I realize that the majority of my blogs on the rare occasions when I actually blog are synopsis of our ministry that month. While that is good to keep you up to date with all that I am doing on the field I never really go in depth about what the Race has done in me and more importantly what God has done in me and through me. Over the past month or so God has really been revealing to me just how much he has been at work (he must be exhausted) and I have had the opportunity to reflect on the journey thus far. That is what this blog is about. It is about me and who God is. (If you want to know what I am currently doing feel free to shoot me a message and I’d love to share.)
If you knew me before I left for the Race I have to confess that most of that person no longer exist. Physically, yes I look basically the same (other than my glorious facial hair) but internally I am completely different and God has/is doing such a transformation in my heart. Before the race I was usually a timid person filled with insecurities and doubt. I was often found hidden in the back of the crowd just trying to fit in. I rarely spoke up. (still got some work to do on that one.) I believe I was often apprehensive of people and definitely didn’t know how to love them well as well as be loved by them. I am not speaking of family or those deep in my corner but all people. I could’ve done a better job of loving them as well. I often thought that I had little to bring to the table so often that is what I did. I tended to care to much for what I thought people perceived of me instead of being the person Pops had lovingly created me to be. Speaking of our Heavenly Dad, I naively thought I had an idea of who he is and how he feels about me and the rest of his children. Turns out I didn’t really have much of a clue!
Coming on to the race Papa had a plan to completely wreck my life. I came onto this journey with few expectations because I truly didn’t know what to expect. That was a good thing because God new exactly what I needed and how to deliver that. If I came here with my own plans I would have interfered with his. Community wasn’t something that I was unfamiliar to before the race, I have a pretty incredible one back home filled with some beautiful God centered people. However truly living with people and doing life with them is its own cup of tea. It is quite difficult to put up walls and shut people out because they are always there. I am thankful we had little control of selecting our first team, because I probably wouldn’t have selected the same group of people after knowing them for only 7 days. Luckily the big guy upstairs had known them a bit longer and knew that we were the perfectly broken pieces we each needed to compliment one another and fill in our holes. These people truly knew how to love and they made it easy to love them as well. Their hearts were full of the love of Jesus and they truly loved people as Jesus did. They helped me see what was truly in my heart and just how much Jesus loved me as well. It was through them that I fell in love with people and learned how to love them as they needed to be loved. That first team broke me in ways that I never knew I needed to be broken. They showed me how to be truly vulnerable and the freedom from walking out of that vulnerability.
My second team grew me in totally new ways than my first team did. We were an incredibly diverse group of people. each person had their own unique story to tell. being diverse was wonderful in regards to ministry. It allowed us to have an abudance of ways to spread the Gospel. Some spit fire when they prayed while others preached straight from the soul. Through this team God showed me that I had far more to bring to the table and he began revealing more of those things to me. Not only did he reveal those things to me but he called me to walk into them and trust that it is truly who he created me to be. I am going to be honest trying to develop community and intimacy with this team was hard, but I think that is just how God wanted it to be. He pulled me from a community whom I loved so dearly and related to on an intimate level and put me in one where I would have to fight for and actively seek. ( I often not only failed myself in this but also failed them in the process.) I didn’t do a very good job of pursuing them and seeking what their hearts needed. I think God was trying to transform my heart during that season and prepare me for the next. Looking back I think He was trying to tell me that I have been a sheep long enough I want to develop you into a shepard. Well it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks so I struggled with stepping away from the crowd even though I could feel my heart wanting to dig deeper.
Being on the race has allowed me to view people more through my fathers lens than my own. I have had the opportunity to see them as he sees them, his beloved children. He doesn’t see them as the sin they commit or the mistakes they have made, but as a father sees a child who stumbles as they first are learning how to walk. I imagine Papa’s eyes welling up with tears of pride and joy as he watches us from above knowing that there will be plenty of times we will fall and as we fall we might hurt ourselves or even those around us, but he is always there picking us back up and shaking the jello out of our legs as we regain our composure. Looking through the lens of the father or as Josh my friend puts it looking through a lens of Love I have found myself falling in love with his people and truly wanting to be with them walking beside them as they figure out how to walk themselves. Speaking of love I have truly fell in love with who God is and his word. I used to look at scripture and spending time with Jesus as a chore and it would become something that I would try and fit into my schedule. Through this walk I have discovered that it is through his word that we find more of him and ultimately all he wants is more of us. I have come to realize it shouldn’t be about doing at all. He already took care of anything we would need to do when he chose the cross. It should simply be about Love and as 1 John puts it God is love. When you love someone deeply you want to get to know everything about them, you seek to discover them and spend intimate time with them. I’ve learned that is exactly how God wants to know us and am learning how to love him like that. You see when you seek God through love it doesn’t become how can he fit into my schedule he himself becomes the root of your schedule and from it everything else in your life manifests.
I have been blessed to walked through so much freedom and boldness during this journey. Freedom from sin and past mistakes. Freedom from what the world sees me as. I used to live a life of avoidance now I am stepping into a life of seeking and pursuing. In the beginning I dreaded having one on ones, this past debrief I signed up for four of them because I have learned to love talking with people and truly value who they are as well as the wisdom they have. I used to not speak but now I know I have a voice that needs to be heard. God has provided me with wisdom and the heart of a servant and I am choosing to give those away. I used to be unsure of my identity and doubt who I was, now I know I am specifically a son of Christ and created with a purpose. I used to think that I was weak now I know I am but Jesus provides all the strength I will ever need. Currently Jesus is showing me what it means to be an authoratitive, courageous man that was created in his image and how to walk that out. I have no Idea what the next three months are going to look like or what is in store. But I do know who is in control and judging from his previous track record it is going to blow me away.
