Hey everyone!
For those of you who don’t yet know, I’ve officially finished my gap year with the World Race and have made it home to sweet ol’ Iowa! The last week and a half have been crazy in the most incredible way – I’ve been reunited with my best friends and family. I’m back at my old jobs, hopping between waitressing and babysitting, and I get to spend all my free time at Sidecar, my favorite coffee shop (aka my second home). In a weird way it feels like I never left, but I think that’s just a testament to the incredible community I have here in Cedar Falls; it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been away, or what for, because this place and this community is my home, in the truest sense of the word.
As for what’s next, I am so excited for everything that God is doing and planning in my life in this upcoming season! I’ll be starting my freshman year at the University of Iowa this fall, studying education and anthropology. I can’t express how excited I am to be back in a school setting after a year off. It is a joy to be able to, first and foremost, get a formal education, and secondly, get prepared for a career that I’m so excited to step into. I think that in the years ahead of me I’ll be learning a lot about what it looks like to impact the Kingdom through the work force here in the States, and all that a career can entail within the Kingdom once it coincides with my faith.
Being in the early stages of that learning process, I’ve realized in the (almost) two weeks since returning home that, more than ever before, I see a need for revival in the American church (This isn’t to say that things have become drastically worse since I initially left for my gap year last fall, rather that I was truthfully just unaware of the state of the church in my home country). Returning to the States has opened my eyes to the idea that we, here in the western world, are living in a fairly post-christian culture – we live in a society that essentially desires the Kingdom without the King. We want and pursue things like peace and joy, kindness and gentleness – fruits offered in the Kingdom of God – but that kind of fulfillment is sought after without looking to Jesus.
After spending the last year in nations that are either primarily pre-christian (pagan) culture (such as India and Nepal), or primarily christianized culture (Swaziland, Lesotho, Nicaragua and Guatemala) where the gospel and it’s values are truthfully portrayed and practiced by the vast majority of the nation’s citizens, the biggest culture shock of my year was coming home to a nation where, although our general values are so deeply intertwined with what is preached in the gospel, Christianity has become something of a taboo social construct.
And I do understand why that has become part of common thought within this culture; the gospel has been largely misrepresented within and throughout media, and has even been misconstrued by the church. I agree with the general thought in that I disagree with Christianity as an institution; “Christian” isn’t meant to be a noun, but an adjective – it is a word not meant to strictly define, but to describe. Apart from accepting and knowing Jesus, there are not strict boundaries that must be followed in order to remain a Christian – the expectation of perfection that such a concept lays before us is unachievable and unattainable.
The truth of the gospel is that Jesus died to save us from our sin. We have been sprinkled in his blood and when we accept Jesus into our lives, when we are anointed by the Holy Spirit, we die to ourselves and are completely restored. And as we learn to step into our new identity in Christ, God is patient; He joyfully comes alongside each of us in that journey and he delights to just be with us. We are loved and we are seen in the Kingdom of God, and we are asked to love and see one another in the same way. We are asked to put on the heart of Christ in action and in identity. And the beautiful thing is that when we don’t do those things perfectly, there is so much grace. It’s in that grace, we are raised up to the perfection of Jesus every time in the eyes of the Father, no matter how short we fall in the flesh.
It is for this reason that am so excited to make my own home my mission field. I am excited to walk out the gospel in truth by action. ???????I am excited to come alongside my peers in a community that works to raise one another up and love each other well. I am excited to work within the education system to impact and raise up the next generation as leaders within their communities. I am excited for this season of life because God is bringing revival to all nations. Not just the deeply impoverished countries in Africa, of the spiritually broken countries in the Middle East, but here in the United States too.
There is so much in store here. There will be revival and transformation and I am so excited to be a part of that.
