You know that feeling when you are on a roller coaster and the chains click-clack away as you head up to the huge height you are about to drop from? The feeling is one full of anticipation, expected exhilaration. What if you were to stop for a while right before the drop? How would you feel? Would you grow nervous, would the anticipation build?
The World Race is an amazing journey, an exhilarating way of life for a year. However for this month God is teaching me to wait on top, at the peak, and rest for the ride ahead. I'm a go go go person and American society has an always going mentality, but what happens to rest? We just don't have the time to rest, to prepare for the ride because we are always too busy riding. This month God is showing me the Sabbath, a day of rest to dedicate to Him, is a way for God to refresh our souls, give us guidance and excitement for the road ahead. It is difficult to rest and people find rest in many different ways such as hanging out with friends, watching TV, sleeping, reading the Bible, etc. The list goes on and on so my challenge for all of you is to figure out how you rest and then do it. Watch Him refresh your soul, reinvigorate your motivation, and reaffirm His plan for your life. The ride is a good one if you take time to rest with God before the plunge and take Him along for the ride.
These last few days I had the opportunity to get the rest my heart desires, my soul craves for in a small village in Thailand called Mae Ai. Mae Ai is a gorgeous village surrounded by mountains with rice fields as far as the eye can see. Our day consisted of morning walks with fog dusting the mountains as the sun rose above them, smiles and laughter as the Thai people performed their traditional Thai dances at the Buddhist temple for the local festival, afternoons of sitting in a small hut in the middle of a rice field reading the Bible and soaking in His beauty, and finally concluding in a team time of worship, encouragement, and calling out the greatness in each other. In this place I experienced God. God can be found everywhere and people experience Him in so many different ways like in prayer, in architecture, in reading the Bible, in worship, and so many other ways. As for me a huge way I experience God is in nature. To simply sit outside and see the beauty of His creation to me is one of the most pure forms of worship and experiencing God. In Mae Ai I found rest, in Mae Ai I experienced God, and in Mae Ai I strengthened my excitement at the forthcoming exhilaration of the rest of this World Race ride. God meets us in our rest on our Sabbaths to refresh our souls so we can see new perspectives and experience Him in new ways. God shows us in our rest things we missed while running too fast and permits time to process them thus producing growth.
Take the time to rest and rely on God's perfect timing. God won't allow you to miss anything He has planned for you while you are resting in Him, but you will often miss Him if you are constantly running and going. It might be difficult, it might be nerve wracking to stop at the climax before the fall, but rest in God is always worth it. May you rest in Him for it makes the ride following much more meaningful.
