The World Race just might have you fooled.
If you’re anything like me you spent hours of your week reading blogs, stalking the World Race Instagram, looking up routes, daydreaming about quitting your life and going on this adventure with Jesus. Shoot, if you were me you already had team name ideas and strategies about how you were going to lead your team from within, how you wanted God to grow you, on and on ad nauseam. I’ve been living this dream of mine for 9 months now, and let me tell you what they all tell you: it’s nothing like what I expected, but it’s been so beautiful. If you’ve read blogs and looked at the World Race Instagram – ever – you need to know this.
Don’t go on the World Race unless:
* You’re willing to let go of all control. That means time being altered, plans being canceled, “whoops, looks like this is happening now” – just about every day. This is harder than it seems. When everything around you is changing or being dictated for you, it makes you want to cling to the times that you think are “yours” because it gives you some structure and a sense of “control.” Let me tell you, it’s fake. It’s not really control at all; in fact it just makes you harder to be around the more you cling to those things. You also short-circuit a lot of the growth God is trying to work in your heart by not letting go and surrendering to Him. Don’t go on the Race unless this is something you can choose to surrender.
* You’re willing to totally redefine your idea of ministry. Sometimes ministry will look like two hours of rolling cotton balls in a hospital, maybe teaching two hours of English, moving thousands of bricks, sitting at a table long after lunch talking to your ministry host instead of journaling or taking a nap. The WR Instagram paints this unbelievable picture of ministry as loving on little orphan babies with the sun streaming through the trees or watching people get healed – and don’t get me wrong, mine does too. It’s hard to capture the moments of sitting in your cement room for the other 18 hours of the day on your sleeping pad trying to press into what God is teaching you or growing into the uncomfortable. Those aren’t fun, what you thought you came here for, or what other people want to see, but that’s where most of the growth happens. Did you come here to get Instagram worthy pictures of little African babies or to grow in intimacy with the Father? Be ok for intimacy to look nothing like what you expect, and for His love to encounter you in the deepest moments.
* You can let go of the security of relationships back home. I didn’t say you needed to, you need to be able to. Relationships are important. Security blankets are important. The Race is hard. It will challenge you and you need people that you feel safe with to hang onto when everything is changing around you. The issues are these: not only may you not have access to people at home for weeks on end, but will they start becoming your default coping mechanism? If you allow them to become so, that’s fine, just know you’re doing that at the expense of your Race. Is that why you came?
* You can learn from people younger than you or that you don’t get along with. Feedback and growth are a huge part of the Race. If hearing things you need improvement on from someone you don’t naturally mesh with is hard for you, you might need to find a different program. Some of your biggest lessons (and pieces of humble pie) will very likely come from moments like that. If you don’t have a teachable heart, the Race might not be your best option. You can spend money to do missions somewhere else, but you won’t have the same growth.
* You’re willing to give up certain things that are important to you. This could be free time, introvert time, your last snack you brought from home, your turn or right to do something, the options are endless. Basically whatever you hang onto just a little too tightly. If you’re not willing to give that up, moments you have to will reveal a chunk of your character; moments you don’t will be areas you aren’t surrendered. (Note: we are not talking about lacking boundaries. You need to do what’s important to you to stay healthy internally and externally so you can continue to pour out. However; why did you come on this thing? So you can cling to personal days? It was probably to pour out, huh? To give selflessly. To make a difference. Those moments come from being willing to sacrifice.)
* You’re willing to get uncomfortable. This could be anything: weird food, brutal climate, bugs, tight sleeping arrangements, ministry you don’t enjoy or feel an aptitude in, but especially learning about and interacting with God. Being in different cultures already teaches you a lot about how to interact with the Father. Don’t expect to find Him in all the old familiar places (again, is that why you came?) Be prepared to learn about Him in ways that will challenge you and stretch the limits of the God you’ve always known. As Jefferson Bethke says in It’s Not What You Think, “We were made in God’s image. It’s dangerous when we reverse that, put Him in a box, and try to make Him into our own.” The God we serve is bigger than we can understand. He can handle a little challenge. If you can’t, the church you go to back home is just fine.
* You’re willing to be vulnerable; I mean really vulnerable. The Race has gotten much better about boundaries, sharing with safe people who have earned the right to hear your stories, etc., but you will be far more uncomfortable far more times than you’d like to be when it comes to laying it all out there and being ok with not being ok. This is a year of your life. You can’t be ok every day; especially when it comes to hard stuff like praying for someone who doesn’t get healed or watching the orphans you’re loving on go without enough food. No one can just “be ok” the whole Race. I dare you to try to be ok for a whole year back home without all those struggles. It’s not a thing. You need to be ok with letting your team see where you are, letting them into the mess, and teaching them how to take care of you and love you in those moments. They might not do it as naturally as your friends or family do, but you’ll be hard pressed to find people that are willing to learn as much as this crowd is. This is the only place I know of where strangers can be meshed together and learn to love each other as well as they do – because they want to, not because they’re told to or are naturally good at it. You just have to be willing to let them. The way you get to community that’s worth having isn’t by adventuring together around the world, it’s fighting to learn to love each other and loving through the mess. Those committed relationships don’t come around very often. I kinda wanna seize them while I have them. If you don’t, you can still do the Race, but prepare to feel very isolated and alone and like you’re missing out on one of the biggest blessings the Race has to offer; because you are.
* You’re ok with the Race being a lot less about what God does through you and a lot more about what He does in you. The Race is a journey with the Father. It’s a journey of intimacy, of depth, of spiritual growth, not of changing the world. If you come with the perspective that you’ll be doing life-changing mission work and healing the sick, preaching to thousands, changing lives every single day, about month 4 or 5 you’ll be really burnt out and disappointed, probably wondering what you’re doing wrong. The Race is about taking a year of your life and letting the Father do a work in you, and FROM that letting him do a work THROUGH you. Healing, raising the dead, and changing lives are His job. You will only see those things if you’re content to surrender to the surgery of letting Him develop intimacy with you – removing everything that’s in the way. Don’t let your perspective of what you think you should be doing limit God from what He wants to do. If you come expecting to change the world or prove to your supporters that you’re doing so, you’ll be hurt, disappointed, and frustrated very quickly. Your supporters gave to invest in you. Believe me when I say they’re just as content – if not more content – to see what God is doing in your life than to watch you hold a bunch of babies or teach some English classes. The ones that care enough to give $16,000 are ones that want to invest in YOU. Don’t short circuit what the Father wants to do by limiting Him with your expectations.
I have loved every minute of my time on the World Race, even the hard minutes. I tend to live this thing with the eyes of a seven year old, ooh-ing and aah-ing at seriously everything. “How am I here” is one of my most common phrases, but the death of my expectations came hard. Everyone said “let go of your expectations” and I didn’t have a clue what that meant. Seeing “the non-Instagram side” would have helped with that a little bit. Let these perspectives sink into your mind and let the Spirit into those places of hurt and unmet expectation. It’s often there where He does the most work.
