Dear Future World Racer,
Before I left, I thought the World Race was going to be about seeing God at work in the nations and partnering with missionaries in Kingdom work, with some personal spiritual growth thrown in there. After being on the Race for five months, I’ve realized that although all of this does take place, the heart of the World Race is actually discipleship in a community of believers (the only place where discipleship can really take place, of course!). Specifically on the Race, this “community” consists of people you do not choose and do not know prior to embarking on this “eleven countries in eleven months” mission trip.
There was a while earlier on in my team where “our Race” was really “my Race”. We each tried to grow individually without plugging in to the community we were in. Although our understanding of God might have deepened in those periods of individual pursuit, we were spiritually weak. Despite the Scriptures we read, prayers we said, songs we sang, or what we believed about our individual walk with Jesus, we weren’t remaining or abiding in Him. In John 15, Jesus talks about the vine and the branches, urging His disciples to remain in Him, the true Vine. He then proceeds to command His disciples to “Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Just in case that isn’t clear enough, Jesus repeats again a few verses later, “This is my command: Love each other.” Jesus establishes here that remaining in Him is inextricably tied to choosing to love one another in community. Remaining in the Vine means remaining in the Body of Christ, the community He gave up His body for. Similarly, growing in the Vine means growing in His Body, so actually growing in Jesus means growing in community. It was foolish to think that we could remain and grow in Him apart from remaining in the Body, and pursue Him apart from completely pursuing the people surrounding our lives whom He so loves.
At some points in our spiritual walk, we can forget that the pursuit of God is inseparable from His pursuit of man. But if we chase after God in Scripture, prayer, and worship, we’ll soon realize (if we’re chasing the true God, and not idols of legalism, praise from men, or righteousness) that the God we are running after is not standing still waiting for everyone to adore Him for all eternity from discrete, individual stations. He is waiting for us to adore Him for all eternity, and as a result of knowing and exulting in His character – love, joy, hope, truth, peace – join Him in that eternity to adore His world, and the creation in it that He so loved. The God we pursue reveals time and time again to be Himself engrossed in and chasing after one thing – the heart of His creation in humans. Look for God, and we’ll find His Holy Spirit dwelling in the tabernacle amidst His chosen people despite their unholiness. After that, we find Him faithfully dwelling in the temple of Israel in the unfaithfulness of the wandering Israelites. Even many silent years later, we find the Word become flesh – Jesus, Immanuel (“God with us”) making His dwelling amongst evil and hypocrisy in His people. Now the Spirit dwells in the unworthy heart of man, because He wants to be there in all His fullness filling our emptiness. Within us, the heart of God dwells in the heart of the one He has pursued, so that unworthy as we are, we can be made to pursue others. God only moves closer and closer to the heart of His people, from heavens to tabernacle to temple to earth to body. To say that Christianity is about loving God apart from loving people and transforming His people to love people, is to describe a false Christianity.
In Matthew 22, when an expert in the law asks Jesus what the greatest commandment is, He says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Jesus doesn’t reduce the Law to one commandment. The furthest He can reduce the Law is to two commandments. Otherwise, the Law and the Prophets can no longer hang, and thus fall apart. Jesus very well could have just said the first part about loving God, but He doesn’t because He wants us to understand that loving God is about loving people because of who God is. As John says in 1 John 4, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him…We love because he first loved us.”
All the pursuits of God cannot be separated from God’s pursuit of man, and not just one specific man, but all humans each bearing the image of God. So study the Scriptures, search Him in prayer, and praise Him in worship, but do this all in the community you have with you. Realize that Scriptures and the Law are words, spoken by God because there is such a thing as a people to communicate to in matters of love that lead to righteousness, holiness, and goodness. Discover that prayer is a channel, not just from man to God, but from God to man, and is used most powerfully when one man prays for another to God for healing, deliverance, and forgiveness. Experience worship in the context of the praise and lives of unique, different, and diverse thousands offered up in one voice and purpose bound in love and unity to the God who is worthy because He first offered Himself.
As hard as it will be to abide in Him within the context of community (and believe me, there will be days where you will want to withdraw, be angry, hateful, slanderous, envious, prideful, and unforgiving all alone), don’t let the seemingly insurmountable difficulty of abiding in community fool you into thinking that you can abide in Him otherwise. You cannot dwell in Him apart from His dwelling in people. So choose in. Go into the God who is into His people. Realize that searching the depths of this God, really pressing into Him, is to search a God who is searching for and through people because of His nature embodied in Jesus who lived, died, and rose for us. Come and see that the God you’re falling in love with is found already in love with not only you, but also those around you. Community is where you will see the Spirit of God move, live, and thrive even in the context of world missions and the nations. He will be faithfully and patiently waiting for you to get on board with that. At the end of every day of these eleven months and every place in these eleven countries, the World Race is about diving into a God who is into His people. Know that and jump in.
Love,
An Abiding World Racer
