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I’ve been thinking a lot in the last few days about the theme of my blog, “the spirit of a vagabond“.  I’ve been trying to decide whether I’ve been faithful to that theme or not, whether I’ve done a good job charting my journey through the wilderness that’s the only reality I know right now.  And whether I’ve done a decent job updating frequently or not is, I think, beside the point.  I think what really matters is if I’ve been faithful to what I said I was going to dish out.  I made an entry in this online-journal last October titled The Spirit of a Vagabond.  I said this about the journey I was getting ready to embark on:

Part of me really wants to understand how I grow.  Another part of me is afraid of learning the truth behind it.  I think it would be easy for me to travel through life not knowing the best way to challenge myself, the dozen or so ways that it takes to make me uncomfortable – uncomfortable in a way that stretches me beyond who I really am in an attempt to make myself a better person – or at least one who reflects more of what God is calling out of me.

I think we all desire that in some way, we just don’t always like to challenge ourselves or try to completely give ourselves up for God.  That is what this is all about: “the spirit of a vagabond.”  I am a wanderer in my faith, not that I drift in and out of faith in Jesus, I’m just a restless soul eagerly searching for more places I can find Him.  A lot of times they are unlikely places from my home all of the way to the streets of downtown.  Sometimes I have to wrestle with my past and sometimes I mistakenly pry into my future – all in a search for who God is trying to make me into.

This is the story of my heart searching for a home – somewhere to settle, to set-up camp and live until God calls me elsewhere.

And this year has ended up being a lot more than that.  It’s been a story of my own personal Exodus, my own abandonment of the land with illusions of ground bubbling with milk and honey… and the search for that “something more”, in a sense, that land that I know God has promised me.  And oftentimes I wonder, just like the Israelites, what the heck I’m doing out in the middle of this wilderness called the World Race, but I know that God’s promised me a lot more… and that’s why I decided to pack my bags and leave Egypt [America].  The only way to get to the Promised Land is to actually get brave and step into the desert of uncertainties.

So how would I describe my Exodus in one word?

Holy.

This year has been one of the most sacred things I think I’ve done in my life and I suppose it’s because pilgrimages tend to be that way, they tend to be something set-apart in life that we don’t want the world to touch or interfere with.  It’s just challenging when you don’t really know what you’re pilgrimaging towards because you walked into it with such abandonment; it becomes one of those situations in life that you have to really let the Lord lead you.  And maybe I really do know what I’m traveling towards, I just haven’t allowed myself to become aware of it yet, and perhaps I am I’m just denying the new realities that I’m faced with because they’re some things that challenge me daily, and let’s face it, who likes being challenged the very second they snap their eyelids open?

And it reminds me that I am a new person, that you can’t go on a holy pilgrimage like the World Race and end your journey the same… and I’m not.  I’m no longer this guy just trying to get through life, struggling to hold on tight to his “seat” in the Sunday morning church pew until Jesus returns.  I’m the guy that’s also running around Monday through Saturday raising holy havoc!  It all begins with the awareness of who you are, and when you’re walking miles and miles through an open desert searching for that place that God’s calling you to settle, it gives you time to ponder that very thing.  I was struck with the reality that I wasn’t living in my newfound spiritual identity and with the fact that I can achieve Christ-likeness.

So now I’m a son daily becoming like God the Father (call me a heretic, I don’t care).

New people live in new places.  I said a year ago that I’m searching for home, for a place to set-up camp until God calls me elsewhere.  But the thing is that I now know where I live.  I know where I have obtained citizenship and far be it from me to deny where my heart truly is, where my permenant residence is, where God MY Father is residing, and what my responsibility is in living there!  I live in the Kingdom and I’m now an alien and foreigner to this world!  I make myself at home wherever the heck I find myself!  I claim Kingdom property everywhere I go!  The Kingdom is in me and I AM THE KINGDOM!

I’m driven by Kingdom reality and more-so by the power that’s behind it.

I’m a son and a resident of the Kingdom!

And so romping through the wilderness oftentimes gives you a lot of time to think about things.  These are merely two of the thoughts that have flitted through my mind in the last 10 months, probably the two strongest ones.  And perhaps I haven’t found a place in this world to quite call home yet, but I have found something much better, truths which allow me absolute freedom from that which used to fetter me to the ground.  Leaving America [Egypt] was the best decision that I could have ever made because I truly believe, that for me, I would never have obtained freedom if I didn’t.  While I might still be treading through the desert in many ways, I’m daily being refined into the likeness of God my Father and making my home wherever I go.

I’m not sure what the future holds for me in the next 1 1/2 months.  I just know that God’s calling me to pursue this thing even deeper and even further.  If the World Race has thrusted me into anything, it’s shoved me into Kingdom reality and everything that comes with it.  It’s now a life that once tasted, you cannot abandon because the abandonment wouldn’t even be worth it.  I have to keep swimming towards the deep end, running through the mud, and challenging myself in the ways that makes me look even more foolish to this world.  Why?  I think it’s what God’s called all of His kids to.
 

And I so I want to leave you with some encouragement: leave Egypt and step into what God’s calling you towards.  It won’t leave you the same.