Part of journey is the end. This week is our last week of ministry and our squad will be home in two weeks time. It’s a bittersweet season, and as a result people have been transitioning into the processing stage of the race. We are trying to make the most of our time left while still breaking down all our experiences into pieces that we can swallow, deal with, and then hopefully move forward from in a healthy way.
For me, I wanted to process all the ways I have grown throughout the race. I thought I would go through month by month and track my spiritual journey. It is for the purpose of refreshing my gratitude for where the Lord has brought me from and all the work He has done in and through me. It is also something I know I’ll have to answer questions about from people at home when I get there, so I thought I would just start handling it now.
Month 1 – Identity and Community
Month 1 was an innocent time. We were all bright eyed and bushy tailed and all too unprepared for what was to come. The biggest lesson I learned this month, and maybe even on the race in general, was about identity. I had to surrender any more subconscious ideas I had about myself and my self-worth and fully give in to what the Lord says about me. It was a time when I was learning to see myself in a new light and live out a whole new life from a different sense of self. This was made way easier than it should have been because of the community I found month 1. None of us had ever experienced a group of people like we did on the race and we got to celebrate that and also learn how to live together.
Month 2 – Discomfort and Self-Denial
A big part of the world race is abandonment. We are encouraged by leadership to give up things we are comfortable with even if they are not bad things for the purpose of letting God show you something better. This is the month where we stopped being all happy-to-be-here all the time and moved toward letting the Lord grow us in ways that were more uncomfortable. We learned that there are benefits to denying ourselves for self-refinement especially when we don’t have to. I started leaning into difficult and uncomfortable situations because that’s where the most growth happens.
Month 3 – Confidence and Rest
Month 3 was when I started to pump the breaks in a good way. We spent 3 months in the same place, and by the end of it I was becoming worn out. I hadn’t yet learned about how I find rest best, and I was still pushing the whole I need to be growing at all times mentality. I learned about how God sometimes calls us into times of rest and recharge where our purpose is to sit and just be with Him. This was also the month where I took the identity lesson from month 1 and started walking it out with more and more confidence. This looked like stating my convictions with authority to others and being more bold during ministry. At the end of this month I was asked to become a team leader and there was a specific moment when I realized that I should not just say yes to that leadership role because it would grow me but because I can have confidence that I would be good at it.
Month 4 – Intentionality and Flexibility
This was a time of change where for the first time on my race, we changed countries and we were no longer living with the whole squad. The month started with an unexpected complication where my teammate got a blood clot and I had to change my plans and stay with him instead of joining the rest of my team at our ministry. This taught me about flexibility. If we approach our relationship with God, or even life in general, with expectations or a closed mind then we will miss out on some of what the Lord has for us. This month also had our busiest ministry schedule which was partially what led me to learn about intentionality and time management. I had the realization that if we really believe we have authority on behalf of the Lord, then we should do everything on purpose. It came from a place of building on the authority that I was learning the last 3 months. If I truly believed that I carried authority then I would want to use it well more often. The whole with great power comes great responsibility type of thing.
Month 5 – Intimacy and Difficulty
Month 5 was spent in Myanmar. This might have been the hardest month for me. We were away from the squad again, ministry felt redundant and ineffective, and we were processing the fact that a handful of our squamates went home. All of this weighed on me and the fact that we lived with our ministry host in our most cramped living situation made me feel like I had no room to process our ever truly rest. I had to learn to rely more on the Lord than literally anything else. Myanmar was a time where I deliberately tried to take away as many distractions as possible and just focus on intimacy with the Lord. I gained a deeper sense of fulfillment from the Lord than I ever had before, and I spent far more time in prayer than any other time in my life.
Month 6 – Humility and Abiding
Starting month 6 I was glad to be back in Thailand. At this point I thought that the worst was behind me and we were living in Chiang Mai, somewhere that I was already comfortable with. I was feeling good about myself and all the ways that I had grown on the race already, so I decided that the next step would be to let myself indulge in all comforts just like I would in America because it would teach me how to live at home. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. I struggled in my walk this month and it really brought me down to Earth. It humbled me and made me realize that no matter how I grow I’ll always have to have the perspective of a broken man who’s only strength is the Lord. I have to abide in Him especially in the midst of every distraction, and that’s something I’ll have to fight for my whole life.
Month 7 – Surrender and Hearing God
This was the first month in our final country. Most of us were excited to leave Asia and be back together as a whole squad for the first time since Guatemala. We had the fewest amount of distractions or things to do than in any other country, so I spent this month re-cementing my foundations of faith. The last couple of months were challenging for me, so I felt the need to get back to the basics of what my faith was built on. Swaziland made it easy to surrender everything and make the Lord my number one priority over everything else. I spent time trying to make it into an actual relationship again and focused on listening to His voice. It was a reminder how intimate the relationship should be and how liberating it is to surrender all Earthly interests to the Lord.
Month 8 – Trust and Entitlement
Month 8 started immediately after PVT and an awakening. We started to find our rhythm in Swaziland and settled into a pretty normal schedule (by African standards). After re-surrendering everything to the Lord the next step was to develop deeper trust with Him. It was something where I believe that the Lord has a good plan for me, but it didn’t always seem that way because of hardships or unanswered prayers or other life problems. I would pray, but I struggled to know if I actually trusted that the Lord would answer my prayers. I realized that when I was praying and expecting the Lord to answer in a specific way, I was actually putting Him in a box. There was some entitlement in the way that I expected the Lord to move. I am not entitled to know how the Lord is going to answer prayers or to understand what the purpose of everything is. When I would pray with fake confidence as if I knew how the Lord was about to move, then I was just putting my Earthly mindset above the Lord’s. It takes more trust and faith to believe that God can and is working everything for good without all the specific details.
Month 9 – Selflessness and Grace
The last month! Still in progress but I have already learned some valuable lessons. I felt like I needed to reshape the way I approached the Lord. I had spent the 8 previous months approaching Him and expecting Him to give me something in return, whether that was a lesson for growth or a testimony during ministry or a good word to share. I wanted to move away from approaching God like a vending machine ready to dispense something for me and move toward being genuine friends with God. This looks like sitting with Him because I like it, and taking all of my interests off myself. This lesson partnered with a book I read about living a lifestyle of accepting grace. It changed my perspective from knowing I’m a sinner saved by grace and then moving to a perspective of knowing I will always be a sinner saved by grace and letting that be a comfort to me always instead of a source of shame. Overall this month was realizing that none of this is about me. God’s the one who did all the work to save me and He should be my only motivation moving forward.
So that’s a (not so) brief summary of my journey the past year. I am so thankful for this journey and for the ways that the Lord has showed up for me. The next step is moving on from this and tackling how I feel about going home and the next stage of life.
I am going to be in a missions/discipleship program called Center for Global Action that I have to raise money for, so if you are willing to support me in the next step of this journey that the Lord is taking me on would you please click the orange donate button on my blog! Thank you all!
