On my drive to work this morning a song came on “I am yours” by Lauren Daigle. I have heard this song so many times but for some reason, I heard the verse where she says “I lay me down at the alter” a little bit differently today and it hit me, that verse sums up with the race means to me. If your lost hang tight I am going to break it down.
The race to me means submission! If you have read any of my blogs you will know missions was something I never thought I would be doing till about a year or 2 ago when God started working on my heart. When I got the call to the world race there was a small part of me that said God if I don’t get accepted I will be ok matter of fact it would be a relief so God I don’t really want to go unless its your will…… and here we are so you know how that turned out! lol matter of fact the day I got the call I was accepted I cried, yes some of those tears were happy tears but there was sad tears in there too. From the moment I heard the holy spirit tell me “Go and make disciples of Nations.” I have always prayed “Your will not mine.” and to watch everything fall into place not only with getting accepted but with my job its been an amazing adventure. A lot of the time I find myself walking blindly, or not walking at all just sitting and waiting for God to tell me my next steps. But as the song says I lay me down at the alter. My life isn’t my own, this body, the heart beat, the breaths I take aren’t mine, it is HIS to do with what he pleases, I am just the vessel that he uses to build his kingdom!
The race to me means Community! This is something I don’t know a whole lot about but I got a taste of it at camp I am learning more and growing in this and I am pretty sure I am going to LOVE it! Unfortunately I never learned community, I never knew what it felt like to have people stick by you through anything and everything. I spoke a little about this at camp and didn’t realize the effect it had on me till that time. 3 of my closest friends have all just walked out of my life. I spent so much time partially blaming myself. People always say that if you loose more than one close friend look in the mirror it might not be them, its probably you. I took that to heart, none of them ever confronted me with any issues had with me, or told me that I needed to work on anything. They all just up and walked out, 2 of them in the really tough times. Feedback was always something I craved, I needed someone to tell me when I was getting off track, someone to call me on my crap. (for lack of a better word) but they just walked out. For me loosing 3 of my closest friends said, I wasn’t good enough, there was something wrong with me, people don’t want to be around me, you can’t trust anyone to be there for you so don’t EVER tell people when you are struggling keep it inside and deal with it on your own. Which then made me just not want to get close to anyone. I keep people at arms length because in my mind people always walk away.
The race to me means Compassion! This is something I have always struggled with if I am being completely honest. For 3 years I worked in section 8 (if you don’t know what that is, it is government funded housing.) and this hardened my heart way more than it should. I saw so many people (a majority actually) that were in the situation because they didn’t want to work or they didn’t want to take responsibility for anything. I think that skewed my view of people. For so long I had the mind set that if you were homeless you did it to yourself, you were probably a drug addict or an alcoholic. I will be honest and say I am not completely over this mind set but I am working on it. My prayer since the beginning of my world race journey was “God break my heart for the things that break yours and break my heart in ways that it could never be broken here in the US.” You see to have your heart broken is to also have it put back together, and put back together for the better.
I talk a lot about the past, things I have been through and how the effected me. Sometimes things have bigger impacts than you realize and they change you sometimes not for the better. The key is to not stay stuck in those bad places. The key is to die to self, get around good people, and love people! I am laying ME down, all of me, the good the bad and the ugly and I am giving myself whole heatedly to God and his use! He can use all this hurt all this pain and all happiness and joy to do great things if you take the chance and follow what he is asking you to do. The things you go through shouldn’t define you but they can be used to glorify God in sooooo many ways!
