“Jesus sent out 12 apostles with these instructions: “Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samarians, but only to the people of Israel, God’s lost sheep. Go and announce to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons. Give as freely as you’ve received.”
-Matthew 10:5-8
I saw these verses in a promo video for the Race and they brought me to tears. Something in me some desire to do Kingdom work that I’d never realized before stood up and demanded to be recognized. I wanted to heal the sick. I wanted to raise the dead. I didn’t know what leprosy was exactly, but I wanted to be the one to cure it. I wanted to cast out demons.
It was a convincing marketing spiel. Tell a 20-something college grad that there’s more to life than making money or getting a career, remind them that Jesus was a radical and you might be in business. There’s a market for that. There’s a demographic for that.
It’s a lot harder to sell a year long journey of Creator-discovery, that’s for sure, even if that’s what the Race is about. It’s even more difficult to sell a year of self-in-Christ-discovery, even if that’s really what the Race is about. Christians especially those of us who like to think we’re radicals don’t want to be selfish. A year spent searching for ourselves is nothing if not selfish, right?
I’ve often thought that this marketing approach must be the cause of much laughter in the home office. The biggest joke of the Race is that your main purpose is serving the nations. Really, the Race is a mostly a journey about letting the LORD take the shattered pieces of your life and letting Him make a stained glass window out of it. About letting Him build His church in YOU. About you leaving the 99 to find the one lost, and finding, somewhere along the way, that YOU are the one that Jesus went out to find.
Because Jesus does save.
And He even saves US.
It’s so crazy radical when you think about it. Fifty-two people started this Race with B Squad last October. We launched in the beautiful town of Antigua, Guatemala, completely ignorant of just how changed we’d be.
What I’ve realized since is that all fifty-two of us are the miracles we came on the Race to see.
We went out to bring Jesus to the Nations, but instead, the Nations brought Jesus to us.
And I won’t ever be the same. I can’t go back to who I was before this. I just can’t.
Because there are miracles every month.
There was the unexplainable light in Thomas that switched on in Antigua when he held a little boy named Pablo who had Down Syndrome.
There was a former gang leader named Ariel in Honduras who's getting high marks in school instead of getting high sniffing paint thinner.
There was an island in Nicaragua that saw Brian baptized by one of the Racers who brought him to Christ a year before.
There was the one night in the red light district of Thailand that introduced us to the reality of the sex trafficking industry and the redemption that's possible through Christ's love for broken people.
There was a hospital in Cambodia where the LORD healed Erica's wounds and fostered new dreams in her heart.
There was a beach in Vietnam that became my alter, a place where I laid down my dreams and gave them to the LORD, who holds all my dreams in His hands.
There was a little girl named Catherine in Malaysia who held my hand and called me Sister.
There was the prophecy in Kenya that spoke of the 120 days between me and home, how the LORD would give me a new dream and then the moment when that dream showed up.
There were countless nights of worship where heaven came down, any number of prophecies that we’ve seen come true, new identities we’ve stepped into, battles we’ve won because of who the LORD is and what He’s done not just through us, but in us, for us.
And yes, we’ve seen healings and people released from curses too. We’ve spent whole nights on our knees until the burden to pray lifts. We’ve taken the gospel where no white people have gone before and we’ve seen our squad mates spared from death on multiple occasions. And the biggest miracle is this:
There is a squad full of fifty-two lives totally wrecked for Jesus, fifty-two people than can testify to the miracles in their own lives.
Our lives are the miracles. We are the blind who see, the deaf who hear, the lame who walk, the mute who speak, the dead who live. We are the lost who are sought after and found. We are the resurrected children of God.
There are fifty-two people who are the miracles they came on Race to see.
