These past ten months have been some of the most awe-inspiring months of my life. I have gone to secret underground churches with my Chinese friends. I have ridden elephants, pet tigers, and set off lanterns in Thailand. I have loved and held some of the poorest children in Cambodia. I have worn saris and sang Christmas carols with a pastor’s family in Malaysia. I have spent hours upon hours playing charades to communicate with our Japanese grandmother. I have made friends with a hip English grandmother in Albania, and went to underground rock concerts. I have started a soccer game with the local children and cleaned a building for women’s retreats in Bulgaria. I have hiked mountains and visited Dracula’s castle in Romania. I have played strike ball in an abandoned fortress in Ukraine. I have lived on a mountain in Swaziland for an entire month with some of the most adorable children imaginable, and I am currently in the midst of my eleventh month of my World Race. How on earth did this happen?
I admit that I had a certain mindset when I entered into this race. I expected a perfect Christian community. I imagined being one of the most unspiritual people on our squad. I expected to spend my months with a bunch of alone time to work on my architectural drawings. I believed that I would see people miraculously healed and start walking, people to be exorcised, and God to become a physical presence, in order for me to tell all of my friends and family back home what I had witnessed. I thought that I would constantly be convicted and pushed in my relationship with the Lord.
I thought selfishly.
The other day I was reading a daily devotional by Oswald Chambers about Peter when he walked on the water to Jesus. He says:
“By what right have we become “a royal priesthood”? it is by the right of the atonement by the cross of Christ that this has been accomplished. are we prepared to purposely disregard ourselves and the launch out into the priestly work of prayer? The continual inner-searching we do in an effort to see if we are what we ought to be generates a self-centered, sickly type of Christianity, not the vigorous and simple life of a child of God. Until we get into this right and proper relationship with God, it is simply a case of our “hanging on by the skin of our teeth,” although we way, “What a wonderful victory I have!” . . . Then don’t worry anymore about yourself, but begin to do as Jesus Christ has said, in essence, “Pray for the friend who comes to you at midnight, pray for the saints of God, and pray for all men.”. . . There is only one place where we are right with God, and that is in Christ Jesus. Once we are there, we have to pour out our lives for all we are worth in this ministry of the inner life.”
Like a glorious slap in the face, I realized that God has surpassed all of my expectations for this World Race, in the most unexpected way. I have had to fight for Christian community, and learned how to do so in a Godly way. I have learned that there is no comparison for your “spirituality,” it a purely a relationship with you and the Lord. I have barely touched my architecture drawings, but instead have chosen to invest in the lives around me and seen the fruit of fellowship. I haven’t seen outright miracles, but I have witnessed peoples’ hearts change, and seen God in the day to day life. I have seen God work in amazing ways, but I have no pride in the ways He has moved not only me but the rest of my squad. I have been pushed and convicted, but I have also has days full of joy and peace and love.
Without knowing I had made the race about me, and I am so glad that the Lord has changed that. Each passing month I have noticed how much the Lord has changed my heart to become more like His. In no way am I perfect, but I am more than prepared to see what He has in store for this last month. BRING IT ON MONTH 11!
