“You can’t be remade until you first allow yourself to be unmade:
Abandon your comfort zone.
Embrace your brokenness.
Depend on God.”
Just three steps. Easy, right? I mean, it sounds so simple. Bring it on. I’ll do it. I’ll be remade.
In Guatemala, I learned a lot about the first step. I learned how to abandon home and my worldly desires. I learned what it meant to not be entitled to anything. I learned how to leave behind my old self and step into this new life of redemption and freedom with the Lord. I learned how to die to myself daily. I thought God had done enough work in me. He taught me so much, surely I was ready to start moving forward.
I’m learning that that’s not the case. It’s actually the exact opposite.
The phrase “power of prayer” was something I’ve always understood. Recently, I’ve been seeing how God truly does work in that. I asked God to show me how to have a steadfast heart and be constant in my faith. Now, He’s teaching me exactly that. I looked back through my journal and I had journaled these exact words:
“Wreck me, Father.
Wreck me for Your Kingdom.
Wreck me for Your good”
“Rid me of myself.
I belong to You and You alone.
Rid me of myself, Jesus.”
Funny. He’s doing that. He’s doing all of that and more.
My team and I arrived at the YWAM base in Kanchanaburi, where we will be staying the next three months, with mouths wide open. We had just driven five hours from Bangkok, leaving behind our entire squad. It was the seven of us on our own for the first time. The last city we saw was over an hour away and there was little civilization nearby. We were standing on a farm, in the jungle, set down in the mountains, surrounded by banana and rubber trees.
God literally pulled me out of my comfort zone and stripped away all of the comforts I could ever rely on.
Since the moment I set foot on the farm, I was broken.
God, what the heck are you doing? What is this place and why am I here? I came on the Race to radically love people, bring your Kingdom, and change lives. I’m farming and teaching English, which I’ve been doing for the past three months. I can’t love on people like I desire to in that. I can’t change lives. I’m not in prisons bringing people to the Lord, in orphanages loving on the fatherless, or in bars pulling girls out of the sex slave industry. There are so many places and people that need help in Thailand, and I’m here. You’ve given me such a huge passion for the people of Thailand, and I’m here. I’m useless here. I’m trapped.
I woke up every morning and pleaded with God. I walked around on the verge of tears, frustrated and confused. I was stuck in the middle of this mess. I was weak. Conveniently, Satan loves to attack us when we are most weak. He thrives on our brokenness and struggles. And he was eating me alive. He relentlessly fed me lies about who I am and what I’m capable of. He overwhelmed me to the point of suffocation.
I couldn’t do it anymore. I was tired. I was exhausted. My life no longer worked. I couldn’t understand what God was doing. I was okay with being broken, but I thought it would be for other people. I wanted brokenness when I wanted it. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t expect this. It found me.
But that’s the point.
Seth Barnes says it himself: “A kingdom journey smashes the boxes we try to put God in. We tend to think that God only acts in certain ways because that’s all we’ve experienced.”
I put God in a box. I told Him, “You must move in this way and I can only bring your Kingdom and serve you if it looks like this.” My mind was solely focused on my own desires and refused to look beyond to what God might be doing in other ways. No doubt, I had expectations. God wrecked every single one of my expectations. He took ahold of them and threw them straight out of the window.
Brokenness brings you to a place where you need something solid to place your hope in. You can no longer rely on anything or anyone else. I’m being forced to rely on God and trust in His plan without knowing what that is. That’s hard for me. I like knowing the next step. I like knowing the game plan. I’m schedule oriented. Yet, I know longer have that comfort. God is more interested in our full obedience than our full understanding. A verse from the song Climb this Mountain explains what I needed perfectly:
I lean not on my own understanding.
My life is in the hands of the Maker of Heaven.
I was brought out into the jungle with only my team and God Himself to reach out to. He’s funny that way. My teammate, Anna, said something that really changed my attitude towards my time here: “God brought us all the way out here because He wants us all to Himself. He wants to be our sole focus and place of refuge.”
We are in the middle of nowhere. There’s no doubt in my mind that this placement is directly from the Lord. I’m here for a reason. I may not know every single one of those reasons yet, but I have a better understanding of some.
I get to learn how to be His daughter. I get to learn how to hear His voice on a daily basis. I get to learn how to be content in simplicity. I get to learn what hard work, diligence, and perseverance means in life and daily drudgery. I get to strengthen my character and become the woman God wants me to by becoming more like His Son every day. I know the Lord is waiting on the other side of these struggles with overwhelming joy. I know He’s put me in the middle of this because He has something great waiting for me.
I’m still bringing the Kingdom,
it’s just not in the way that I expected,
and it’s within myself.
Something else the World Race says a lot is that “we can’t change anything, unless were changed first.” Identity always come before activity in the order of God. If God still has work to do in my life, in shaping me more like Jesus and bringing me into daughterhood, – who am I to stop Him? I want that. I have to learn how to let go of my expectations and desires and embrace the Lord’s will with open arms and a thankful heart. Thats hard sometimes. But I’m ready to get out of my own mess and let Him put me back together how He wants to. I want to get rid of every broken part of my life and allow room for God to transform me into a new creation.
God loves to interrupt our schedules. He loves to inconvenience our “plans.” It’s a reality check. He wants us to need Him. Only He can redeem our pain. Once that happens, we find ourselves on the other side. We find ourselves with a greater obedience to anything God could call us to. God desires to see us become fully alive. The only way to do that is to strip away all of our self-dependent ways and lay them at His feet.
I have to choose to quiet my mind and anxiousness, and set it aside. I must rebuke the Enemy and the lies he feeds my mind and heart. I have to choose to push in and trust my Daddy.
God, I surrender. I don’t care how bad it hurts. I don’t care how broken I am. I know this chaos is Your work and it’s for my good. I know you’re in this. If you’re in it, I want it.
Step by step.
Day by day.
Left foot. Right foot.
