A question I’m getting more and more now is “why are you doing this?” In other words, why am I leaving the life I’ve built and come to know, here in northern Minnesota, to live for Christ out of a backpack for a year?
That answer is both simple and complex.
Bluntly, I believe that this is where God is calling me at this stage in my life. In the past several months, He has freed me from many long-term commitments and taught me so much regarding my identity in Him and what it means to serve. But that just scratches the surface.
When it comes down to it, I’ve always felt that there must be something more to my life and career, and now I have the opportunity to pursue that. As a friend of mine put it, “Christ gave everything for me, so why shouldn’t my life revolve around Him?” That stuck with me. I know that I can serve God from any position that He puts me in, but I also believe that He’s calling me to something more at this time, and I want to honor Him in that.
Am I scared as I begin this journey? Yes. I have fears that the fundraising won’t come together, that something will go wrong before or during the race, that I won’t be able to do what God has called me to do when I am on the race; but, when I think about it, maybe that’s why God called me in the first place.
Maybe God’s purpose in calling me on this adventure is to expose my fears and then to shatter them as I see His grace, love, and peace revealed, as I serve the world for Him. We pray that God would take away our fears, which I believe He is willing to do, but at the same time, I believe that He allows these fears to creep in because it forces us to make a choice. We can either fall on Him or we can continue to become stuck.
So, in this time of preparation, I have chosen to seek Christ first, as it says in my favorite passage (Matthew 6:33-34), and trust that He will provide because this is where He’s calling me to be. God doesn’t call us to situations we can’t handle. Instead, He calls us to take a leap of faith, out into the deeper waters because our enemy can’t swim.
So, that’s the longer way around the topic, but, basically, I’m taking this step in my life because I want to experience God on a new level, and I want to serve and honor Him by jumping into the deep end. That’s why I’m going on the World Race.
