The race gets hard some months and other months not so much. But every month has brought some sort of struggle or trial. The struggles of our team's month in Thailand carried over into Cambodia and I was becoming exhausted. If someone were to ask me heading into Cambodia, the thing I missed the most from America, I would have answered, having a home. A place where I felt comfortable. A place that I could relax and not have to worry about tip toeing around other people.
God loves me so much, so in Cambodia, he gave me just that!
We were pretty comfortable where we lived. We had air conditioning when we slept at night, constant wifi, we got to cook our own meals, and our host even let us use their living room to watch movies as a team. Our hosts were back in America for the month, so we pretty much had the whole house to ourselves. It was man-istry month, so our team combined with Team Radical girls had an all girls month. There were 11 of us living in the house.
It was like I was back in college. We spent days doing ministry together (babysitting babies, teaching English to school kids and teaching preschool). At night we would all cook and eat dinner together. It was so much fun being with so many girls! We even had girls days out on the weekends. These days were complete with manicures, movies and margaritas!
I'm so undeserving of God's love and the gifts he gives me. He gave me this incredible gift, and I chose to become complacent in building my relationship with him. I would wake up in the morning, spend my day taking care of babies and then just hang out with my friends at night. I didn't "need" God last month, so I stopped pursuing him.
I look back on Cambodia wishing that I hadn't been complacent, but knowing that God still taught me a lesson. We are now almost 2/3 of the way through the World Race, and I want to spend every last minute pursuing Jesus. My pursuit of Jesus isn't going to stop when I get home, but it is going to become a lot harder. When all of the luxuries we have at home and spending time with friends and family become a distraction, we have to choose to spend time with Jesus! We have to make time. Not in a way that it is a chore, but in the same way you make time to eat lunch or go on a date or watch a movie. It should be a part of our day that we enjoy and energizes us!
For the rest of the race I am choosing to dive deeper and deeper into who Jesus is, because the time that I spend reading, worshipping or just talking to Jesus is the best part of my day!
Acts 17:26-28 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and thd boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for "In him we live and and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, For we are indeed his offspring."
