How the world race changed my life… And why it didn’t
The following are excerpts from blogs and journal entries before and throughout the race:
Before Launch: “I am going on the World Race Gap Year because I want to step out of my own boat… I want to enter raging seas in my pursuit of Jesus, trusting in Him to keep me afloat. To put myself in situations that I am wholly unqualified for, and watch God work through them.”
Month 1: Together (the Lord and I) walk once again through the hardship of the past month, yet in each moment he shows me exactly where he stood, his soft light glowing in the midst of my darkest memories. Gradually we come to the end once again, his hand no longer holding mine but instead wrapped around me in intimate embrace. I stand with my face in his chest, crying, worshiping… loving; loving him more than I have ever loved anything…I take a seat and realize for the first time in my ten year walk with the Lord I am fully, hopelessly in love with Him.”
Month 4: “It’s quiet here. That’s the first thing you notice. The roar of mopeds and piercing cry of buddhist chants over loudspeakers at 4:00 AM have been replaced with the low, constant whisper of wind as it ripples across the endless fields of grain…Despite the varying ministries, the pace of life here is slow. It is never hard to find time to simply wander into the middle of a neighbouring field, and sit in the midst of the quiet, with nothing but the constant hush of the wind and rustling of the field. If I had to tell you about my most cherished moments of the past two months, many would take me back there, to the middle of the silence, where woven in with the whisper of the wind, I found the whisper of the Lord also.”
Month 7: “ (Today during worship) the Lord showed me my new life in Him. I stood clothed in amor and authority of belonging to Christ/ He showed me just how much I have become a new creation, not through the eyes of the world but through the eyes of Heaven… Ge destroyed the lies that had been holding me captive and I was suddenly able to hear and feel Him one again.”
As I look back on my journey throughout the race, it can be summed up in three bible passages. The first comes from the story of the prodigal son.
Each morning in Cambodia I sat on the balcony in a flimsy red plastic chair and listened for the Lord’s voice. Slowly I learned to hear Him, and as I heard Him I began to fall in love with Him. This is an excerpt from a blog I wrote about one of those mornings with Him:
“Together (the Lord and I) walk once again through the hardship of the past month, yet in each moment he shows me exactly where he stood, his soft light glowing in the midst of my darkest memories. Gradually we come to the end once again, his hand no longer holding mine but instead wrapped around me in intimate embrace. I stand with my face in his chest, crying, worshiping… loving; loving him more than I have ever loved anything…I take a seat and realize for the first time in my ten year walk with the Lord I am fully, hopelessly in love with Him.”
Throughout those first three months I learned for the first time in my life what it meant to truly love the Lord as a young boy loves his father. In the midst of the hardship during my first months on the field, I thought the very same thing the prodigal son thought in Luke 15. The response of the Father, my heavenly Father, is what changed everything.
17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. Luke 15: 17-20
In Ethiopia I wrote this in a blog, “It’s quiet here. That’s the first thing you notice. The roar of mopeds and piercing cry of buddhist chants over loudspeakers at 4:00 AM have been replaced with the low, constant whisper of wind as it ripples across the endless fields of grain…Despite the varying ministries, the pace of life here is slow. It is never hard to find time to simply wander into the middle of a neighbouring field, and sit in the midst of the quiet, with nothing but the constant hush of the wind and rustling of the field. If I had to tell you about my most cherished moments of the past two months, many would take me back there, to the middle of the silence, where woven in with the whisper of the wind, I found the whisper of the Lord also.”
And so over the course of those three months I listened, and as I listened I learned to speak. I spoke of my frustrations and replaced them with grace. Spoke my pain and traded it for comfort. Spoke my requests and traded them for promises.
During that time the Lord showed me that I was not only a son to the Father, but part of Christ’s bride. In the fields of Ethiopia he invited me into marriage with Him.
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. 15 There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond[c] as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.16 “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’ you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ – Hosea 2: 14-16
While in Nicaragua I became paralysed with the fear that I would lose what I had gained. What was to stop me from becoming the prodigal son once again? Is my heart not just as adulterous as that of Hosea’s wife? I realised that I soon was headed for the comfort and distractions of home. What if I lost the very same love I had spent the last eight months discovering?
And then, as sweet as ever, the Lord reminded me that it had never been about my pursuit of Him. Rather, the gospel is the good news of His pursuit of us. Of me.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.”
During a worship night under the pavilion in Nicaragua the Lord showed me my new life in Him.
Journal entry: “I stood clothed in amor and authority of belonging to Christ/ He showed me just how much I have become a new creation, not through the eyes of the world but through the eyes of Heaven… Ge destroyed the lies that had been holding me captive and I was suddenly able to hear and feel Him one again.”
He then led me to Psalm 139
1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
So no, the world race didn’t change my life and it won’t change yours. There was no, prayer, devotional or scripture that will change me or you from our sinful nature. It was never about me finding the Lord. The good news wouldn’t, couldn’t, be good if it was.
Instead this year has been a discovery of His pursuit of me. From the cross thousands of years ago to me sitting in that flimsy red chair. He has never and will never stop coming after me. The race didn’t change my life, but it gave me the opportunity to take my eyes off myself long enough to encounter an eternal God who wants to be my Father, a Son I get to live united with, and the inheritance of the Holy Spirit given to me.
