Hello Everyone! Caroline here!
Over the past 6 months I have been asked one question more then any other: “What made you decide to go on the World Race?” It’s a question that I always answer the same way; “Alex and I were living this ordinary nine-to-five life. I know God to be big and adventurous and amazing, and my life style was not reflecting that. I was not satisfied with life, and I was eager to do some thing big and crazy! So when Alex suggested the World Race it just clicked in my spirit, and I KNEW that was what I was supposed to be doing for this season in my life.”
After six months of living this life style though I have realized something shocking: the World Race really feels the same as life back in the states.
So recently I started asking God, why? Why does it feel the same? Why is the Race not this ongoing huge adventure that I expected it to be? Here was his answer; “Your life does not just instantly change because you are in a new location. Yes, the excitement of things you’ve never seen is good, but at the end of the day that wears off rather quickly. It is not your location that makes life adventurous; it is only through a relationship with me that you will find the adventure you are looking for.”
There’s the truth of it; I wasn’t going to find the type of adventure I wanted just because I left home. I thought that the dissatisfaction I felt came from the way my life looked when in reality it was a heart condition. It was a lack of Jesus in my daily life. Changing locations didn’t suddenly make my life exciting and adventurous and satisfying. It is only inviting Jesus into every moment of my day that will do that.
I don’t think I can sum it up any better then Paul does in 2 Corinthians 6:11-13 (MSG); “My dear, dear Corinthians [Caroline], I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively.”
The smallness I felt didn’t come from the nine-to-five life. It came from within me. I was living life in a small way because Jesus wasn’t a big enough part of it. I still know God to be big and adventurous and exciting, but I don’t know Him that way personally yet. I now know, however, that it’s a change in ME that results in know Him that way and having the adventurous life I set out to find in the first place.
