Chapter One of the World Race is over.
It’s amazing to reflect back on four months of living abroad. It’s often hard to process. How could so much have happened in my life in such a short amount of time? How is it possible that in four months, I called five different countries home? How could I have gone this long living only on six different outfits and one giant backpack? How is it that I can now call this lifestyle “normal”?
Needless to say, the World Race has changed me quite a bit. I still feel like the same person in many ways, but there’s no doubt that the Lord has done a lot of growing and refining work in me throughout this time. I look back on these four months with fondness and gratitude, but I look forward with even greater hope that this is only just the beginning.
Month Four was a big one for me. It’s the month where God stopped me in my tracks and asked me to turn around. From this month on, I don’t think I’ll be able to look at the World Race the same.
This month, God taught me about identity.
Here’s the thing about identity. As an American man, I’m used to understanding myself and others through labels. When I met my teammates at Training Camp, I quickly picked labels for each of them to help me understand them quicker. I knew which people were the leaders, which were the funny ones, which were the quiet ones, and which ones had the best advice. And based on my giftings and background, I picked a couple labels for myself as well. You know, to simplify things.
Most of the Race, I didn’t have trouble knowing my identity. This came as a shock to me, because I knew how fragile it had been before. Even in college, I worked under the desire to be “the best” at something – “the best actor”, “the best student”, “the best friend” – and if I didn’t see myself achieving that label, I gave up. In many ways, I expected to “give up” on the Race, because I thought that people would far surpass my spiritual confidence, my fervor for God, or my charisma and ability to make friends. But as the Race went on, I started to see the ways in which people pursued me and acknowledged my accomplishments. I heard how the ways I had served the Lord inspired them, or how my efforts to love them really encouraged them. I was feeling good about this identity, and who I was starting to become in this giant family of 43.
And this month, I was handed the role of team leader. After three months of faithfully serving God and my teammates, I finally was given the chance to grow my influence and gain more responsibility. I wore it proudly, like a medal for bravery from fighting through rigorous battle.
My team of men was assigned to do Unsung Heroes. This month of ministry is a significant time on the Race to do ATL (or “Ask the Lord” ministry), a ministry style where you invite God to give you an assignment, like a prayer walk where He highlights people for you to pray for. I carried a lot of fervor for God to do some amazing things this month through my team, especially because I knew I had more experience with this than most. I dreamed of seeing amazing miracles, huge manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and radical transformation in each of my teammates lives. I felt equipped for this role, purely because I knew I was the one most passionate about Spirit-led ministry, and I knew I could help others walk it out. I knew God was going to use me mightily in this position, because this felt like the perfect alignment of my passions for Spirit-led ministry and my skills in intentionality and leadership.
And so, as the month began, I cast a vision for what I felt God wanted us to do in Belize. I told them that I wanted us to believe for miracles, pray big prayers, and to listen to the voice of God for direction daily. I believed that Unsung Heroes month was the month to do it, and even though we only had two and a half weeks in the country, God could still do something huge. But it would take a lot of intentionality to get there that quickly. No wasted time this month.
Well, as I soon learned, Unsung Heroes month is not an easy month to make plans for. Things change, contacts cancel meetings, and many people who you meet and expect to pull through suddenly disappear. Our team was split up between meetings most days, meaning it was hard to get the whole team on board to do anything. I desired for us to spend intentional time doing ATL, but instead found that most of our days were used sitting around waiting for something to happen. It slowly started to eat at me, because I could feel as the days were starting to melt away. We may have met with a lot of contacts, but it didn’t really feel like we were doing anything.
Finally, we got to our second location in Punta Gorda, Belize, and I found that we were not finding as many people as we wanted for meetings, which gave us more free time that week than normal. This meant that we had a wide open schedule for ATL, which I knew we had yet to do. And so, I put it on the schedule: two hours a day, where we would go into town and intentionally ask the Lord what He wanted us to do. I suggested to some that this could look like prayer walking, or spending time in intercession, but I knew that God would do some amazing things if we simply said “yes” to obeying His voice.
The first day we tried this, I found a group of guys to talk to. For two straight hours, my teammates and I debated with a group of Rastafarians about the Bible and theology and the meaning of life. We got to share the Gospel with them, and while they seemed to receive it passively, I knew that it was time well spent. We had started planting seeds in Punta Gorda, and I saw why God wanted us in this city in the first place.
But it was the second day that God had different plans.
As the hour approached to go out for ATL ministry, I hadn’t figured out what He wanted me to do. Some people felt called to walk around, some felt led to stay and pray, but I couldn’t find a grasp on what God wanted me to do. I asked Him, and I thought I heard different things: “stay and pray”, and “go and walk around”, and “trust me”. I felt a restlessness in my spirit, and knew that I needed to leave our little base at the coffee shop to get some clearer perspective. And so, as I walked around, I tried to process what it was that God was leading me to. Nothing I thought to do seemed to give me peace. Finally, I retreated to a little restaurant on the water, mostly because I wanted a Coke, but also just to sit down and process things. I opened my Bible to read, but it didn’t work. I tried journaling, but words couldn’t come out. I even tried doodling, but my drawings didn’t make sense.
I had been eyeing the pier by the restaurant, thinking about taking my drink down to the water and sitting out there to pray. “But you already did that this morning”, I thought. It was true; I had spent an hour that morning sitting out there to read my Bible and talk to God. Going out on the pier to do this again felt like a cop out from doing real ministry. I knew that these two-hour ATL sessions were few, and I wanted to use mine well.
But finally, I gave up. I walked down to the pier. And God did something I didn’t expect Him to do.
He loved me.
In this moment, as I sat on the dock praying and listening to music, I wasn’t doing ANYTHING. In fact, I even felt disobedient, because I knew I was wasting time not going out in town to minister to people. At this moment, God didn’t ask me to take on my identity as a team leader, or a missionary, or as a faithful servant.
Sitting on that dock, God didn’t seem to be interested in labels at all.
I didn’t understand why I needed this moment. All throughout my life, I’ve known He loved me. On the Race, I knew this in an even greater measure. And as a team leader, I couldn’t have felt more loved by God. There was no purpose for this moment – I wasn’t seeking Him because I wanted to be “filled up” for ministry, or because I needed a boost, or even because I felt like I needed to be there.
There was no purpose for this moment but this moment.
And that was frustrating.
Because I realized in that moment that I spent SO MUCH of my relationship with the Lord figuring out how to love Him through my actions. My devotions were either times to receive assignments, or to have therapy sessions so I could clear out bad habits in my life. I traded in intimacy with the Lord for works that would earn His labels.
I prided myself in my identity with Him. I loved that I knew that I was an obedient son. I loved that I knew I was highly favored through my gifts and talents. I loved that I knew more about Him than most people. I loved that I was a missionary, who had given a year of his life to His service.
Hearing Him say “I love you” before didn’t really do much for me, because I didn’t know why He loved me. I felt loved by Him when I did good things, but when I was inactive, His love for me seemed pointless. I sought to find His love for me in the physical ways I loved Him. And in turn, I expected that His love would cover me as long as I remained obedient to Him.
But I realized in this moment, I wasn’t loved because I was a team leader. I wasn’t loved because I was doing amazing ministry in town and bringing Heaven to earth. I wasn’t loved for any reason at all.
I was simply loved. And in turn, I simply chose to love God.
As I stared at the horizon, listening to music, and reflecting on the majesty of His creation and the mystery of His nature, I felt my restless spirit give way to peace. I embraced His presence as it washed over me, and I praised Him as my heart began to soar with wonder at His beautiful nature. And I soon found that sitting and soaking in the glory of who God was, with absolutely no agenda and no alternative purpose, brought glory to Him than a million miraculous healings.
In this moment, I realized that my identity was never in the things I did on this earth, but in the identity that God gave me. As a perfectly loved Son of the Most High King. An identity that I never earned or paid for, but simply accepted. Because He loved me unconditionally; wholly; perfectly.
After those two hours, I felt renewed. I felt more at peace than I had experienced in a long time. The best word to describe it was that I felt free. All from a day where I didn’t do ministry.
And it was ironic that I felt this way, because God ended up bringing a man down to the end of the dock with me for a discussion on faith. The day before, my discussion with the Rastafarian guys was almost stressful as I tried to get my points out in the short time that I had. But this time, I was at total peace, because I felt the Spirit of God moving through me and letting me enjoy the moment I had with this guy. If the opportunity came to share the Gospel with him, perfect; but I knew that God’s plan would be perfect even if this casual conversation was all that happened that day. And so I spent an hour listening to this man’s long thoughts on God (that seemed to run on many contradictory rabbit trails), the chat ended, and then we parted ways.
Nothing really happened on that dock that day. I sat and prayed, and then talked to a guy. Nothing that happened there really mattered that much to the work of the Church in Belize. But in that moment, God showed me who I was, and did more work for the Kingdom than I ever could have done that day.
Because in that moment, I gave up striving for Him, and chose to start thriving in Him.
And so, I say goodbye to four wonderful months of ministry in Central America, and I say hello to a new relationship with Him. In the months ahead, I want to operate out of this love relationship. I want to use my quiet time with Him, not for the purpose of using Him in my ministry, but because I want to live out of my intimacy with Him.
I want Him to be higher. I want to love the world out of my relationship with Him. And furthermore, I want to live out of the knowledge that regardless of how many people I share the Gospel with, or heal, or pray over, or minister to, I will never earn His love for me. Because He’s already given it all to me.
And that’s a label that I can live for.
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:10 NIV
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Check out photo highlights from my team’s month in Belize and Guatemala! And scroll to the bottom for a video montage of Month 4!
