I have joined the worldrace for a week now. It has been a gratifying learning process to go through.
This Fusion 3 Route is different from the other routes. We walk and minister by praying for the people in the local community, which is a completely different experience to common mission trip. At first, I wondered why our team wasn’t engaged with any local host in Malaysia who would link us up with the different communities as they was previously engaged with a local host in Africa during their travels in the last three months. I struggled with many thoughts of mine. I wondered whether it was because I had too much expectations before I joined the race. Was my concerns a result of my familiarity with previous experiences, where I focused on completing mission “events” instead of developing a personal relationship with a person that God allows us to encounter on our way?
Earlier on Sunday, a friend of mine back in Bandung shared her Sunday message to me about expectations, without her realizing that I had actually been thinking about the expectations of this race, people’s expectation, and any other expectation that may fall in between. The passage she shared was from Mathew 21:1-11.
When Jesus came to Jerusalem, many people knew who Jesus was and they received Him with great fanfare! What do you think may be their motivation behind giving a great welcome to Jesus? Perhaps, in many ways, we are similar to the people of that time, welcoming Jesus with great fanfare in the hopes and expectation that Jesus can and will fulfill our personal needs and wants as a man. In many Christian conferences, we often hear testimonies about lives that went from complete failures (in a worldly sense) to a victorious and successful life after they have known Jesus. Many of these testimonies will also make a bold claim: “If that miracle can happen in my life, then it can happen to your life as well!”
However, these testimonies and expectations are questionable, when we compare it with Paul’s testimonies. He would have said: “Before I knew Jesus, I was a reputable and respectable person with strong authority in religious laws and I led a good life. After I knew Jesus, I was persecuted, and many people want to take my life.” And he will probably close his testimony with the following line, “If Jesus was able to change my life, then it can happen to your life as well! Do you still want to receive Jesus?”
So, what does it really mean for us to follow Jesus?
Jesus was not there to fulfil His followers’ expectations, needs and wants. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, He demonstrated complete obedience to the Father. He knew the challenges and temptations were great and it was much easier to give up and not do the Father’s will. However, Jesus demonstrated his full obedience:
??Most of the crowds was treating Him as the king of the world by spreading their cloaks on the road, and cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. But Jesus said His kingdom is not of this world.
??The Pharisees were always looking for a reason to crucify Jesus on their pretentious obedience towards the laws. Jesus could have easily foiled their plans, but He did not do it, because He knew that His Father’s plan was not the same as human plans. He did not come to fulfil man’s agenda. He was and is an obedient Servant, faithfully seeking God’s will and seeking to please the Father in all things. In humility, Jesus (who was God) rode a donkey and not a strong nor powerful horse. Jesus had the boldness and the obedience to defy human’s expectation, to fully obey God’s will and to humbly die on the Cross for the redemption of man’s sin.
Perhaps, many of us, instead of humbly obeying God’s will, selfishly want God to obey our human wills, desires and expectations. We have neither the courage nor the strength to pray “God, let Your will be done”. Instead, we want God to fulfil our own wishes.
When Jesus came to this world, He did not back off in the face of difficulties. He continued to focus on the Father to complete His mission on earth. When He was surrounded by darkness, temptations, hardships and challenges, His actions and speech which contained truths which shone even brighter and He persisted in doing the Father’s will. Likewise, for mankind, in the face of hardship, the true faith of a believer will be ever more evident!
As the follower of Jesus, we are called to bring peace to people in this world. Able to serve as servant, rode a donkey and not a strong nor powerful horse, able to humbly say each day: “My daily bread is to do Your will?”
After I heard my friend’s sharing, I began to understand my mission with Worldrace better and perhaps this might be an affirmation of what I’m doing right now in Fusion Route.
To be bold to preach His Word. To follow Jesus. To build relationships within the community I am in, and share about Him personally to others, because Jesus is a personal and a relational God. We will walk by faith, we will be sensitive to God’s soft whispers, and we will listen to God and go to where God leads us, so that we may encounter and share about Jesus, to the people we meet, even as we walk and pray in this journey with Him as our guide. May we reach out to the people without our own self conceived expectations of what God can do in this race.
Let us remember His love this Good Friday, and may all of us find peace in Him alone.
Love,
Evelyn
