So let’s pretend we’re pals and we haven’t seen each other in a hot minute and decide to meet up in a hipster coffee shop because that’s what you do in Fayetteville and you say “Gilly! So tell me about this crazy thing you’re doing called the World Race.”
Let’s backtrack. On July 9, 2014 I bought a cool forest green Moleskine journal because I met Jesus and I wanted to start journaling to write down our conversations and blessings and thoughts. It was my last day at camp that I had just spent 4 weeks at, working tirelessly serving high school kids and helping them meet Jesus, while I myself was like woah this is who Jesus really is and this is what being a believer really looks like. So in finding out how to follow Jesus I realized that I had been comfortable in my faith for the past 6 years and wasn’t living out being a Christian because I was getting myself stuck. Throughout camp, I was uncomfortable, the good kind where you’re like dang this is incredible what have I been doing this whole time.
Back to the journal.. so it’s the last few days of camp when I bought it and immediately started writing. I didn’t know this when I first applied for the WR but I just looked at that journal 3 weeks ago and the first lines read “Lord, I know you now. I want to be forever uncomfortable, I want to forever be changing but knowing you’re the only constant. Lord, I want my heart to break for the nations and to go deeper.” WHAT hold up, little ole Gil, a new believer wrote that down.
But it was hard. Throughout the first semester, I lived selfishly. Making friends for myself, building community to look good on the outside, getting involved in activities to seem fun, making good grades to glorify myself and I knew it. My purpose is to spread the good news and I certainly have not been doing that in the best way possible.
The idea The World Race just about landed in my lap- here it was and after a long time of wrestling internally, with Jesus and the ‘rents, I finally said let’s test the waters see what this things all about. It seemed like the answer to my constant prayers. Typing it out seems like it was an easy process and just like that I’m going. I couldn’t tell you that’s the slightest bit of truth. 3 months of working through it, I just now understand that this is real and I’m going.
Through the World Race, I want to see the world through a window and not a mirror. I’m serving myself in my current position, but I want to fearlessly serve others and Jesus. I want to get uncomfortable, be in a completely new situation where my own strength is not sufficient, have the opportunity of an insanely unfamiliar mission field, and I want to experience the breath of Jesus being so heavily poured out through me. I desire to do the unordinary in an ordinary world. I want to be uncertain with a certain God.
