These thoughts are as much for my fellow racers as they are for the rest of ya’all – we’re all about to walk through this together!
Yesterday, I stood in a crammed Nicaraguan jail, and praised Jesus with my brothers serving time there, to the jammin spanish praise music. It was an incredible experience, and the Spirit showed up in an awesome way.
Two months ago, we were woken up every morning at 5am by our Russian, ex-con, half-way-house-roommates whooping and hollering, crying out to the Lord in prayer and praising His name, starting the day off right.
In Nepal, it was so hot I literally laid hands on the ceiling fan in prayer, asking for the power to come on so the girls could sleep that night. (It worked once!). In India we ate the exact same meal every night of the month, constantly obligated to eat way more than we had any desire to. In Swaziland, saw our brothers and sisters put a completely new meaning to dancing in praise to Jesus.
These experiences have expanded my perspective. They don’t make me a better christian than my friends and family back at home, that I’m about to go back to living life with.
In South Africa I was on a 9-person all men’s team for the month. During the month, 3 of us went skydiving (it was awesome!!!). There’s really no good way to describe what an incredible experience it was – all I can say is, it definitely expanded my perspective of the physical realm, and stretched my definition of reality.
For the rest of the month, the 3 of us that went didn’t live in disappointment and disdain of the other 6. We didn’t wake up each day, and think
“Man, they just don’t get it! If only they’d go skydiving, they would better understand the real world and the actual dimensions of reality. They’re missing out on so much of life…..they’re doing it wrong!!! They need to get out and go skydiving ASAP, and until then, we need to do our best to teach them what it’s like to have experienced skydiving, so they can live life just like us, with that understanding and expanded view!!!”
39 of us are about to hit American (and Canadian :P) soil. We’re going to start doing life alongside others that, more than likely, don’t see demons cast out regularly. We probably won’t sing worship songs together in multiple languages. We most likely won’t go out walking the city everyday, and have people line up the streets begging to be prayed for. We probably won’t live in close quarters with the exact same group of people all day every day for months on end. And that’s ok.
Don’t get me wrong, there absolutely are things about our lifestyle this year that we can bring home with us, and introduce to our “home culture”. We can all pray together out loud, at the same time (“Nepali style”) – that’s cool. We can wake up early and start each morning with group prayer – you bet. Shoot, if we want to we can even try to introduce a form of feedback, and intentionally call one another higher on the daily.
The spiritual walk us G-Squaders have been on this year looks significantly different than the walk our folks back home have been on. And that’s ok. It doesn’t make us better or worse. It doesn’t mean we need to take everything we learned out here on the field, and bring it home and implement it directly. It also doesn’t mean we need to leave it all behind. Ultimately, we all serve the same Lord. We’re all learning how to walk more closely with Him – to Love others with His love, to hear His voice through the noise, and to live in the fullness He desires for us.
2nd Corinthians 10:12,13 – We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise. We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the sphere of service God himself has assigned to us, a sphere that also includes you.
