It’s the most frightening thing I’ve ever done.
Leaving my family. Moving away from the friends who support me, the comfort I love so much, and the rationality of the world in which I’ve lived. Spending a full year fundraising and saving as much money as I make, only so that I can leave the familiar and live out of a backpack for nine months. For the first time, I’m asked to give the Father the entirety of my life: my time, my money, my commitments, and my attachments.
It’s also the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been asked to do.
I have such a privilege in this moment, as he asks me to leave behind everything I know and run to him as fully as I am able. I am given the chance to sacrifice every aspect of my life that is about me and not about loving obedience to the Father. I can lay aside all my fears and inhibitions and truly serve others with a full heart in a new way.
I am able to experience the center of life in Christ: sacrifice. The reality is, the Christian life should be characterized by sacrifice no matter where we live, because this is how we have been loved. Jesus loved us by sacrificing for us, and we are called to do the same. That is why I’m embarking on this insane mission to three continents and five countries. I am going to serve and love others around the world because this is exactly how God loves us in Jesus: by sacrificing his perfection and choosing instead to step into our pain, our brokenness, our failure.
And yes, it is terrifying to think of leaving everything behind for this long.
But this sacrifice is made beautiful because in it I am able to imitate Jesus and run directly to the loving embrace of our Father.
“Faith can no longer mean sitting still and waiting—they must rise and follow him. The call frees them from all earthly ties, and binds them to Jesus Christ alone. They must burn their boats and plunge into absolute insecurity in order to learn the demand and the gift of Christ…The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus. Unless a definite step is demanded, the call vanishes into this air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves like fanatics.” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship.
