To Future Applicants; To those wondering why I’m out here.
Think long and hard about what you’re doing when you apply for the World Race. Think long. And. Hard.
We all have a list of reasons for why we’re here on the race. For me, the decision to apply was made almost on the spot. For others it was a decision that took years to process and work out. I know what it’s like to fall in love immediately with this program. I know what it’s like to hear what God is doing out in the world and almost impulsively jump to a decision. I know what it’s like to pray for discernment, to list out reasons, to justify, to explain to hundreds of others…
I want to make sure you know exactly why you should be here, and why you shouldn’t.
The World Race is no picnic. It isn’t a game, it isn’t just a good option for a gap year, or just an escape, or a release, or an adventure. It isn’t the fix-all for Christian community, nor is it the best way to see the world. It is not just ‘the next step’ in a flat-lining Christian experience, and it’s not a way to ‘experience a bunch of different ministries to see where God is calling you’. It is not always fun, it is very rarely easy, it is exhausting, and pain-staking, and heart-breaking, and grueling, and relentless, and stretching, and it requires serious, serious sacrifice.
It is dangerous to read blogs. It is dangerous to build up expectations, to picture the Race as this perfect Jesus adventure. I knew this of course, but didn’t think it applied to me.
Heed my advice. Pleeeeeease listen to us when we say; Don’t have expectations. Don’t have them. In fact, let me help you not have them.
Don’t expect anything different than what you’re living right now.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned so far, it’s that you don’t get anything handed to you. Just because your life may look a lot different on the Race, doesn’t necessarily mean you will. If you have bad habits now, they will be amplified here. If you struggle with things now, you will struggle with them more on the Race. If you are grouchy when you’re tired, have trouble opening up, need control over your schedule, and have a hard time sticking to planned quiet time, I promise you those things will not go away. You’re imagining life on the Race to be a perfect Christian life, with perfect Christian community and perfect Christian everything. I know you are. We all were. Stop imagining that. For your own sake, please stop. We work for every step we take, as individuals and as a team, and it is work, I promise you.
Don’t expect miracles.
We went over this a lot at training camp. And we’re still learning it. The Holy Spirit works in different ways. Some people it comes really natural to, the whole tongues-prophecy-healing thing. Some people don’t have those gifts right now. Some people will never get those gifts. I have read so many blogs about miraculous healings and salvations I almost get jealous. We haven’t seen any healings yet. We haven’t seen any blind receive sight. We haven’t seen any dead raised. Not yet anyways. And it’s hard sometimes, and frustrating, and it’s hard not to get let down. But God’s will is perfect, and we’re learning to rest in that, and walk in that.
Don’t expect a spiritual paradise.
Maybe you’ll get some good spiritual mentoring. Maybe you won’t. We’ve been blessed with a contact this month that is very invested in our development. But don’t expect perfect bible studies, don’t expect perfect worship sessions, don’t expect perfect prayer meetings, don’t expect 24/7 prophecy and life being spoken into you. Time is tight, despite how much time there is, and intentionality is everything. And honestly, spiritual attention takes a lot of discipline and a lot of time to work out. You’ll have to fight for every second of your spiritual development.
Don’t expect a perfect adventure.
The World Race is an adventure. But it is not your adventure. You’ll actually be very surprised at how little this trip is about you. You constantly cede control, to the Lord, to your squad leaders, to your squad, to your team, to your contact, to your ministry partners. By the time you get to worry about yourself, there’s only so much adventure you have time left for. And while you will see the world, you’ll see it through the Lord’s eyes, not your own, and you’ll only see what He wants to show you. If you’re just here for the adventure, you’ll be much better off to just book it yourself.
Every day is not magical. In fact, most days aren’t magical.
Do you know what we do with our free time? We nap. Or we snack. Maybe someone is up to play cards. Or maybe there’s time to go to the internet café. Do you know what we do most mornings? We shovel dirt from piles into puddles. It’s exhausting. Do you know what we do at night? We feedback each other, diligently combing through the day’s events and calling each other out on what we did that reflected Christ well, and what we did that didn’t. I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t painful, but it builds us up into our full potential, into what Christ calls us to be. There aren’t any days where I’m not exhausted by the end of them. There aren’t any days where something doesn’t hurt. There aren’t any days where there isn’t empty downtime, where life doesn’t feel any different than it did at home.
Don’t expect easy community.
The World Race is a program designed to foster discipleship and active community, among other things. But this doesn’t mean that these things are handed to you. I have been inordinately blessed by my team. We have become extremely close, and this is mostly due to the fact that we are fighting, and fighting very hard, for intimacy and vulnerability and community. We also are probably the most blunt team of all time. While some of that will be refined, some of it has been extremely helpful in bringing things to the surface and dealing with them immediately. But there will be times when you have to make the conscious decision to let your team into your life and into your struggles. There will be times when you don’t get along. There will be times when you don’t agree on things. There will never be a time when you are completely perfect as a community. Don’t come on the race expecting that. The community here will change your life, but it won’t in the way you expect it, I promise.
Don’t expect ‘the joy of the Lord’ to be the only thing He gives you.
I just want to share what we did today. We drove the 6 hours back to where we were staying, having spent the weekend driving around to far away Tamil churches giving sermons to people who couldn’t understand us. It’s cramped inside the van, and I’m gonna admit, we were all a little testy. On the way home, our contact made a little side trip to a house, where we were to go in and pray for the family. Our attitudes were not great. We all just wanted to get home. So we dragged our butts up the 2 flights of stairs, the humidity at what felt like 3000%, and rolled into a house with a crib in the center, with a young baby boy who had severe deformations and disabilities. He took our breath away. His legs were glued together, immobile, and his head was misshapen. He was blind, def, and mostly paralyzed. His limbs had atrophied, hands clamped in tiny fists. And he was left, most of the day, on his back, crying to a family that just didn’t know what to do about him anymore. Any milk they tried to feed him kept coming out his nose in slow, boiling white bubbles. And every breath he took sounded like it was drawn with excruciating effort through lungs clogged with every fluid you could squeeze into that precious, tiny body. His name was Madhavan. We were instructed to pray. Most of us just cried. Sheri scooped him up almost at once, and rocked him, and I held his head for the next hour, wiping away the snot that kept forming, our tears falling on his pale brown skin, easing him into momentary rest from a world that didn’t see the point of loving him enough to even hold him.
This is what we do. This is our ministry. We do what we can, the Lord brings us to places and breaks our hearts, and then we leave. It is not fun. It is not glamorous. It is not immediately rewarding. It is frustrating and taxing and emotional and hard.
If you were looking at any of these expectations as reasons you are going, please, please, please, reconsider. There is only one reason to go on the World Race, and it isn’t to see the world, or find cool ministries, or serve people, or find the perfect community, or live a perfect Christian dream, or experience joy and rest all the time. And I’m not saying these weren’t reasons I’m here as well, and I’m sure I speak for the majority of Racers when I say this. But the more I learn, the more the Lord changes my heart, and the more we’re all inclined to say – the only real reason we’re here, and the only reason you should be too, is to fall deeper in love with the Lord.
The Lord is here and He is working, and He is teaching us to rejoice in Him always, when things make sense and when they don’t. You will learn more about His heart, and draw closer to Him here on the Race than you ever thought possible. He will reveal himself to you ways you never even dreamed of. He will make plain to you His path and His will, and He will teach you and comfort you and instruct you and mold you and speak to you and love you, and you will understand Him better than you ever have. Out of this relationship, and only out of this relationship, can any of the other things that make the World Race so special be possible. The adventure, the community, the ministry – these are all entirely contingent on your investment in using this time to pursue the Lord with everything you have.
I’m not asking you to not apply. And I’m not asking you not to go. I learned more about the Lord and the way He loves this afternoon than I had all summer, in Madhavan’s tiny feet and his tiny cough and his tiny gaping eyes. It has been a rough afternoon. And the World Race has not been what I imagined, hardly in any way. But in this very real sense, being on the Race has changed my life. It has been perfect.
Love,
Danny
