The World Race will not be the best year of my life.
I know, shocking.
This is something I promised myself even before I left for the race. I told myself no matter how amazing my year on the race would be, I would do bigger an better things. I expected this year to have 330-some-odd days of pure ecstasy, overflowing with God-like passion and power.
They told me to not to have expectations…
I’ve had this glorious idea of what “missions” look like. I’ve wanted to be a missionary for years. This month did not look like what I thought missions was supposed to look like. This month looked a lot like… life.
Malaysia is very Americanized. It’s a melting pot of cultures. There’s a McDonald’s on every corner. You can see three different places of worship on the same street. They struggle with obesity and diabetes. There are even spiritually-dead churches filled with nominal Christians whose faith doesn’t leave the church pew.
This month has been hard. Really hard. Hard living situation. Hard ministry. Hard people to deal with.
This month I’ve been faced with the question “if your mission is boring, or hard, or frustrating, will you still follow your call with passion?”
I wish I could tell you all about how I overcame my situation. How, despite the downfalls, I gave it my all and worked every day, giving 100%, passionately serving as if for the Lord. But I didn’t. I let the little things drag me down. I let the sense of “Americanism” cause me to become complacent. Surviving day after day rather than truly striving. It’s become mundane, tiring, and most days I’m more frustrated than not. But I’ve learned an important lesson through all this.
I understand better now how our “mission” really is everyday life. Jesus called us to “go into ALL the world”. That includes Asia, Africa, but it also includes your back yard. Where will I end up 30 years from now? Only God knows, but I know that life will never turn out exactly like you want it. There will be hard times. There will be days where you don’t want to get out of bed. Maybe you can’t move as fast as you could before. But just the fact that you’re still moving forward is a victory. In the grand race of life, it doesn’t matter if you’re sprinting, jogging, walking, or even crawling, as long as you don’t give up – don’t sit on the sidelines – you’re still making progress. Everyday of my life will take effort to continue forward in passion, reaching out to God to fill me enough that I can overflow onto those around me and share some of the Kingdom to their lives.
