10 days ago I felt lost. 10 days ago I felt shameful. 10 days ago I felt distant from God. 10 days ago I felt alone. 10 days ago I had no idea who I really was.
But that was 10 days ago.
And this is now.
Now I remember that I am found in Christ. Now I understand that I’m accepted despite my past failures. Now I feel God’s presence constantly. Now I belong to a family that is closer than blood. Now I know that my identity is firm in Jesus.
In the week before training camp, I was on a week-long mission in Guatemala. My parents, a couple of family friends, and I were working in villages, playing with orphans and communing with elderly people. It was the fourth time in as many years that I had been to the same ministry in Guatemala (Hope of Life International; look it up, it’s incredible).
Usually, I’m on a spiritual high when I am there. Not this time. This time I felt like somehow I had gotten mixed up. The call between me and God had somehow dropped and I couldn’t find service anywhere no matter how many chairs I stood on or how many different rooms in the house I moved to.
It felt like my prayers were literally bouncing off the ceiling right back to me.
And this strange disconnect caused me to force a wedge between God and myself in my mind. I truly began convincing myself that somehow I just wasn’t meant to be connected to God. That somehow my past sins, my former life, had been too much. Shame began to suffocate me and suddenly the Jesus I had once known so well seemed unreachable.
These thoughts carried over into WR Training Camp.
I was entering the 10 days of my life that were designed to prepare me for the greatest adventure of my life up to this point and I felt completely out of place. I was so certain that everyone else would have it all together and that I would have to fake my relationship with God to keep up with them.
So, that’s what I did. When I got to Training Camp, I faked my smile and used all the buzzwords I needed to for me to feel like I was keeping the facade up well enough.
The story in the Bible that has always resonated with me the most is the account of Peter walking on water. It’s mentioned in three of the four gospels (Matthew 14, Mark 6, John 6) and it’s just one of many miracles that Jesus performed during his ministry. But, the piece of the story that I so often marvel at is not that Peter walked on the water or even that Jesus himself walked on the water. What keeps me up at night is the fact that Peter stepped out of the boat at all.
Even if he had stepped out of the boat and sank right to the bottom of the sea, I would still be just as shaken by the simple fact that Peter actually stepped out.
Peter’s entire life had been spent in the boat. He was a fisherman and I tend to assume that fishing had been the family business for generations. That boat represented all that had ever been familiar to Peter. It was his safe place. His refuge. His comfort zone.
And suddenly, he found himself on the verge of stepping out. Stepping away from life as he knew it. Because he knew what was calling out to him–who was calling out to him–was so much greater than anything he had ever known.
Many times in my life, God has led me to this story. I’ve had Jesus beckon to me as I stood in many different boats of my life. It’s the vision I got when I was called to walk away from playing baseball. It’s the picture the Spirit gave me when I made the decision to go on the World Race. And on the first night of Training Camp–standing in the middle of a room full of other people crying out to Jesus–I once again found myself standing on the edge of the boat.
There I was, staring through the wind and rain out at Jesus. He was calling me to take off the mask. To drop the act. To make myself bare before Him and before all these strangers I had met just hours before.
I was terrified. I was barely open and honest with myself. How could I strip down and present my heart and soul as naked to these people? What if they were terrified? What if they rejected me? What if….and, before I knew it, my foot was out over the water.
I said, “Yes, Lord.”
I began telling my story with honesty and with vulnerability and was blown away by the saving grace of Jesus and the love of these virtual strangers.
Not only did they accept me with open arms, but I learned that I wasn’t actually alone. Many of them had shadows over their past, too. But we all shared something: Jesus. Jesus and this scandalous grace that He so freely offers.
And when I began to hear the incredible stories of some of my squadmates (you definitely need to go check out their blogs; they’re some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met) I began to realize something I had never understood before: I wasn’t made to do this alone.
My whole life I had thought that my walk with Christ was my own. Although there is some truth in that, God wants us to share our story, our testimony, our life with other brothers and sisters who can encourage us, who can pick us up, who can carry the weight when we can’t.
Grasping this concept fundamentally changed the way I see God, the way I see others, and the way I see myself. I began to love God, to love others, and to love myself in an entirely new and more passionate way. I began to feel the power of the Great Commandment.
That connection that I thought I had lost back in the mountains of Guatemala returned. I felt the Spirit of God’s presence in my life once again. And I learned something: no matter how I feel, God is still with me; he will never leave me nor forsake me (Deut. 31:6).
Over the course of Training Camp, I gained a family of 49 other people who mean more to me than words in a blog could ever express. I believe that even if we never were to go on the Race–if all we had were those 10 days in Gainesville, Georgia–that we still would have created something that could never be taken away; that we would have forged bonds that never could be broken. And it is these people and these relationships that helped me rediscover that I am a child of the one true King.
So, that’s how you save a life in 10 days.
You realize that you’re a new creation; that the old has passed away and the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17). You accept the inescabable, overwhelming grace of Jesus. You say “Yes, Lord.” You let yourself be vulnerable. You allow others in. You trust knowing that you will get hurt instead of trusting until you do get hurt. You love God, others, and yourself unconditionally.
You step out of the boat.
