In my last blog, I mentioned that I’m finally feeling some hesitation about this whole World Race thing.
It’s true: there’s a piece of me that, now that it’s happening, flat out doesn’t want to go.
I’ve known since I discovered the Race back in 2012 that this is not a vacation, that it won’t be a smooth or easy or comfortable journey. It’s not meant to be, and let’s face it: if it were, I’d be disappointed. I’ve known since the day I applied a year ago that my long, hot showers were numbered.
But it’s a lot easier to be excited about your showers being numbered in the hundreds than in the twos.
So as I left for Launch, I was feeling some serious hesitation.
At first, that resistance alarmed me a bit. After more than a year of preparation, how could I not be excited to go to Launch? How could I pick now to get hung up on the uncomfortableness inherent in the journey on which I’d begged God to take me?
But then I realized: my decision to go on the Race wasn’t based on emotions. It felt like it, at the time, because I was ecstatically excited about the call the Lord had given me. That enthusiasm has carried me for a couple of years now, and in fact, was one of the things that confused me about whether I was following my desires or the Lord’s will when I chose to go on the Race.
But ultimately, feelings aren’t the point.
[Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:7-8a
My God loves me more deeply than I can imagine. But His love isn’t based on feelings alone, but on a deep, unwavering, relentless, never failing commitment to me. He’s committed to my sanctification, to transforming me ever more into the image of His Son. That commitment has been demonstrated over and over and over again, most clearly on the cross.
He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for all of us–how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?
Romans 8:32
As I processed through this re-understanding of God’s love, I started mentally replacing “love” with “commitment” in song lyrics.
(This is interesting to think about, but it does not work syllabically. Consider yourself warned.)
Your commitment never fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me.
There’s no place I’d rather be than here in Your commitment.
Oh, how He’s committed to us so.
His commitment to me is why He invited me on the Race.
My own emotions could never sustain me on the Race, or in life. Feelings shift and change constantly, and my enthusiasm for the Race might evaporate the moment I hit my first true struggle.
Case in point: Launch.
But God can sustain me. And because He’s committed to me, I know He will.
* * *
During a worship session at Launch, the band played Oceans by Hillsong. That song resonates deeply with me, and was my anthem and prayer throughout the time I was deciding whether or not to go on the Race. I’d change the words to my own plea:
Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders.
Let me walk upon the waters.
To the World Race would you call me.
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander,
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior.
This time, days before leaving for Haiti, without even realizing it, I found myself changing the words again: Take me deeper than my feet would ever wander.
Would. Not could, but would.
Take me deeper than my feet would ever choose to wander.
I realized that I was now asking God to take me where I don’t want to go.
Oceans has always captured my desperate desire for the Lord to call me to the World Race. I’ve filled the lyrics with my own passion and enthusiasm. Never, in all the times I’d sung the song before, had I not wanted to go on the Race.
But as I processed through my newfound hesitation, Oceans unconsciously became a new prayer.
Even when I don’t want to go deeper, Lord, take me anyway.
* * *
I worried at one point that I was only going on the Race because I wanted to. But the foundation of this journey isn’t my emotions. It’s the Lord’s call.
So I’m not concerned anymore about that piece of me that doesn’t want to go. Far from it: now I rejoice for that hesitation, my floundering feelings, because my resistance affirms once more that I’m not racing for myself.
The Race represents my God’s commitment to me. He’s invited me to join Him in this adventure around the world to put me in a spiritual pressure cooker and transform me to look ever more like Jesus.
Now it also represents my commitment to my God: I’m choosing to commit to the Race because He is committed to me. The resistance is a gift allowing me to demonstrate that to Him and to myself.
We love because He first loved us.
1 John 4:19
I’m committed to the Race for exactly one reason: my Lord, who loves me, has called me, and I’m committed to following Him.
