Right now, in this moment, in this season, I am rejoicing. Rejoicing that I am about to spend the next school year serving the God I love.
About 2 years ago I felt God pressing into my heart the word Go. It’s kind of insane how two letters can change the trajectory of your whole life. These past years have been seasons of prayer and questioning and going to God asking what the heck do these two letters mean and how I am supposed to go, I’m only a high schooler. There were points where I thought God wanted me to drop out of high school and run to a third world country and there were points when God told me the only way to go is to be a light exactly where you are. Sometimes I thought he was telling me to go into ministry and sometimes I thought he was telling me to go to college and be a vessel there. I kept grasping at straws and running with what I wanted instead of what He did, and he kept whispering wait and see, wait and see, wait and see.
If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s this- Christianity is a lifestyle, not just something you step into on a mission trip or at church. Pursuing the Lord doesn’t always mean going over seas, sometimes it’s much harder for us to follow God when he says love your neighbors and your coworkers and your peers well. Pursuing the Lord means that your life isn’t just yours anymore, it’s his. It’s recognizing that his will for your life is turning into your will for your life. It’s stepping into situations you would normally avoid, jumping into conversations that scare you, walking into a room with no expectations except that the Lord will be present. It means walking into every single situation with hands wide open and ready for God to move.
Actually doing this can be so hard though. We are still in the world, which means we still have to go to school or go to work and figure out how our new life in Christ is going to enter into our world. For me, this meant I still had to submit college applications. But this word, go, still kept coming up when I prayed about if I should apply to more than one college. This word kept coming up when God taught me about authenticity and faithfulness and it challenged me to find a way to serve him with my whole life. Now, finally, I am overjoyed that God has orchestrated this two letter word to fruition. All this questioning and learning and growing led me to here, the World Race. Now I get to focus solely on making my new life in Christ overcome the world around me. I get to step out of who I am expected to be as a college student for a year and into the position of full-time missionary, a role that God calls all of us to, at home or in India.
