Over a month ago I shared with you all a lengthy insight into the community with which I shared life for the decade or so prior to leaving for The World Race. I took to illustrating in admittedly excessive detail the lives and character of all the men who helped shape me into the man that I currently am. At the outset of part one, I asked a question that has been plaguing my conscience for the better part of five years since my friends began moving on in life toward different paths on which I shared only a few scattered steps. I wanted to look deeper into the question of why we move on from a place that is good, fruitful, and full of life in community, seeing as how we, as followers of a God that exists in community within Himself, were designed to bear fruit and invest in vibrant community.
So then, if we are designed for community, why do we leave it behind? Why don’t we cast roots deep into the ground where community already exists and thrive there in that space? That’s a question I’m going to explore more here in part two. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I think the Lord has shown me enough over the last couple months to make a pretty educated guess at why we leave community behind in pursuit of something else. There are probably a dozen or more excellent reasons, but I think the vast majority of those reasons boil down at their foundational level to this: we leave community behind because the sovereign God we call father has something better for us waiting on the horizon.
I immediately think back to my previous community and the outlook on life that I held throughout that time. If pushed, I would likely tell you that I was always satisfied with the direction in which my life was headed. That I was happy, even if some of the deepest desires of my heart were not being met in my timing. I would have told you that I had the best friends, job, and family out there (not untrue, but an exclusive thought nonetheless). If I were to be completely honest with you, I would have told you that there were very few scattered moments throughout the decade prior to the Race that I was a man at peace. I daily lived in secret rebellion against the Lord. I lusted after many of the things of this world. I drank in excess. I held several unhealthy relationships.
It wasn’t always that way. Increasingly over the course of the last few years, the Lord began unsettling me from my home, my community, and my future plans. He wanted something new for me. He wanted something fresh with which He could do some pruning, heart excavating, and identity transformation within me. My community at the time was not bad in any way, but it wasn’t what I needed past a certain point. Those men will always be close friends, but they won’t always be in my immediate community, a sobering reality that I hate feeling. They were everything I needed and more for a significant portion of my young adulthood. At various times, each held substantial influence over my life. For instance, Brooks was my closest friend during the darkest moments of my depravity prior to the Race. The Lord gave me that friendship and the community with him to serve as my support.
But ultimately, the Lord was pushing me toward something new. He wanted to pull me out of a life of stagnation, apathy, self-deprecation, self-condemnation, and borderline debauchery at times. You see, our Heavenly Father…you know…the One who breathed life into the universe, spoke creation into being, placed stars in the sky that exceed our imagination’s ability to conceive, and humbly decided to sacrifice one-third of His existent community in order to bridge a rift between He and His creation…He’s the One who decided that our lives are so precious to Him that He decides to invest Himself in us. He decides to lead us, love us, and never let us settle for less than He desires for us. So He cares for His children. One of the ways the Lord does that is through the provision of community to help us grow and experience Him in a deeper way. He also is so good to us that He causes us to share in the joy of knowing Him along with our community. Shared experiences are always my favorite experiences, so this is an aspect of the way that the Father loves me with which I deeply connect.
I was clearly told back in October of 2014 that it was time to move on. My friends began moving on as well. Some married, had children, and moved away. My life was marked less by joy and excitement and more by obligation and lack of vitality. My loving Father didn’t want that for me. He wanted to show me a life of joy, expectation, excitement, and, most importantly, intimacy in relationship with Him. Prior to the Race, I had only fleeting moments of intimacy with the Lord. I’m still learning what that intimacy really looks and feels like. The moments are still fleeting from time to time, but they are increasing in frequency all because I’m drawing closer to the Father. That might not have happened without The World Race. It definitely wouldn’t have happened without the new community the Lord has given me.
The Lord called me to leave my old community behind in search of a deeper sense of community. In part one of this blog, Joey Willis, one of my alumni squad leaders, commented saying, “we leave community for deeper community (I.e. friend groups for family).” I think he’s totally correct. We leave community behind for a deeper sense of community to come. That is precisely what the Race has provided me over the last year. I deeply love these men and women with which I get to share this life. They push, encourage, and sharpen me in ways I have never experienced in the past. They refuse to allow me to settle for less than what the Lord is calling me toward.
Four of my best friends in the world have been established in a mere ten months of life together. Kelly, Kathleen, Marsha, and Jayshree, four of my squad-mates, have played such massive roles in helping me experience healing throughout this journey. They have spoken life into me and helped me see exactly who the Lord says I am. I love each of them deeply and will always call them close friends. Derik, one of my raised-up squad leaders, has been a man worth following since the day I met him at training camp. He reminds me of my friend Jim. He knows who he is and he is comfortable in that identity. I learn so much from simply being in the same room as Derik. All seven of the men on this journey with me have impacted my life in ways that I didn’t know possible. From Luke’s truth-telling, to Mason’s light-hearted humor and refusal to settle for less, to Zack’s art of celebrating what the Lord is doing, I have learned more of what it means to be a man after the Lord’s heart. From Drew’s discipline and intentionality, to Kody’s yearning for wisdom, to Ben’s bold and willing spirit, I have gained an appreciation for how creative the Lord is in making His children so unique.
I could write a novel about these people and only begin to scratch the surface of what they mean to me as my new community. I would not have been capable of hazarding a guess at how important these people were going to become in my life prior to the Race. They are precisely what I needed…and the Lord knew it. He knew that I needed to heal from my past. From my willing disobedience to His Word. From my addictions. From my apathy. From my self-condemnation. From my numbness and aversion to being vulnerable. From my fear of rejection. From my lack of assurance and peace. From my false view of self. From my false view of the Father. God knew all of what I needed.
I am not a finished product. I still struggle mightily with all of these things. Yet I know the truth now of what the Lord says about me. Last week at one of our final all-squad weekends, Kelly prayed and spoke over me that I am currently on a journey from the head to the heart. She’s totally right. The Lord has been using the Race as a means of taking what I intellectually know as true and instilling those truths in my heart as unshakeable beliefs. I can only live in the overflowing joy of that knowledge if it becomes experience that flows from the place of my heart. My mind is too fickle and easily influenced. But my heart belongs to the Lord. It is His dwelling place. No lie can rest there where He makes His home.
Do you see what I mean about community? We leave behind a good sense of community in pursuit of a better form and deeper level of community as the Lord leads us further in relationship with Him. It’s beautiful. He provides if we are willing to follow. In His grace, He even provides when we are unwilling to follow. It took Him roughly five years to uproot me from my previous community. I am so thankful He did. I am genuinely fearful of the man I might have become had He decided to leave me where I was ten months ago. But our Father is good.
This community will not be my last. God willing, He will continue to provide a sense of community for every season of life as He draws me closer to His heart. Likely another community of close friends who will surround me the way the apostles surrounded one another in their pursuit of the Father. A church community that encourages, exhorts, and sharpens one another toward the likeness of Jesus. A wife who will teach me what it looks like for the Father to pursue and love His church. Children to remind me what it means to cling to the Father like a child. To demonstrate how much the Father longs to bless His children as I raise a family belonging to the Lord. That’s why we leave community behind…because the Lord has so much more for us than we can ever conceive and He promises to finish what He starts in us. His ways are not our ways, and thanks be to God for that truth.
What lies ahead? A deep, Christ-centered community is always awaiting us every step of our walk with the Lord. Be open to it. Embrace it. And, most importantly, thank the Lord for how deeply He seeks to love us through that community.
