Nine Things That Changed My Life
Over the course of the Race I would say that I learned a few things. Almost all of these things have given me insight, or changed the way I may think on some things. After giving thoughtful consideration to many of the things that I learned, I finally settled on the nine greatest things I believe changed my life over the past nine months. I am going to list each one of them off and go into my new perspective on them as well.
1 – God accepts our failure
Shocker, God does not expect us to be perfect human beings. When he created us, we were perfect, but we ended up falling and destroyed what once was. God has been teaching me that failure is okay even when I am not OK with it myself. Oftentimes, I am able to give grace to others in their failure, but when it comes to myself I cut God’s grace short. Now I know that this is preached to us all of the time. Pastors and other people tell us “It’s okay to fail.” However, we never take it to heart. We say in our hearts “They don’t know what I have done.” or “This time it has gone too far.” or something along those lines. Something that I have been taught and realized through all of this is that they’re all right. God knows we’re going to fail before it even happens and He accepts that whether I like it or not. I often treat grace like it’s cheap; I think that somehow I am too sinful or have fallen too far to be saved by His grace—exactly what I stated above. However, God has taught me that this radical and unrelenting grace is for failures like me. It extends far beyond what I consider too far because it extends forever. This rang true for me when I failed so miserably in month one. I failed morally and in leadership. I was broken and ready for judgement, but all I received from leadership and Christ was such deep and ravishing grace. God knows no limits and when we attempt to put him into a box, we cannot except all the things he has for us—especially that grace. Knowing that God doesn’t focus on our failures, therefore, we should not focus on those failures either. Being a follower of Christ means that we will live a bold life not fearing failure in anything, knowing that all of our failures will draw us closer to the Father.
2 – Dreaming
Everyone has dreams; we all desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves (that’s actually the desire of our heart). For example, I desire to see others grow and come to Christ, to see kingdom come wherever I live, to live within a drive of gorgeous mountains, to travel the world, to get married, to bless people through my work, and I could go on and on. God gave all of us dreams for specific reasons. He gave us these dreams so that we would trust him and live out those that he has given us. There is a possibility that not all of your or my dreams come true, but honestly, God already has let me live out some of those dreams, which I am incredibly blessed. God gave us these desires for a reason. He gave the desire of horses, medical school, missions, construction, hiking, and cooking to different people asking each of us to use them for his glory. God would not give us dreams if he didn’t want us to live them out. Precaution to that last sentence: just because God gave us dreams does not mean every single one will come true, but I believe God does want some (sometimes all) of those dreams to be lived out. Living life void of dreams is living life without color. A very dull life to live indeed. Throughout this trip, God has taught me to live out my dreams and give all the glory to Him.
3 – Relationships
No, I am not talking about romantic relationships. I want to spend some time talking about relationships that we have with friends, family, co-workers, and people we meet everyday—I guess romantic relationships too. The World Race has shown me another side of relationships that I have not really experienced until now and I think that there is also a truth that we need to acknowledge…Relationships are the way we are able to reach people and show them the Father’s love. Relationships are vital to our lives. Despite how self-reliant we attempt to be, we cannot live without solid relationships. After living with and around countless people for the past nine months (shoutout to living with Robbie for nine whole months!!!), I can say without a doubt that relationships that build each other up are crucial to our development as Christians. But I shouldn’t even limit it to that. Relationship that challenge us and that make it difficult to love others is also important for us because it is just another way to learn how to love someone. It’s as simple as that. We need to realize how important relationships are and make sure that our priorities are in order and go and make some!
4 – Yup… Pride
Where to even start with this one… Pride is something that every human is born into. We all grow up with and die with. We all have pride in different areas of our lives. I have been extremely prideful in my short existence (Like SO prideful). I have oftentimes thought that I’m better than others, more humble (HA!), less ‘sinful’, and I could honestly go on all day. Throughout the Race, the Lord has been teaching me what pride looks like in my life and been showing me how I need to be humbled and quite honestly, he humbles me in those areas before I even know I have pride there. He is continuing to show me my flaws and how I can grow from them. Something that I believe applies to all of our lives is the fact that pride blinds us from works God wants to do in us and through us. We have the idea that we have learned enough or just don’t struggle with things like others do. I used to think that and WOW! What a load of complete crap! When pride is in our lives we miss opportunities and people that God has placed in our lives. We also take time for granted and don’t properly use what God has given us. I devoted a whole blog to this earlier in the year, so if you want to read more about it go check it out, but I believe it’s important enough to write about it again here. This is something that we will be learning all of our lives—and never really stop learning either. Keep on digging; also, spoiler alert: You’ll never be ‘humble enough’ so you’ll never stop learning. Might as well embrace it, right?
5 – Resting Well
Somewhere around month four or five, in India, I was just worn out. I was done; I was so burnt out that I did not want to live another day out of the country forever. Okay, I will admit that was a little bit dramatic, but it allowed me to learn something new: the value of rest. Now a lot of people will say “Yeah, that’s great.” or “I totally get that.” but there is such a value in rest that we miss. Day seven of creation God made rest and soaked it up for the whole day. In the New Testament, Jesus talks about sabbath being created for man not man for the sabbath. God knew we would need this rest and placed a significant value over it as well. Something that I’m sure not that many people know about me—maybe everyone knows—is that I have a hard time sitting still. I always want to be going somewhere or doing something; I’m almost in a constant state of movement. That’s one of the greatest reasons this was so difficult for me to learn. I feel bored or useless just sitting still or resting. When I started getting extremely burnt out in India I was able to learn the value of finding how I rest well. For some it could be playing music, painting, doing absolutely nothing, sleeping, going on walks, reading, and various other things. I learned this through a lot of thought and believe it or not the way I feel rested is from either hiking/walking outdoors, reading, spending time with people, or sleep. I think it’s so important to learn how to rest well because how can we be effective in ministry, school, work, and just life if we can’t stay well rested and ready for anything God has for us?
6 – Feedback
Okay. This is something that has been huge in my life the past nine months because this is where I believe I have learned to do it best. The term “feedback” is exactly what it sounds like: Being honest and real with people about giving constructive criticism or sharing with them where they really did well in something—in other words something more positive. Feedback is actually such a beautiful thing. Before I came on the Race, I would not share with people about my emotions whether that be frustration, elation, exhaustion, sadness, fear, or whatever. However, that is one of the most ridiculous things to do to any human-being. I realized how often I do this and others that do this as well. How horrible is it to have friends, family members, and church goers who cannot say the hard things to each other? Feedback gets rid of passive-aggression and makes way for true feelings to be spoken. Feedback is about all of the things. It does not have to be just the hard things, but it is intentionally looking at situations, our emotions, or the actions of others and just giving them our thoughtful perceptions about them. It is not said out of anger in the moment, but prayerfully considered and given in love. Feedback done right should not only sharpen others, but encourage them and push them towards Christ. It’s such a beautiful thing and I love it :).
7 – How are you living your life?
How do you think God wants you, a Christian, to live your life? What profession does he want you to have? Where would he want you to live? I have asked these questions to myself thousands of times and would become so frustrated because I could not figure out the ‘correct’ answer. What I am about to say may be extremely controversial, but I will say it anyways. God doesn’t really care what you do… There I said it. Before you start writing this blogpost off, let me unpack that a little bit. Yes, I believe God calls some people to specific things, jobs, places, and things in life, but God also gave us dreams and desires. These dreams and desires can play huge rolls in our lives and in the kingdom. Sometimes we know our passions and other times God reveals them to us when we may not even be looking for it. Living out those dreams and desires—while giving God glory—is exactly what he wants all of us to do. That job could be a doctor, farmer, secretary, small business owner, missionary, or pastor. You can honor God in and with any of those careers. Obviously, our lives are not just the massive questions in life, but also the little choices we make each and every day. In order to live for God in the grandiose moments, we need to learn how to live like Him in the small ones too. It’s all about the little things. The way you treat a sibling, share the gospel with a friend, spend time with God, and even just spend your time in general. If you’re able make the right decision in the small moments, I am most positive that you—with God’s help obvi—will make the right choices in the big moments as well. My point is that God sometimes calls us to a specific area where He wants us to go—and usually it’s so very evident—, but God also gave us dreams and free will to go and glorify him in everything. Even though Jesus had a fantastic ministry, He also was a carpenter for more years than he had an actual “ministry”. Life is ministry, people.
8 – Trust = Faith
Wow! Okay, this took me SOOOOO long to learn on the Race. I actually am learning this still… Well, obviously we all have our doubts in life. Doubts whether God will come through on something, a job will work out, we will get into the school we wanted to, or just that life would work out for us. There’s a lot that actually goes into trusting the Lord and the people around us. For instance, leaving the Race after nine months and trusting that God has my future (which I still know little about) is so difficult for me. I could have definitely taken the easy route—the easy route for me that is—and gone to school for some ministry and just lived out life. That’s not bad to do, but that would have been comfortable. God loves when we take big or small steps in directions where we honestly need God to pull through because he loves coming through for us. I suppose it’s similar to the parable of the men that were given talents. One man was given five, another two, and another one. The first two took risks—God loves us even if we fail with that risk—but the last one was too afraid and buried it. What I waste of an opportunity. Lets be a people that puts all of our eggs in one basket and put more of our faith and trust in the one who can truly come through for us. All in all, our whole lives we will have to continue learning about trusting in God no matter what and what that looks like because I can tell you that I have not fully learned trust on a nine month mission trip.
9 – Becoming a wild-man after God’s own heart
This has been one of the greatest and most wonderful things the Lord has been
teaching me the last two years or so, but has really put in work on this the past
nine months. During month one through three was all about respect and loving others well; month four through six was learning the small things that show the Lord’s love and cherishing women (yes, you can cherish women that are just your friends); however, during this whole time, it has been about seeking the Lord’s heart, what we’re passionate about, chasing after the Lord, and so much more. A book that us men on the squad have been studying the last month or so is Wild At Heart. A book by John Eldridge, it is pretty counter cultural to what is considered ‘normal masculinity’. I won’t go through the whole book because it is worth a read (it’s for men and women by the way). I’m just going to take a moment to highlight my main takeaways from this book. The first is the fact that not enough men live out their passions for God. What I mean by that is that so many men—including myself at some point—was or is living a life where they don’t pursue the things that God has placed on their heart. God gave men specific dreams for a reason; He desires us to seek them out and give him glory. Next was how the Lord created man’s heart. The Lord has created us—men—with desire of danger, adventure, and the unknown. Since our youth, we all had great dreams of being heroes and all-stars. We desire to challenge ourselves and lead others. Oftentimes, we limit that or are limited by others and give up on that. We allow other men, women, or ourselves shoot down those qualities that God has given us. Men love adventure; men love to lead; men love to be the strong, handsome knight. I believe men have something in them that has gone long without being pulled out of them. God given qualities—that allow us to be men of God—that we simply have disregarded because they didn’t fit well in this day and age. Men NEED to ask the Lord and really try and understand how the Lord has created them.
I could go on and on about all these things—especially the last one. I think one blog was enough for now. One last thing I wanted to add to this blog before it’s over. I strongly recommend buying Wild at Heart. It is such a great book about men, but isn’t just for men because it’s very much for women to read and better understand men as well. It talks about the heart of men, how God created them, and how we work. So it’s great for everyone to read. Thanks for reading my blog! 😀
