As my squad moved from Cote d’Ivoire to Ghana, we entered a new year and our halfway month on the race. I started thinking about how the calendar may have flipped but I am still on the World Race. The world celebrates 2018 as a chance for new beginnings, another opportunity to change the way you live, but I can’t have a new beginning. I can’t start a new workout routine or diet, but I can adjust my mindset on the race. I can evaluate where I am at in this journey. So I begin to think about how Ghana is the halfway point on the race and I asked myself, am I halfway to where I wanted to be?
It’s hard to measure where halfway is if you don’t know where the end is. So where did I want to be? What did I want to grow in? What areas of my life did I want to challenge myself to be better? What was I hoping to get out of the race? That’s a lot of questions and rather than looking forward, I started to reflect on where I had come from. I had zero experience with living in community. I had come from a place of wanting to grow more in intimacy and trusting God and to grow more in living in a community. As I reflected I definitely saw the growth in living in community; whether it was comprising on what to do for adventure day, or learning how to teach English together, or encouraging and calling each other to walk in our God given identities. I have learned how to just simply live with 5+ people, twenty-four seven. In intimacy I am learning more about how God is calling me to be a warrior for Him, to be prepared and have the strength to fight whenever He needs me to. I am learning more about the voice of the Holy Spirit and how He guides us into saying the right words at the right time. I am also learning about the unity of the Church through the Spirit. And as I reflected on what I learned, I also wanted to continue growing and challenging myself.
I decided to pray about a word of words that I wanted to truly impact how I approach every situation in front of me. The words that God gave me: BE BOLD. BE RISKY. BE BROKEN. BE LOVED. They’re words that challenge me to dive deeper into trusting God. BE BOLD, to be confident and courageous in the actions I take and be willing to take risks. BE RISKY, to do things for the Lord that might be scary and full of failure or embarrassment. BE BROKEN, to be not be afraid of failing and to fail and trust that God is good. BE LOVED, to know that the Father will mend me when I am broken, He will restore my strength. These words paint a picture of a young child jumping off the edge of the pool into their father’s arms. Jumping into the deep water takes strength and courage from the child. It takes being willing to get wet and the trust to know that their father will catch them. Then to repeat the process all over again, except this time the father takes a step back and let the child fall further into the water before he catches them. This picture is exactly what I am stating in these words. BE BOLD. BE RISKY. BE BROKEN. BE LOVED. Without takes risks and jumping further, I won’t ever challenge my own strength. I won’t be able to grow unless I step out in faith and take risks.
The next half of my race won’t look any different. I want to take more risks so that I can grow in my faith. I want to continue down the road to nowhere. Nowhere as in no expectations; I don’t want to say I can only go to point C when God wants me to continue to point D. And nowhere as in no where I would rather be than here on the race serving God. As the race continues on past halfway I want to get lost in doing bold, risky ministry for my Lord my God.
