Getting through week one of the World Race showed me my true colors.
I went on a short term mission trip to Oaxaca, Mexico in 2015 and it was life changing because we made an impact everywhere we went. Everywhere we would go people got saved, people got healed, and the Holy Spirit was radically moving. I watched them as they worshiped in pure freedom and surrender, and these people had nothing yet they were giving God everything. It was beautiful.
That is the only other mission trip I’ve been on, and so it has been hard not to compare my experience on the World Race with that experience. I’ve been waiting for the radical stuff to happen, and it hasn’t happened yet. It’s frustrating.
I know that everything my team is doing is important and it will make an impact, I know this. I love construction, hard labor, and projects. I love using my skills to make something look better and seeing the progress along the way, and I know how much it is helping our ministry. I know this. Yet, at the end of week one I was feeling so frustrated. I didn’t even feel like a missionary. I can’t talk to anyone because I don’t know Spanish. Every time we pray for people it feels rushed, and I don’t get to see the product of it. I haven’t felt very connected with God because our quiet time in the morning feels rushed and don’t get much time to be alone, we are locked on a gated compound together. In my frustration I have been hard on myself, but I also started to see my true colors.
On short term mission trips you have a completely different mindset. You only have so long so you push yourself because you know that soon it’ll be over and you’ll be back to your regular life, but you don’t really have to surrender anything in the process. It has only been a week and I’m already realizing all the things I had to surrender to be here. I can’t call my friends any time I want. I can’t go for a drive and escape my problems. In the midst of this frustration, I started to see the true colors of my sinful nature, in other words I started getting easily annoyed, I started daydreaming and wishing I was somewhere else doing something else, I started getting jealous of people who are back home—but then I realized that my true colors are not my human nature tendencies, my true colors come from the Lord who created me.
God didn’t send me on the World Race with my agenda in mind. He sent me to do more, be more, see more, and thrive more no matter what the circumstances are. The true colors of my flesh are slowly being removed and repainted to reveal the beauty He created in me. Thank you, Jesus.
