I just want to share a little bit with you about how I’ve been feeling since I got on the race. I know I haven’t talked as much about how I’m really doing as I should.. it’s easy to talk about what I’ve physically been doing and not how I’ve been doing mentally and spiritually, but God has been helping me process and I think it’s important for me to share that with you. I want to be transparent and unashamed of feeling the way I do. One of the main reasons I decided to go on The World Race is because I want a deeper relationship with Jesus and now I have this great opportunity to share it, so how can I keep to myself what God is doing in me? So here it goes, this is what God has been teaching me through my struggles.
In my head I had this pretty picture of what the race would be like-sunny skies, smiles and giggles. It’s not that I haven’t felt that way at all since we started, but it certainly hasn’t been like that the whole time. I know there will be a time for those feelings, just like Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, there will be a time for everything. I kinda just assumed that being on the race would automatically make me closer to God and that our relationship would be perfect and I would be changed instantly. Instead, I have found it just as hard, if not harder. I feel like the israelites who are constantly in the vicious circle of living with God, finding out they can’t do it, going back to God for a while and then leaving him again.
Jeremiah 2:25 reminds us not to run until our feet are bare and our throats are dry. When I read that I think, well duhh why wouldn’t I drink water if I’m thirsty or why wouldn’t I stop running if I wore my shoes out? Well it may sound so simple but that’s exactly what I’m doing. A quick little prayer or bible reading is going to quench my parched soul just about as much as a couple drops of water after a 3 mile run.
I keep thinking, how is God gonna change me? What is God gonna ask me to do for Him? And honestly, those feelings scare me as much as I crave the answers to them. Yesterday during worship, God showed me the root of some of the things I’ve been feeling. I saw a side of such fear in myself that I have never seen before. I felt sick to my stomach and instantly I knew it’s because of all the fear I’m holding onto. The fear of being uncomfortable, the fear of letting go of who I used to be and becoming someone else, the fear that if I give everything I have that I might not change, or change in ways that I hadn’t planned on. Even the fear that I might not have what it takes to do what God wants for me. Feeling that fear scared me because I don’t want to bound by that. It’s ridiculous how much satan plays with our minds because fear has no hold over our lives.
While on the long train ride, I started reading my bible and God was showing me a bunch of different passages I was thinking, what God? What are you trying to show me? How do these all these verses fit into my life? As I began to write my thoughts down He started showing me how these verses are all for different things that I’ve been going through. Some of the segments of verses are from Psalms 50 and 51, where God talks about the fact that He is in control of everything. He can do anything He wants, and doesn’t need our help. Anything I can do is nothing compared to what He can do.I don’t need to worry about trying to save the day or feeling inadequate, cause He’s got this! All He wants from me is my broken spirit. He knows that I have nothing more to give Him but my brokenness, and yet thats all he wants. He wants to live through me.
Jeremiah 7:13- Lately I’ve been so wrapped up in thinking about what I can do for God, how I’m going to change on this trip that I haven’t taken a moment to hear God’s voice. I’ve gotten so carried away with life that I don’t realize what God is trying to say to me. Often I feel like I don’t know how to hear God’s voice, but Psalm 50:7 makes it sound so simple. Listen my people and I will speak. Jeremiah 6:16 says stand at the cross roads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. God is calling me to put asid my fears and concerns, to not worry about what the future holds, because the only thing that matters is our relationship. Through that, everything else will fall into place. He loves me so much and wants to show me the way, to give my soul rest, if only I would ask.
