Somehow those two words have been the theme of my race since the beginning.
And He said to them all, “If anyone would come after me, let Him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
When you look that verse up in a study Bible this is what you get, “People are willing to pay a high price for something they value. Is it any surprise that Jesus would demand this much commitment from His followers? There are at least three conditions that must be met by people who want to follow Jesus. We must be willing to deny self, to take up our crosses, and to follow Him. Anything else is superficial lip service.”
Simple as that.
When we give our life over to Christ we vow to follow Him where ever He goes. All through out the gospels He instructs us to follow Him. It sounds like an easy enough task.
When I got accepted on the race I knew I was giving up a year to be a true follower. I wasn’t going to be in control or in the leading spot of my life. I was signing up to follow Christ where ever He led me. Rather it be to a beach front view in South Africa, a mountain top home in Swaziland, or a sandy village in Mozambique. I was giving it all to Him.
Little did I know I was putting Him in a small box of what He was going to do in my life this year. I knew He would change my heart, I knew I would see Him in new and beautiful ways each day but I never guessed He would use me in some ways I have already seen Him do. Getting into Mozambique I told my team I was not comfortable preaching. I really just felt like it was a man’s job to lead a sermon. I knew I was going to have to do it but it would probably come down to a forced thing. Our first service we had to lead I watched my teammate who struggled with feeling like she didn’t have a voice the first month get up and preach the sermon and I was overwhelmed with excitement for her. How cool is God to take a person who felt like she wasn’t heard and use her to speak His words to all of us. I sat there and couldn’t wait to see the rest of my team do it. We have a few girls on our team who love to preach. I think that is awesome, I feel like God is just using me in children’s ministry which is exactly how I like it. Tuesday rolled around and we were up again to preach. Ari, one of the girl’s who has told us she loves to preach told our team God was telling her to step back. She would still preach if she had to that night but God wanted her to step back tonight. My eyes dropped to the floor because I knew exactly what He was up to.
My heart started pounding and almost instantly the words Follow Me popped in my head. We gave each other time to go off and pray about who would lead the service but I already knew it was going to be me. We all grabbed our Bibles and journals and went off to spend time with the Lord. Almost instantly He started using my hand and my pen to write my sermon. Words started flowing and before I knew it I had wrote a whole sermon about how God instructs us to follow Him. My heart was pounding and I kept asking Him if He was sure He wanted to use ME to preach this sermon and time after time He answered my question with yes!
So, we met back up as a team and I told them God had called me to preach that night. They were all so excited for me. 6 pm rolled around and we walked down to the church. I was so nervous. We went through some worship songs and then it was my time to get up there and let Him use me. If you know me, you know I am a talker but I am no public speaker. I start getting nervous and nothing comes out like it is supposed to. Something was different that night, I got up there and things went so smoothly. He was in full control of my mouth and He was speaking through me. He was using me, ME!
As I sat down after the sermon I just thanked Him for choosing me. I was thankful He called me to follow Him and take Him from the box I had put Him in.
Sometimes making that choice to follow our Father is not easy and definitely not always the most comfortable to do but if I said no to Him that night and didn’t get up and preach His plan wouldn’t have been carried out and I wouldn’t be taking the next step in my growing closer to Him.
