This is a NEW year, to be spent in a NEW country, with a NEW team and the Lord has been speaking to me about this being a time of many NEW things in my journey with Him including a NEW level of intimacy with Him as well as a NEW level of commitment.
Just a handful of hours ago, we arrived in Ho Chi Minh city to begin our 7th month on The World Race!
Last night, I found out the new team I have been placed on. My team was dissolved and we each were placed on new teams. I am excited for the change, but nervous that I am the only addition to my new team; they have already spent two months together. However, I have never received such a warm welcome before! I was so excited when I found out my new team and I think they just might have been equally excited. What a blessing! I am hopeful that this will be a team of joy and fun and of iron sharponing iron as we grow together in the Lord.
After 6 months of the World Race spent on 3 different teams, that sometimes fought with each other, sometimes for each other and other times were completely apathetic, after spending time on teams where we fought for our time and growth in the Lord and time on teams that fought for nothing and wasted so much of the time, gifts and resoources we have been given, I strongly feel the Lord speaking, “It’s time to rise up and follow My lead.”
It is easy for me to rise up to the level of greatness someone else sets the example for, but to rise up on my own? That’s a challenge. The Lord has asked me for a long time that EVEN IF I were to go alone, would I still follow Him? I so desperately want to say, ‘YES!!!’, but have so often failed and settled to the spiritual tone and level of discipline set by those around me. However, the time is now to say yes to the Lord in everything.
So, this second half of the race, beginning with this new month on the race with a new team, I will rise up and follow the Lord. I will say yes to Him even if I must say yes alone. I will fight for the relationships with my team and I will fight to pour my heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears into the ministry I have been assigned.
Just a couple of days ago, I received an acceptance letter for the SBS (School of Biblical Studies) with YWAM (Youth With A Mission). I am almost in a state of shock! This is too good to be true! Many of my squadmates still do not yet know what the post-world race season will look like for them. God has begun to speak and lead, but very few of us know for sure… and me? The Lord would speak so clearly to me!? Who am I that the Lord would lead so gently and kindly and clearly? And Hawaii?! I never thought in a million years I would get to go to Hawaii, let alone get to spend 9 months there!
This SBS is 9 months of intense study followed by 2-3 months of outreach ministry teaching from the Bible. I am scared out of my mind! I have less than $100 to my name. I have yet to meet my World Race deadline, though it is very close and now I need even more than what I needed for the World Race! I will need to fly out June 27th for SBS, which is less than 30 days after I complete the World Race and in between I am scheduled for jury duty, a lifelong friend’s wedding, and a million coffee dates with as many of my faithful friends as possible. There is no time to work and save. The Lord has clearly spoken to trust Him, but that is so scary! Trust? For everything?! Yes.
Upon reading my acceptance letter, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this is the next step the Lord is asking me to take and that I can trust Him. I have known His peace and assurance before, but not like this. He has assured me He WILL provide.
So, in this new year, 2014 will be defined by an unshakable trust in the Lord. I will live to trust that He is in all things and sovereign over every situation I find myself in. I will trust His love and care for me and I will trust He will provide everything I need as well as little blessings for enjoyment just because He loves me. I will trust that He has placed the people around me on purpose and I will do my best to make the most of every opportunity the Lord places before me to love well and serve well, for whatever is done for the ‘least of these’ because he is a disciple, is done for the Lord.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
-Isaiah 43:19
