Psalm 66:10 says, “For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.”
As I started the World Race I sensed God telling me that this year would be a refining process. Now in my third month I’m starting to get a better grasp on what that looks like for me.
Seth Barns (who started the World Race) calls this a ‘Kingdom Journey.’ Kingdom Journey’s are marked by 6 stages of growth: Abandonment, Brokenness, Dependence, Empowerment, Calling and Confirmation. This blog will address the first 3 stages.
Abandonment:
To come on the World Race I had to abandon some things. I left my home and community, complete with people I know and love and I know know and love me. I left ministry that I love in a neighborhood I fondly call home, where I thrive and genuinely enjoy life. I left behind a large majority of human comforts to spend a year living out of a backpack and in a tent.
While this was the first step I’ve begun to realize that there are some internal things that I need to abandon. In order to run this race to the fullest I have to abandon false identities and grasp my true identity in Christ. False identities like I am what I do: my self-worth is defined by the ministries I’m apart of or what I do to make money. Or I am what others say: constantly relaying on the approval or disapproval of others to define my worth. Or I am what I think: I’m defined by my desires and expectation for life, I’m worthwhile if I’m doing what makes me happy and come alive. When I live in these false identities I become distracted from and forget my true identity in Christ.
In places of comfort these false identities can go unnoticed because they are so easy to slip into. So stepping out of my comforts to come on the World Race and be thrown into brand new situations with brand new people has caused me to realize how much I’ve depended on these false realities to define me.
Brokenness:
Seeking to be defined by these false identities has left me broken. While I was living in this brokenness before the World Race it took leaving my comfortable life to discover that I rely on these false identities to define me and determine my worth. Once I was no longer able to define myself in the ways I had before the World Race I became insecure and childish. Feeling insecure I began to use defense mechanisms like sarcasm to put up walls of protection and hide my insecurity. The whole time wondering am I loved? Am I wanted?
At the core of this insecurity sits the fear that I am not 100% lovable and I am not 100% wanted. Next to this fear sits the lie that acceptance from others is more important than acceptance from God. Living with this insecurity left me constantly seeking affirmation from others but never satisfied.
Living this way is not healthy and something needed to change for me to live out of security in my identity in Christ rather than the insecurity of always wondering if I’m loved and wanted.
Dependence:
The first thing that needed to change was for me to stop seeking after things and people to give me my identity and to start looking to God. After realizing that I needed to turn to God for my identitiy it was time to discover what God says about me. Here is one of many verses that I’ve been dwelling on lately:
Jeremiah 31:3 says: The Lord appeared to us in the past saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
When I depend on God for my identitiy I no longer have to wonder if I’m loved or wanted because I can rest in the truth that yes I am loved and I am wanted. This truth frees me from the insecurity that keeps me constantly searching for love and belonging.
Learning to depending on God is the first and most important step but I don’t have to go this journey alone. The World Race placed me in a team for a reason and for better or worse they are on this journey with me and I can depend on them. I can depend on them to call me out when my sarcasm isn’t funny and when they think I’m hiding something. They call me out when they sense me living in insecurity and encourage me to seek God above all else.
Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man [person] sharpens another.”
For me this journey is a sharpening process, one where sparks fly and unnecessary pieces are chipped away.
This refining, sharpening process is not easy, in fact it’s very painful. It’s painful for me to come face to face with my own junk, painful to let go of these false identities, (even though they are false they have been my comfort for so long). It’s painful to unknowingly hurt others and feel hurt by them.
As hard as this refining, sharpening process is I didn’t come on this journey to be comfortable. I came to press into discomfort, to grow and change. I came knowing there were things in my life that needed to be transformed but with no idea what or how. So here I am in the fires of re-formation, learning and growing anew.
Challenge:
Leave a comment describing who Christ says you are.
