It’s incredible to think that only a short week ago I was down in Gainesville, GA getting my world absolutely rocked by God and His unfailing and all encompassing love. I’ve already tried to explain everything I have gone through and how life changing just 10 days can really be, but all the while I’m still struggling to process everything myself. This past week has been nothing short of an internal struggle. With everything I’ve experienced from training camp, I was thrust back into a life of getting up early to work long hours in a place that doesn’t replenish me the way I’ve felt the last few weeks. Desperately reaching out to my teammates who would understand the struggles and trying to live in the truth of what God showed me at training camp every day.
The first couple of days felt great as I dove into the word and spoke truth over my friends and family, but as the week went by you can’t help but get a little lost again in this world. Just as I felt myself falling into old temptations and habits, questioning God’s great and powerful will, and just running the risk of being led astray; God decides to give me a great big dose of truth and the reasons He has called me into mission through the words of my pastor this morning. I sat in the pews and had my pastor up there just truth talking straight into my life. Just a testament to the fact that when you ask God to help you through something or show you the light or give you a reminder, He will be there Sunday morning and every other morning to remind you that you are perfectly made in His image and you’re entire story has been perfectly written by His hand. God is so GOOD!
This morning I had a beautiful reminder of our purpose and our mission here on earth. We have such a finite amount of time on this planet and we all but lose sight of that. We get lost in the day to day and the money and the material and the wanting to be in total control of our own lives. Well guess what, it’s not about YOU! God has made you perfectly in His image and He’s calling us to do more than we could ever imagine. I was reminded today that we all have a purpose, and that purpose is to go out and make disciples of the nations. This is exactly what God had spoken into my life when I first decided to take the leap of faith and apply for The World Race. It’s what He’s been speaking over me ever since and it’s exactly what He breathed into me as I came out of the baptismal waters. My pastor this morning gave a beautiful reminder and encouragement into what God is calling all of us to.
The late obedience is the disobedient. God is not calling us to sit back and wait for Him to reveal Himself to us. We have not been made to lean back away from things that might seem too hard or too much. God is calling us into a posture of moving forward, of preparing ourselves to jump when God calls us to something. We are not meant to question if God has called us to the nations… He already HAS! Now the question we should be asking is, how can we serve the nations? For me it is abundantly clear that I will go out into the nations of the world and spread His word over the next year. This good news is not only meant for a certain peoples group or certain country… it’s meant for EVERYONE! We know this amazingly wonderful news that God has died for us and our Holy Creator wants to have a relationship with us. This is the kind of news we should want to scream from the rooftops! Telling people about our Holy Father should be our natural state!
It is all-good to write about it and maybe speak about these type of actions within your Bible study or your church, but it is an entirely different thing to act this out in our lives. It’s extremely terrifying and my pastor helped to remind us of this. When Mary Magdalene and Mary went to Jesus’ tomb they instead were faced with an angel. The angel told them that Jesus was no longer there and that they were to go tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead. The Bible makes sure to state that “So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples” (Matthew 28:8). This stuff can be scary! The Mary’s were faced with an angel and the promise that Jesus had risen from the dead and they were still scared. Here’s the amazing thing though. Even though it is scary and God has commanded it, He is still there right beside us to walk through it together, which makes all the difference in the world.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age”
Matthew 28:19
