The World Race is over, I’m home, and I’m confused. Confused as to where in the world did the last year of my life go! It flew by! I expected coming home and being in America to feel weird. I guess it feels weird, but only because it doesn’t feel weird! Make sense? Yeah, thought so. I expected spending an entire year in different cultures to make America feel like a foreign planet when I got here. But it doesn’t. It feels normal. Too normal if you ask me.
It makes me question if I just dreamed up the last year of my life. Was that real? Did I really just experience all that crazy, life-changing stuff or did I just make it up? When we were on the Race, a normal topic of conversation towards the end would be about home or “real life.” “What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when you get home?” “It’s gonna feel so weird to go back to real life again.” We would refer to America as “real life” and our then current status as “race life.”
But to tell you the truth, now that I’m back in “real life,” the life I was living on the Race was more real than anything I’ve felt in a long time. I’ve created new habits, new desires, new perspectives, and I see America very differently now. I know my God is the same and has me exactly where I am for a reason and has so much in store for this season of my life. So I won’t allow myself to wish it away even though it’s easy to compare America with the rest of the world now. God has even bigger and exciting things for my future and I hold onto that hope very joyfully, while remaining present and thanking God for every new day right where I am.
If you were to ask me what my favorite thing about the Race was, undoubtedly the first thing that will come to my mind is God and how we grew so much closer over the last year. If you ask me this question in person and I say anything else, I’ll probably be experiencing immediate conviction in my mind for denying Him. It’s not easy to explain things that you know no one will truly understand unless they have also experienced them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to ask and that I won’t do my best to try explaining things!
The Race was a year of learning about myself, about God, and experiencing Him like never before. I am too excited about all the things that I learned not to share them! I realize that most of my blogs have been about spiritual things and not about ministry stories or culture. I’m sorry if you were wanting or expecting more cultural stories, but I always wrote about what was closest to my heart at the time and I hope you were touched or delighted in some way by the things the Lord pressed upon me to share.
I’ve compiled a list of some things that have been impactful for me to learn over the past year. I’ve bolded ones that I would dare to say have changed my life. I pray something from this list also resonates with you and you take it to heart. This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but nevertheless I believe it to have some goodies, so enjoy! Thank you to every single person that has supported me throughout this journey. I appreciate you all more than you know. Thank you for investing in me and God’s kingdom! Now without further ado…
- Righteousness is a gift.
- Faith means nothing without accompanied action.
- The church is a body of people.
- The Holy Spirit is way more powerful, tangible, and relational than I knew.
- The Holy Spirit is sadly neglected and misunderstood in a vast majority of American churches. And it makes me really sad cause he’s AWESOME.
- One of the most important ways to be intimate with God is to create a space.
- The Lord wants to personally talk to you, you just need to open your ears and LISTEN.
- One of our most important purposes as a church body is to call each other out and lift each other up.
- Pride is a major inhibitor to fruitfulness. Push through the pride. It is HARD, but so worth it.
- God will give you more when you are faithful with what he’s given you, and obedient to what he’s already asked of you.
- God isn’t going to do and plan everything for you. You have to plan, be actionable, and walk on your own two feet.
- Spiritual warfare is real and affects everybody whether you believe in the spiritual realm or not. Make an effort to become aware and educate yourself on this because it is so important. How are we as christians supposed to fight a battle when we don’t even know who or what we’re fighting and what kind of tactics they are using?
- Positive speech and declaration have the power to physically and spiritually change our environment.
- God’s word is the best medicine for anything.
- Our purpose as christians is not to just believe in Jesus and wait to be taken up into heaven with him one day, thanking him for the gift of eternal life. It’s to bring heaven DOWN to earth. “Your kingdom COME, your will be done. On EARTH as it is in heaven.” Fullness of life on earth is to generate his kingdom right here, right now.
- The purpose of worship is not to make you feel good or give you a “Jesus high”, it’s to give praise, honor, and glory to god through whatever we are going through.
- You won’t always get to see the fruits of your efforts. Sometimes you only get to see the seed being planted and sometimes not even that. God uses this to teach us trust and patience.
- God highly values humility. Humility is an attitude that is heavily catalyzed by creating a habit of vulnerability.
- God gives us choices in life. And sometimes he allows US to choose which path to take instead of telling us which way to go.
- Gratitude and thankfulness is an imperative practice if you want to be a happy, joyful person.
- The ability to live a “radical” life (which seems to be a popular term in Christian culture right now) is NOT affected by your location. It’s a matter of taking the opportunities God gives you right where you are.
- The Lord is always good and worthy of praise even when we are walking in a valley that he has the power to take us out of.
- Trust the things God tells you over what you feel or see in front of you. Emotions and feelings are not trustworthy until they are examined in God’s light.
- Making a lifestyle of denying oneself is REALLY HARD.
- Failure is inevitable. But so is God’s redemption. Choose to shed light and focus on the latter instead of the former.
- Giving yourself grace is SO IMPORTANT. Especially in stripping sin of its power.
- As a temple that houses the Holy Spirit, I am an ambassador of the most powerful authority that exists, Jesus Christ. That makes me righteous and POWERFUL and therefore I also have the spiritual authority to tell my demons to eat dirt. (Not literally)
- We are never so separated or far removed from a people’s culture, upbringing, beliefs, or way of life that we can look at them and not see some of ourselves. As creations of a loving God, it should never be difficult to empathize and celebrate our similarities rather than distance ourselves due to our differences.
- Prayer is not rubbing God’s genie lamp. Instead of asking God for a bunch of stuff (safety, happiness, direction) ask him what YOU can give to him. He might change your heart.
- The Bible is your best friend. Utilize it.
- There is much to be discovered about oneself: motives, emotions, sin struggles, deep rooted hurts, spiritual strengths, SO much more. God loves to lead and help us in self discovery. I’ve learned so much about God’s character through discovering more of mine. It’s also a very intentional process and doesn’t just happen.
