When we were in India, I came across a song called “Are You With Me” by Lost Frequencies. The song is pretty dumb, but it’s very catchy and quickly got stuck in my head. It had no deep meaning to me and there was no real connection to the song, it was just really catchy. But, on new year’s eve, this song took on a new meaning.
I’ve never been much of one for new year’s resolutions and this year was no different. I had a wonderful new year’s eve celebrating at India Christian Ministry’s Covenant Worship. We rang in the new year with worship, dancing, a sermon, and games. I was exhausted from a long day of travel from the village to Hyderabad, so I went to bed before everyone else. I laid my head down and began to reflect on the adventures of the past year and dream with the Lord on what He might have planned for the upcoming year.
As I lay there dreaming with the Lord, He posed a simple question:
“are you with me?”
God wants to take me on crazy adventures. He wants me to blindly trust Him and follow Him. This year, that looked like taking a leap of faith and traveling around the world with Him. The first half of this new year is committed to that same thing and then after that, who knows what He’s got planned. All I know is He has crazy adventures planned for us.
He simply wants us to join Him.
This year has already begun with crazy adventures in Nepal. We spent our first week of ministry at an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp. We lived in the village church. Our backyard was something out of a movie with breath-taking views of the Himalayas. We were a fifteen minute hike from a gorgeous, crystal-clear river. We spent time around a bonfire with the locals laughing and singing songs to our Savior. We attended an “ox fight” where we watched bulls head-butt each other until one gave up (we almost got run over by a rogue bull). We hiked up a Himalayan mountain to bring the love of Jesus to a community that lost everything in the earthquake eight months prior. We slept on the floor of the church, didn’t shower for six days, and quickly became a family (we had team changes at the beginning of this month). We got to bring the love, joy, and hope of Jesus Christ to the beautiful people of Nepal.
The next two weeks, we went with our host to the village he was raised in. We trekked through beautiful mountains to reach his parent’s home. We tented in their field for a week and helped build a house at the school for the teachers to live in. We worked all day and had bonfires every night. We got to help push a tractor up a hill (it was the first automobile to ever reach this village). We played soccer with the locals (I was not the best player, but we had fun. I even scored a goal!). We bathed in the frigged river and ate local food every meal. On the hike back out, we got to cross the river twelve times. When I got back to Kathmandu, I got to go paragliding in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was the craziest, most surreal month of my life. I had a lot of moments where I was able to just soak it all in and appreciate the beauty of the Creator of the Universe.
In 2015, I said “yes” for the first time to the Lord. Since then, He has taken me around the world to places I could have never imagined I would be. Through the process, He has continually asked me to trust Him. There are days when I wake up and feel like “I can’t do it.” Then, I hear the Lord ask “are you with me?”
What is He asking you to trust Him in? Is he asking you to take an incredible leap of faith? Is He asking you to trust Him to bring healing to a part of your past you’d rather not think about? Do you trust Him? He wants to take you on crazier adventures than you could ever imagine…
Are you with Him?
