When I began brainstorming ideas for my first blog I kept coming up empty. How does one write his first blog post about a journey that will take him to 11 different countries over 11 months? I began to go through notable bible verses that are engraved on my brain to see if I could get a blog post out of any of them. When I turned to 1st Corinthians I felt like God was saying, “Hey JD, check this out Paul is literally teaching you how to be a missionary.”
“Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win!” 1st Corinthians 9:24
This was my favorite bible verse growing up, back then I was a swimmer and always took it for face value. I thought I should swim to win and if I could manage such a feat then I would have managed to glorify God. I decided to look back on the verse today because I thought that a verse that mentioned racing might make a good first post for someone blogging about the World Race. What I found ended up being some solid advice about mission work and how to best minister to people.
As I dug into Paul’s words in chapter nine I discovered just how relevant this verse was to what I would be doing on my race. In verse nineteen Paul says, “Even though I am a free man with no master, I have become a slave to all people to bring many to Christ.” Having graduated from Ole Miss two weeks ago and having been fortunate enough to have my parents support my educational ventures, I am now by all means a free man.
The second part of the verse is where I believe Paul lays out some humbling advise about mission work. Having been called to the World Race I have essentially been called to servant hood, and in order to serve God I will need to serve his people. Paul is saying that to best minister to a world that does not know Jesus I will need to enslave my self to them, but what does this mean?
In verse twenty-two Paul writes, “When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.” I see this as Paul explaining that to bring people to Christ it is helpful to see the world through their eyes. Not only that but also to be able to then relate with them and understand the best way to share the gospel.
Verse twenty-five and twenty-six say this, “All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it for a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step.” I now have goal to work towards as I prepare for my journey to begin. From January through September of 2018 I will run a race that could hold an eternal prize for many. I would ask readers to pray that as I prepare and begin my race that I would run to win.
My race route is called the 10/40 Window, which starts in Australia and finishes in Morocco. If you would like to learn more about my route follow this link https://www.worldrace.org/?tab=routes&subtab=january-2018-exp. If you would like to subscribe to my blog feel free to reach out to me or click subscribe for updates at the top of this page.
