*this is my second to last blog post on this site, my next post will be the web address to my new-hopefully more long term website, thanks for staying updated!*
**also, this is sort of a brain deload, so apologies for the jumps, shout-out to you all for sticking through!**
Abandonment. A crazy concept huh? It’s a piece of what you learn when you go on the world race. How to live with less “stuff”, and how to live with more reliance upon Christ to show up and provide. For me it meant concepts like not always having access to communication with people back home, or sometimes not having a real bed to sleep on, or not having running water. Once it meant actually not even having a place to stay momentarily because our hostel was shut down for two years before we arrived. (One of my favorite stories from my race)
For the most part, abandonment meant adjusting to living without comforts… and I’m realizing that abandonment is a little more than just sleeping on an air mat, or having to walk a while to get your bath water.
It became a value of mine, and one I struggle with still. Don’t get me wrong, I’m typing this up on my iPhone, deciding when we’re going to order pizza for dinner.
I don’t have it all figured out.
But I do have a new perspective shift that I feel led to share. So often I’ve heard myself say “I rely on the Lord, the Lord provides, He will give me shelter and food…” (and it goes on and on).
But more and more recently I’m discovering that I’ve been given, living in, and have been handing out a comfortable, watered down, middle class white American version of what it means to follow Jesus Christ.
Just because Jesus fed the five thousand does NOT mean we follow Him because He will always feed us, HE IS NOT A VENDING MACHINE. And we HAVE to stop treating Him so. I say we because I’m in the midst of figuring all of this out, of knowing less and following more.
He’s been coming at me with this for the last week… and by coming at me yes I mean that sometimes Jesus does get in your face because He doesn’t want you going around sharing some sort of candy coated Gospel that says “go out and share my word and then come home and worry about what to pack for your next move” he just says GO.
Over and over again, in Luke 9, Jesus teaches the disciples that following Him means stripping yourself of worldly things, being okay with your family not agreeing with you, and potentially not having a roof over your head at night.
I mean… would I die for the Gospel? Would I go to a country without the comfort of some organization providing my means of getting there if God called me? Would I sell literally everything I own, give it ALL up, and live without a roof over my head? They’re all hypotheticals He’s been asking me, but I have a weird (discernment I know) feeling that eventually it may not all be hypothetical. I didn’t just leave the country a year and a half ago to go on a trip to “find myself”. If I’m being brutally honest, when I left it was because God told me to and I knew there had to be more to life than working a 9-5… it’s not what I was meant to do.. it’s not what a lot of us were meant to do.. and if I may be risky here and poke some nerves, it’s not what any of us were really meant to do. I mean, what would life look like if we all did what we were supposed to thousands of years ago and spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth?
Alright, now that I’ve gone off the rail, let’s get back on track.
I’ve been on mission for a year and a half now… and I’m figuring it out… and realizing that I’ve been screwing it up.. just like a lot of us. Don’t get me wrong, I love the World Race and I absolutely am grateful to God for the encounters I’ve had with people who taught me what it meant to be selfless.. in the moment…
But what does it mean to actually live like my life really doesn’t come first?
Yeah. He created me.
Yeah. He has purpose for me.
Yeah. He gives me good things.
But like…. how can I talk the talk yet not walk the walk?
Back in Ethiopia God asked me
“are you willing to recklessly abandon everything you know and take the risk to live a radically different lifestyle than you’ve ever expected?”
My response? OVERLY CONFIDENT YES OF COURSE.
I mean, the word radical has popped up since then at least 100 times and clearly God has no plan on slowing down this train. At least twice a day my brain says “what did you give up today? Where did you die today?” And a lot of times, I am laying in bed at 10pm and think “should I even be in a bed right now?”
And now I’m home, back in comfort, back in the land of the American Gospel.. which has little accountability and essentially zero understanding of leaving life behind.. and I’ve found myself coming up with excuses for my own lifestyle. Am I grateful for what I have and where God is sending me?
Absolutely yes. I’m leaving for Spain soon to go to school to learn how to start my own missional community. And I’ve received support from all over that I am so grateful for. But I’ve received the wake up call, and want to send it out to everyone else as well…
Abandonment does not just mean leaving for a little while to live out of a backpack and eat for $5.00/day.
Abandonment is the result of counting the cost of raw, radical discipleship… and yeah.. it’s a little crazy.. but if there’s something Jesus is teaching me this year it’s not just that He’s cool.. He’s also absolutely crazy.
Nico
