“Let us become more aware of Your presence, let us experience the glory of Your goodness!”1
“Pull me a little closer, take me a little deeper — I want to know Your heart!”2
“Set a fire down in my soul that I can’t contain, that I can’t control. I want more of You, God!“3
I’ve been singing these lyrics (and others like them) to the Lord in corporate and personal worship for a handful of years now. I knew I meant them.
So, why was I so confused when God started to change me? My desires, my yearnings, my dreams. It started over a year ago. Actually, the first shift was during my senior year of college at a missions conference, but I didn’t understand it then. A year and a half ago when I visited Haiti to serve with the Global Orphan Project, I experienced the Lord through a new culture, examples of servant-hearted and surrendered teammates, a greater understanding of the power of prayer, and an openness to letting the Holy Spirit guide our schedule and time. My eyes were opened. And five months ago when my high school friend came back from the World Race and we talked for hours on her couch about the Lord’s work, I was certain. I was called. He had been changing and preparing me.
4-5 years ago, I was proud to call Jesus my Savior and strived to live in a way that demonstrated that I loved Him. My ultimate yearning was to graduate college so I could get back to my hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado, become an Occupational Therapist, and hopefully get married and start a family. I prayed for what I wanted and asked God to bless it – and I could have honored God in all of that. But at some point last year, I learned that putting your life together and then asking God to bless it is not walking with Him.
Walking with the Lord requires talking to Him, listening to Him, and responding to Him.
Fast forward to God’s total rearrangement of my heart.
The more I talked, listened, and walked, I became increasingly aware of my pebble-sized understanding of God in His bottomless ocean of existence. Eventually, my peace and yearnings were undeniably focused on growing in my understanding and experience of Him by seeing and doing His work around the world. What a coincidence (ha) that my friend had told me about the World Race!
Once the reality set in that the Lord was not messing with my dreams and desires for nothing, I was simultaneously relieved and panicked. Wait…this means I have to give up WHAT relationship? This means I’ll need HOW much financial support? I admit it took me a while to surrender fully.
I had been asking God for more of Him. Funny — He answered my prayers.
I have decided to follow the Lord into a commitment to the World Race from September 2015 – July 2016, to serve and live within the community of my team in 11 countries with a willingness to provide whatever support our host ministry needs. This encouragement-based ministry will look different in every country as we connect with ministries that are established and involved in their community.
Whether we’ll be teaching English, sharing the Gospel door-to-door, doing manual labor, or providing extra hugs and fun as we pray over children in an orphanage, it’s all with one goal in mind: to be the love of Jesus Christ to the nations.
The World Race’s vision is to cultivate long-term, global change in people and projects by creating partnerships with ministries around the world and disciples that understand their power, in Christ’s name, to bring the Kingdom of God and walk in abundant life.
I am choosing to draw near to the Lord by answering His call to make myself available to Him this next year — believing He is setting up divine appointments and will use and teach me in unique and unpredictable ways for His glory.
I hope to use this blog as a means of spreading the word about our GLORIOUS God by communicating all He is doing over the next year in Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Which will be a lot. I will share my personal journey, with prayer requests for those who have committed to supporting me spiritually.
I cannot do this alone, nor do I want to. I need your support! I would be honored if you would use the handy Contact Me or Support Me links there on the left to find out how you can join my support team to provide spiritually and financially to help me share God’s story on the field, through my blog, and through my life.
Lesson 1: Unlike with Oliver’s misfortune, when you ask for more of Him, our Father God delights to fill your bowl.
Jesus already gave us His LIFE, completely voluntarily! (John 10:18)
Why would He hold Himself back now?
1 Holy Spirit, Jesus Culture 2 Closer, Bethel Music 3 Set a Fire, Will Reagan & United Pursuit
