As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am about to finish my World Race experience for 2019! I truly cannot believe 11 months have come and gone so quickly! This year has felt a bit like a dream and in a way, it has been! It has been everything I could have asked for and more. I came with the expectation of learning more about who God is and how He reveals Himself to me. I wanted to hear from Him more quickly and grow in my relationship with Him personally. Basically, I wanted deeper intimacy with the Lord. And I grew even more than I thought I would! Here are some examples of this.
The Race has allowed me to draw closer to God without fear.
In my relationship with the Lord before the Race, I got to the point where I was questioning a lot of things I believed or had been taught to believe. I was so afraid of being “wrong” about how God speaks to me and other parts of our relationship. Some things were “off limits.” I was afraid to ask and look because I was afraid of what I might find. And afraid that I would be “led astray” in my searching. But that’s when I felt the Lord tell me, “If you think I can protect you from harmful and evil things, believe that I can protect you from bad theology.” And this year, I dove in. I sought the Lord and His voice in new ways. I came with the expectation that He would teach me. And you know what I found? A deeper sense of intimacy with the Lord based on His Biblical truths. John 16 says His Holy Spirit leads us in all truth after all. I am no longer afraid to approach Him about any certain topic (prophecy, gifts of the Holy Spirit, predestination vs. free will, etc.) because I know that even if I don’t fully understand it all, He will lead me and continue to grow my understanding of His truths as long as I am seeking Him!
I now speak about the Lord all the time and don’t feel any shame or awkwardness about it anymore.
For the longest time, I was afraid of being a “try-hard” Christian. I was afraid people would think I was trying too hard to be spiritual or that I acted with a “holier than thou” attitude. Seriously, this was one of my biggest fears! I used to be kind of quiet about my faith to people, even other Christians! I didn’t want to be a person who “Jesus-juked” you (which is basically means finding any kind of way to sneak Jesus into the conversation in some way, even when you are talking about completely “non-spiritual things”). It’s sad how “awkward” I felt talking about God before and even sadder that I felt this when talking to other Christians as well. I needed God’s perfect love to cast out this fear of man.
Deeper intimacy showed me there is no need to fear what others may think of us or our motives, especially when our motives are to love God and give Him glory. I really feel the Lord telling me to live out the Scripture in Proverbs 3:6 where it says to acknowledge Him in all your ways. So I did. And I found freedom! On the Race, I’m not only encouraged to talk about Him all the time, but I’ve found that everyone around me does the same thing! I’ve come to realize that everything can have a spiritual connection, so anything can bring attention back to God. And it should! So now, this is what I intend to do: I intend to give Him ALL the glory for ALL things ALL the time and not be held back by the expectation or perception of others (and the fear thereof).
The Race has given me space to read the Word and truly LOVE IT (more than every before).
The Word is one of the easiest, clearest ways that God speaks to us. It builds our intimacy and gets us acquainted with God’s voice so we can learn to discern Him and what He is doing in the Spirit in any given moment. Spending time in His Word is nurturing to our spirits and is incredibly crucial to our lives. And this is true even when we don’t realize it. Even when you are “pushing through the hard parts” like the law, genealogies, and complicated prophets, spending time in His Word is constantly renewing our minds (both passively and actively). You gotta keep going with Him. We truly live off of His Word just as much as we live off of physical food.
This year, I have spent literally HOURS almost every day just reading my Bible and spending time with Jesus. I am also super thankful that I brought a journaling Bible with me. It has been probably the single most important thing I brought on the Race, and it’s impacted my intimacy with the Father in inexplicable ways! It’s full of highlights and notes, reminding me constantly how much the Lord has spoken to me through His Word this year. It is hard evidence of all the revelations the Lord has given me this year from His Word and shows me just how much I’ve grown to understand His heart through His Word (and subsequently in the world around me).
I have learned to hear the Lord more clearly.
To me, this is one of the more exciting ways that I have grown this year because it’s a way I’ve always wanted to grow in, and it all started right before signing up for the World Race in the first place. In 2018, I was introduced to the idea of listening prayer. To put it as simply as I can (which is really not easy to do), listening praying is the “waiting for a response” part of praying. It’s giving God the space to speak into what you are going through and learning in His Word. It’s very complicated to explain in a blog, but if you are intrigued, I’d really recommend reading “The Art of Listening Prayer” by Seth Barnes. As you can probably imagine, this was all a very weird and complicated idea for me at first, but I began to understand it more and more over time.
After a while, I actually began to see “results.” I would receiving these strong feeling to act or say something specific to another person, as if the words that were about to come out of my mouth were so true that I just HAD to tell someone. Eventually, I started to act on these “feelings,” and I was met with many surprises. I received confirmation after confirmation that what I heard and felt was actually significant to the other person. I even journaled once that it felt like I was a spiritual “third wheel,” getting to witness the beauty of the Lord loving on His other children very uniquely and powerfully. What surprised me the most was how everyone around me kept saying, “Andrew, you hear God’s voice very clearly and quickly! It’s inspiring!” And I would respond with, “Wait, what? Really?”
This year, I have discovered this truth for myself. The Lord does speak to me and He always has! I was just unaware of it. He has previously spoken to me mostly through Scripture and through parables. But this year, I got to experience God’s voice in new ways including visions, dreams, and prophetic discernment. I began to really live out what we are encouraged to do in 1 Corinthians 14:1: to eagerly desire the gifts, especially prophecy. I’m not saying I’ve fully “unlocked this,” but I have definitely grown to understand these so much more and how the Lord uses them in my own life.
Still, without true intimacy with the Lord, all of these gifts comes to nothing. One of my squad leaders said that our level influence in the lives of others is proportionate to our level of intimacy with the Father. So if we want to grow in how the Lord uses us to speak into others and encourage them, we need to seek the Father’s heart. But even then, these gifts aren’t the be-all-end-all of Christian living. Having all of Jesus is. Let’s just strive to live in intimacy with the Lord for the sake of being with Him. Even if He never spoke a prophetic word through us or ever gave us a vision for someone else, intimacy with Him is the real gift anyway!
This all is really only the tip of the iceberg for me, but it would take too long to describe it here! I’d love to talk to you more about it and walk you through my journey growing in intimacy with the Lord, but it’s so much better to just dive in and see for yourself how awesome it is to have a deep relationship with Him! In my next blog, I will talk about how I’ve grown in community during my time in the Race. Stay tuned for that one!
In all things, be blessed!
AG
