Before I even applied for the race I kept on reading one sentence that kept on popping up throughout people’s blogs, or even throughout AIM’s website… The term never really rung true for me until now, when I am in the position they were talking about. The term is simple, “The Race starts now.” I never really grasped what that meant, despite the fact that I thought I had everything figured out. I thought I would be completely fine just living my every day life just the same after being accepted for the race. Boy, was I wrong.
It’s not even a matter of me wanting my life to change because I got accepted onto the race… It just… happened… I thought that the life that I was living was one that was pleasing to the Lord, and that it would prepare me just fine for what is to come. But the more that the World Race came up in my every day life the more pressure that came upon me. Pressure to show people the love of Jesus even more than I have before because I am going on this radical mission trip. Pressure to come to them humbly and ask for support. And pressure to keep up with my already established friendships, because I was heavily lacking in that… If I’m being honest, these pressures got to me. I didn’t feel adequate enough to be this example of Jesus in their lives, and I didn’t feel prepared to accept the love and support they wanted to show me. BUT, isn’t that what the race is all about? The idea that we are brought low as humans so Christ can come and fill us up… That he becomes our adequacy and our confidence, so ultimately we don’t have to. The fact that I am learning that now is HUGE… and extremely humbling.
In the past few weeks my life has gone from semi-relaxed to being the busiest season of my entire life, and I think that this is once again the Lord preparing me for the craziness of the race. My job (working in the training department) went from me making my own hours and my own schedule to having something to do 24/7. With the opening of a new location within my work, it is understandable that the training department would be a busy one. But with the constant hours, and the constant GO of my every day life I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed at one point. Looking back now it felt like the world was crashing down on me, but once again… Thats what is gonna happen on the race, right? I’ll have multiple breakdowns, and I’ll feel as if the world is ending, but in reality thats just me being human.
So now I understand. I understand what they mean when they say, “The Race starts now.” I understand that a couple of them probably had the same struggles as I am having now 8 months before the race… What they mean is it doesn’t get easier. It actually gets harder. The evil one is probably going to be coming after you even more so now that you have committed to spending 11 months of your life serving Jesus. What they mean is that you have to literally wake up and say, “Jesus I want to do YOUR will,” and you have to say it daily. From the stories I have heard, and the blogs that I have read, this is much of what the race is going to be like. I am going to continually be in situations where I just want to breakdown, and be put in situations where I feel inadequate. But what I have come to learn is that in those situations all I have to do is come forth in prayer and say, “Its not about me Jesus, may your will be done.”
I’m so thankful I am learning this now. I am so thankful that He has already started taking me on the race, despite the fact that I don’t launch until 8 months from now. He is shaping me and molding me into the man that He wants me to be, and I haven’t even started traveling to the 11 different nations he has called me to. Thank you Jesus for taking me on this journey long before it has even started.
So with that, I reflect on my past mission trips. I reflect on the way that I acted, and how I literally held nothing back. So the question comes to my mind, why don’t I act that way in the states? And I really have no answer for that. So here it is, my declaration of living my life as if I am already there, because as I have said multiple times already, “The Race starts NOW.”
