As the months fly by and the days until we fly home dwindle, I have gotten increasingly nervous about going home. I know God in a whole new way, I’m constantly hearing and learning from Him and that was not true of my life pre-World Race. When I think about going home I get nervous about falling back into the complacency I used to live in or getting distracted by the lifestyle I used to live and reverting back to my apathetic way of living; no part of me wants that to happen. But God has been using these last two months to show me that everything is going to be just fine.
In India, we lived a very comfortable lifestyle that reminded me, in every way, of home and, wouldn’t you know it, I fell into a state of complacency. All month I recognized that I was in this complacent mindset and I felt spiritually dry but I didn’t do much to change that. I didn’t feel like I was learning anything and I really didn’t feel close to God for the first time in four months. But at the end of the month God spoke to me and He showed me that all month long He had been speaking to me and through me, He had been teaching me a lot, and that He had been using me in ways I didn’t recognize at the time.
This month in Nepal we didn’t do a whole lot for our ministry and we had two teams, two squad leaders, and Cassie (all together that’s about half of our squad) with us. There were a ton of people in our house and I love every one of them, so I got to have a ton of Coke dates. I bet you guessed it, I got distracted. I was not focused on God at all; I was having too much fun hanging out with everybody. Every once in a while I found myself on our rooftop contemplating God things, but it was a very rare moment when that happened. Once again, I didn’t feel like I learned anything and I felt distant from God but once again, at the end of the month, God spoke to me and showed me that He had been speaking to me and teaching me and using me the whole time.
Alright, let me just say that complacency and distractions are not a good place to be but it has been encouraging to learn that I’m going to be Ok. God has used the last two months to trump my fears of going home. But that’s not really the point of this blog; I want to tell you what I learned this month (well, at the end of this month).
At the end of India, God gave me the word REVERENCE.
I didn’t know anything about reverence or what it looked like to revere God, but I wanted to learn.
Then He gave me the word HOLINESS.
I didn’t know anything about holiness or what it looked like to strive to be holy, but I wanted to learn.
Now, I have changed a lot on this race and people like to joke around and refer to who I am today as “the new Sarah,” but that can’t be right. I’m still the same person I’ve always been, my identity has always been the same, I’ve always been a daughter of the king, I’ve always been bold and beautiful, I’ve always had a powerful voice, I just didn’t know it. The difference between who I am today and who I was nine months ago is that now I know it. But that’s not the point either. The point is, I am still the same Sarah (bad habits and all) and that’s not enough for me anymore. I want to be better. I want to strive for greatness. And that’s where reverence and holiness come in.
All month long I have been trying to figure out what it looks like to live in reverence and what it looks like to strive for holiness, separately. Three weeks and no conclusions. And then one morning I found this:
“Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” 2 Corinthians 7:1
I never realized just how connected they were. Because Christ has established a new covenant with us, holiness is the purification (or elimination) of our old way of life, before Him. And the motivation to strive for holiness comes from our reverence of Him. So to live a life of reverence is to strive for holiness.
It’s simple, but it’s kind of a big deal. If I want to be better, this is how I should be living.
Next stop: Ukraine
