A year ago today, I left my family and friends and comforts and plans, to pursue the Lord and His people for a year.
Before we left, the women on my squad were asked to pray and imagine our post-race selves looking in the mirror.
What did I want that post-race Emily to look like? Did she carry more confidence? Did she look more adventurous and wild? Did her heart break easily for others? Did she possess more boldness or more faith or more depth? Did she believe in a big, powerful God and was she faithful in carrying out his big, powerful works? What was so different about her?
What did I want that Emily to look like? What did I want to be different?
I turned to a beautiful squad mate who ended up becoming one of my dearest friends along the way, and I said “Grace, I can’t even picture myself….I can’t even picture what I look like. All I know is that I want to be a person who is so in love with Jesus. I want to love Jesus a whole lot more than I do right now.”
So as I started and continued my journey around the world, my motive was to fall more in love with the person of Jesus Christ.
So that was my goal. That was my motive: “This is year to fall more in love with Jesus.” Because what would Jesus want more than someone who loves Him?
In so many moments throughout the race, I would check up and measure myself. Am I falling more in love with the Lord? Do I love him more than I did one month ago, three months ago, six months ago… now 12 months ago?
Sometimes I would love my answer. “YES OMG JESUS IS THE BEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME!” But sometimes I would hate my answer. And in those times I hated my answer, I usually just decided not be honest with myself at all.
In so many moments, He became my everything. Sometimes I chose Him out of obedience and discipline, sometimes I chose Him out of sheer desperation, and sometimes I chose Him out of love.
And yet, in some moments, He wasn’t my everything. Sometimes I reverted back to my Gomer-self. I relate to the prostitute who looks for love and security and fulfillment elsewhere. I see myself in her as she goes after other lovers and forgets her husband- even after she has tasted the true and everlasting love, and commitment, and sacrifice, and eternal covenant of her Faithful and True.
So as I sought to fall more in love with Jesus, my thoughts were “Well what can I do for Him? How can I glorify Him? How can I love others to make Him known? How can I give all of myself, in all of my little broken pieces, to make an impact for His Holy name?”
This was a year about giving up, about surrender, about obedience, about serving, about deprivation, about losing my life, about loving Jesus right? This was after all, a year to pursue the Lord and to pursue His people right?
Yeah that’s what I thought too…
As I sit here now, and think about this past year, I realize it wasn’t a year for that at all.
This past year, I pursued Him, I pursued His people, I have fallen more in love with Him…but that actually wasn’t the point.
I went to a final week of wrapping up the World Race journey and I asked others to listen to the Lord and hear from Him for me. I thought, “Ok this is an opportunity for the Lord to tell me how He wants me to ‘serve’ Him next. Maybe He is going to communicate very clear directions on my next step. And maybe if I’m really lucky, He will tell me, “Wow Emily, you have really come a long way in loving me, thanks for that!”
When both of these people asked the Father for a word for me, they both got the sense that Jesus wasn’t saying that any of those things.
Instead they heard,
“Emily, I love you so much. It is unreal how much I love you. I get butterflies just thinking about you. And I’m honored that you write my name.”
And in true Emily fashion, I started crying.
Of course…of course that was what Jesus wanted to communicate to me. That’s what He always wants to communicate to me.
What does He want more than someone who loves Him? Someone who is loved by Him.
And wow…..how much more beautiful is that? And of course… that’s so like Jesus.
Somewhere along the way, I have learned that this year was a year about the love of God that penetrates the very depths of my soul. This was a year about the love of God that chases me, that relentlessly pursues me, that removes all other names of Baal from my mouth, and that fights for me. This year was a year about the love of God that pursues me in all of my wickedness, in all of my sin, in all of my prostitute ways- to redeem me, to transform me, to refine me, to heal me and to most all, just simply love me.
This year was a year for the Lord to use bucket showers and bugs and strange places and foreign cultures.
This year was a year for the Lord to use my ministry hosts, and teammates, and squadmates, and family, and supporters.
This year was a year for the Lord to use children in Africa with no shoes and prostitutes on street corners in the Red Light District and believers in closed countries crying out desperately for their lives to be saved in an Islamic nation. This year was a year for the Lord to use the brokenness of the world and a seemingly endless amount of tears and long, sleepless nights of heartache.
All to break me.
All to make me desperate for Him.
All to ask me to rely on Him.
All to strip me of things not of Him.
All to allure me into the wilderness and speak tenderly to me.
All to chase me.
All to make me lie down in safety.
All to seek me.
All to pursue me.
All to betroth me to Him in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. To betroth me to Him in faithfulness.
All to reconcile me to Himself. All to bring me back to Himself.
All to love me. And that was the whole entire point.
