One year.
One year ago today is when I gathered with my team for the first day of an 11 month journey.
It would take us to 3 continents; it would take is through hard times and would be the iron that sharpens iron, and that is truly what it was. I know so many think that the World Race is an incredible journey and it is, but not in the way that you might think, it is a journey, its like climbing a mountain, its like seeing the sunset on the most beautiful beach. But the thing is that it is both actually and in the spiritual since.
I can think back to the first month on the race, we were in Santa Cruz del Quiche, Guatemala. That is where I started to hit the mountain head on; I had come on the race ‘cause God told me to and know I realize why. But I had a hard time in the first month; I wasn’t yet ready to get over myself. I had done things that our culture and the church sees as unforgivable, and that caused me to fall into a depression and that caused me to let the enemy label me as all of the things that the world would call me if they knew. Well one day it came up in team time, and it was like a knife stabbing my heart. Here were the people that are supposed to love me but they were joking about something that really hurt me. But in the long run that was one of the best things in the world. It started a journey of forgiveness that would take months but as the mountain got steeper they came around me and helped me up the mountain and even when I no longer wanted to fight for myself they still did. I never felt the love that they gave me before.
It took months but one day not really sure when but somewhere in Nicaragua I stopped thinking of my self as the labels that the world would put on me and instead started to think of myself as the Son that I am. I really don’t know how it happened but I am so glad it did. I was free from the world, I was a Son.
The only thing I can say I did was that I pressed in even when it hurt. God kept bringing up the labels in conversations and even in scripture till I became unoffendable. And the other thing was that I read to myself a list of truths every morning; it was me speaking them into my life.
Well the trail was not over at all. I had a rough month in the Philippines, not really sure why. But I kinda hit the rock slide and slide backward. I didn’t go back to labeling myself by the labels of the world but I didn’t label my self as a son. I couldn’t get that God would want to forgive me for what I had done. But some how he did.
The next month was in Thailand and was great, God really broke all the chains off me. I knew that I did not deserve to be forgiven by God but I accepted it, I accepted his forgiveness and it opened up my heart for so much more, I saw others that month from afar that we stuck in the same kinda junk, that I had once been in and it made me sad and angry at the same time. But I was free of it, truly free of it.
Me on top of Mount Kenya
Then God decided to put a cherry on top, of the mountain. He wanted to see what I would do if the table was turned and would I forgive someone for what they did, well I didn’t want to but I knew I had to, so I did. And then I truly knew that I was walking in Gods freedom and walking as His son.
Not only did I accept his forgiveness, even though I knew I did not deserve it, but I had forgiven myself, and that was so incredible and lead to me getting a tattoo.
I got ‘forgiven’ tattooed over my heart, in my own hand writing, not only say that God forgave me for what I did but that I had forgiven myself for what had happened and the sin that I had lived in.
I am free.
I am His Son
I am more than this world thinks and knows
But more than all that I am loved by God and saved by the sacrifice He gave of His Son on the cross. And in that I am FREE.
I also put this post on my new Blog
http://roaringlionforchrist.wordpress.com/
And then this is a blog post that I wrote about God and this year
Called: Gratitude
