Today is my 29th birthday. This is so weird to me because I do not feel this should be my age. Though I’m not really sure how old I actually feel, this just is not it.
Years ago I decided I would be ok as long as I was married before I turned 29, the age my parents were when they were married. Yet here I am, beginning my 8th month on the World Race, traveling from one country to the next to cover 11 countries over the course of 11 months to learn to love and to serve and to follow Jesus… a journey in which all of us world racers who were single during the application process have been asked to commit to remaining single from the date we have been accepted onto this journey until the day it ends.
Though I long for someone to share my life with, I would not trade this season for anything. If the Lord has someone for me, He will bring him at just the right time. If not, I trust the Lord in that too.
In the meantime, I get to celebrate this special day in the beautifully rich culture of India with the most loving team!
In honor of turning 29, here are 29 lessons I have learned on this journey thus far:
1) Community is optional, just like pursuing the Lord. If we pursue the Lord, we inevitably must press into community. By embracing community, we allow the Lord to sharpen us as iron sharpens iron.
2) God is in everything. He is in the blessing and enjoyment, when we can hear His voice and sense His presence and peace and He is also in the silence when we cannot see and cannot hear His voice or sense His presence. The closeness to His heart and the seemingly absence of Him altogether is all part of the journey. He Who began a good work in us WILL bring it to completion and this good work looks differently for all of us and it looks differently at different times along the way, but it is all good.
3) Following the Lord is a daily choice to put on our Jesus skin and let Him love, act and speak through us.
4) We always have a choice. People will be placed in leadership above us that we disagree with. They will make decisions we would not have made and decisions we do not even want to try to submit to, but we always have the choice to submit in love knowing that the Lord put them in leadership for our growth as well as their own and knowing that by submitting to them and their decisions, we are submitting to the Lord and trusting Him to care for us.
5) Personal free time spent alone is often selfish time. The rest of the time it is a sweet blessing. We were made to live in community. The Lord lives within each of us who have given our lives to trust and follow Him and that same Lord uses each of us to reveal Himself to others. Time away with the Lord is absolutely invaluable and necessary, but maybe not as much as we think, for the Lord can be found in our brothers and sisters within the body of Christ. He can and does speak to us and teach us, encourage us and correct us through others.
6) The Lord’s plans are good, always. He does not cause or allow one thing to happen for harm, but for our growth and/or our healing, or someone else’s growth and/or healing and for His glory.
7) Expectations create the opportunity for the enemy to steal our joy, contentment and peace when they go unmet. They also limit the Lord in doing what He really wants to do, for He can do far more than we imagine or ask.
8) Vulnerability keeps us humble and creates a space for God to heal us and/or someone else. There is so much freedom to be found in vulnerability and openness. For everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said:
“Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” [Ephesians 5:13-14]
9) It is far better to be weak, than to be strong, for the Lord is most glorified in us when we are weak and fully dependant on Him. His weakness is still far greater than our greatest strength, so what do we think we really have to offer in our own strength anyway?
10) We need far less stuff to live (and live well) than we think.
11) Health is from the Lord. We can do all the right things and still get sick or do all the wrong things and remain healthy. The Lord has His purposes in both. Trust Him.
12) We can trust others, not necessarily because they are trustworthy, but because the Lord is trustworthy. He will NEVER leave us or forsake us. The Lord knows everything we need and will provide all things as we seek Him and His kingdom first.
13) When we think things cannot get worse or more difficult and we reach the point of giving up, that is the time to press in all the more. God is just on the other side waiting to heal us or set us free or take us to another level of depth with Him.
14) Time invested in someone else is always worth it. If preferring someone else in love means staying out late so they can shop in the markets for Christmas gifts when you just want to go to bed, do it. If it means serving alongside ministry contacts on a free day when they need extra help, do it. If it means having a conversation during time you planned on spending alone, do it. We never know what the Lord is up to or how He is speaking or loving through us.
15) Rest is from the Lord, not from enough sleep. It can always be found in Him.
16) Every good gift is from the Lord, Who gives us all things for our enjoyment, including chocolate covered fruit, gourmet coffee and chocolate chip cookies. We are blessed from His abundance so we can be a blessing in our abundance.
17) Our gifts and talents are not for us, but for the benefit of others. To withhold our words of encouragement or love or hand of healing or even a loving rebuke is selfish. It is not about our ability or qualifications, but rather about the Lord and how He wants to use us to bless others.
18) NO ONE is too old or too young to know the Lord, to know His freedom, to find healing in Him from a lifetime of wounds, or to be used BY Him to encourage, challenge, love on or bless someone else. Age is irrelevant. Obedience is everything.
19) Love is a sacrifice. It is a risk and an invitation to be hurt that is worth it every time because when we choose to love someone who has offended us or stolen from us or lied to us, when we choose to love someone who irritates us or someone we would never choose to love, when we choose to love those with different personalities than us and different beliefs than us and different understandings of God than us, people can then see Jesus because Jesus loves each and every one of us. He never, ever blames or condemns or rejects. He accepts and heals and makes new. By being patient and kind, believing the best, protecting reputations and the integrity of those we disagree with, and bearing up under all kinds of rejection and misunderstandings and false assumptions or views others have of ourselves, we allow the Lord to be God and we allow others to see His great love.
20) God cannot be kept in a box and He will shake everything we think we know and understand and believe and stand on until we let Him out of the limited perspective we have kept Him in.
21) God hears and responds to every single prayer- He responds to the ones we voice in prayer and He responds even to the ones on our heart that don’t make it out of our lips. He is far nearer and far more attentive and far more caring about every single detail than we can fathom.
22) We MUST give in order to receive. We do not give to receive, but we cannot receive without giving.
23) In order to live, to truly find life and freedom in Christ, we must die. We must crucify our own flesh and desires. We must say no to our own selfishness and look to Jesus be our plumb line to guide all of our desires and actions.
24) Fundraising is not about the money in the least; it is a humbling experience of trusting the Lord fully. Both the giver and the receiver must acknowledge that their life and their resources are not their own – the giver in releasing their sense of ownership, and the receiver in accepting the nature of its source. Both giving and receiving breed a spiritual humility that brings each party into closer communion with God – acknowledging that it’s ALL His in the first place.
25) Everything lasts for a season. It may be a short season or it may be a long season, but it is only for a season. We do not know how long the Lord gives us in each season, so we must give our all, fully surrendered to Him to have His way in us as He wills. We can all endure a season, so we must make the most of it.
26) No one else can dictate what we will or will not get out of the World Race, or anything else in life. It is our choice. Someone else’s lack of discipline or passion does not justify my lack of discipline and passion. Someone else’s failure to follow the Lord wholeheartedly does not justify my failure to follow the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Neither can someone else’s passion for the Lord determine my commitment to the Lord. If I am only committed to following Him when others follow Him, that is no commitment at all and my love is far too conditional. It is easy to make good choices when everyone else is making them, but it develops a lifestyle of devotion to the Lord when we choose Him even when no one else does.
27) Our things are not our things and our money is not our money. Everything we have has been given to us from the Lord to use and to share and to be a blessing to those around us. When I choose to give because the Lord is a giver and when I choose to love because the Lord is love, I can rest assured the Lord will give to me and care for me because He loves me and I have chosen to allow Him to use His money and His things, that I have been given only to steward, as He pleases.
28) The Lord will strip our hearts from everything we have given our hearts to so that He might bind our wandering hearts wholeheartedly to His. He will not settle for anything less than our everything and He will not relent until He has it all.
29) The Lord is intentional. He is so incredibly intentional. We cannot even fathom the careful thought He puts into orchestrating every detail of our lives – the circumstances, each person we meet, every conversation, every single step we take is known by the Lord. He knows who and what will expose our worst so He can forgive, clean and heal us. He knows who will encourage, challenge and bless us. He withholds sweet friendships to protect them until we are ready for them and then surprises us with His great love in a brother or sister in the faith. And then He reveals Himself in others who know us at our worst and love us anyway with no judgement. He loves us. The Lord absolutely loves us and does everything He has to do to heal us so we can know Him and His great love for us. There is no one like the Lord. There is no god like Him. He is the One and Only Who binds up the brokenhearted, sets the imprisoned free, heals the sick, gives life to the dead and loves beyond measure.
