Everyone has heard of the old adage, “You get what you ask for.” Looking back on my training camp week I have come to realize that God is ready to put that adage to shame and blow me out of the water with this experience.
If I’d written this blog a few months ago (like I was supposed to), I would have told you all about my expectations for the Race. I had a picture of what I’d learn, what kind of interactions I’d have with people, which struggles I’d face, and exactly what God had put me in this situation for. It would have been a nice, neat answer… and completely inadequate.
Make no mistake, my expectations were high. I imagined God would submerge me in the experiences I’d seen in the video blogs of previous racers: sharing Christmas with street kids in Cambodia, being overwhelmed with God’s beautiful creation on the top of Mount Everest in Nepal, and loving and serving the hungry and outcast. There is no doubt that God will in fact use me in some of these situations or that I will get to share some of the awesome experiences that I’ve seen other racers be blessed by. As awesome as a year full of these things would be, I’m beginning to see that if I expect these experiences, I may be limiting my view of what God is capable of.
At training camp, God knocked me off my feet as He showed up in powerful ways to let me know that His ways are higher than my ways (Isaiah 55). If you’re someone who has never really understood what people are talking about when they say “God told me…”, then this message is a message of encouragement for you: God does speak to us! In the Gospels, upon Jesus giving up His spirit and dying for all mankind on the cross, the bible tells us that “At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51). This curtain represented a separation of God from the people. Behind it was the Holy of Holies, where God would dwell and which only the high priest could enter and only on one day of every year. With Jesus’ death, that separation was removed and He became our new High Priest and granted us direct access to God the Father.
We also have access to God the Father through the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:26). Jesus had to leave the earth, but He promised the Spirit would return to dwell with those who love and obey the Lord.
Why the bible lessons in the middle of my blog about expectations? Because we need to understand that we can speak directly to God and that He also speaks directly to us. Maybe God’s voice isn’t an audible voice. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s made audible through the voice of a complete stranger from another squad that you’ve never met, seen, or spoken to, but who approaches you with a message from the Lord that responds exactly to something you’ve been praying about all week. Maybe, if we take a leap of faith, the Lord will speak to us in ways far beyond the walls of our box.
My expectations for the Race?: To trust in “Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). Thanks be to God that He doesn’t fit in any box that you or I could ever imagine.
