A friend challenged me with a question not soon after I got home from my race, “What is the number one thing you learned, whether about the Lord, yourself, or the world?” Gosh, this tripped me up! Just one thing? I ended up only being able to narrow it down to a few big ones in the moment. One thing from nine months of so much growth is hard!
After being able to take time to step out of the Race and process through some of it, I have found the answer to the question: obedience
From the time I applied for the Race all the way to getting home, the question the Lord has asked me is, “Do you trust me?” And time and time again as I’m faced with this question my only choice is to say “yes.” I must trust, I must follow, I must walk in obedience wherever the Lord is taking me. If I can’t do that than I can’t really call myself a Christian. Here is what time has allowed me to understand:
Once you say yes to the Lord, he will forever be calling you deeper, there isn’t any going back.
Jesus from the moment he found his disciples continued to call them into more and more radical ways of living. First it was to follow him, then it was to obey him, then perform miracles, then to go out on their own! Perhaps the most radical act of all was when Jesus ascended into heaven. He didn’t tell his disciples to go back to fishing or tax collecting! He called them to wait for the Spirit which in turn, sent them into a whirlwind of speaking languages they didn’t know and evangelizing in radical ways they never imagined! Of all the things Jesus called his disciples to do, this had to be the craziest! When they thought that it may be over, because Jesus was gone, they had to do something even more radical than ever before.
Here’s the kicker: We are called to follow just like the disciples.
This means that after surrendering to God’s will once and carrying it through, you’re stuck getting crazy callings from Him for the rest of your life!
This doesn’t always mean we all have to give up living in our homes to trek through jungles to save unreached people for the rest of our lives. Sometimes the radical way of living is getting up at 3:30am to serve the homeless a meal twice a week, or learning to share the gospel in corporate America just through acts of kindness.
The Race was absolutely the most radical thing I’d ever done for the Lord, but he isn’t done with calling me forward into crazy things. While in Peru the Lord asked me to take a wild dream I had and make it a goal. That dream? A coffee shop. A place where the hand of God rests, creating a safe place and a place for people to come together to build community (all with an amazing cup of coffee in hand of course!). So in just over a month I am starting school to pursue an Associates in Entrepreneurship. College was something that for the past several years I have had no desire for, but over the last year I’ve been praying a simple prayer, “God, if it is your will that I go to school, than change my heart so that I can go wherever you call me.” It was a prayer asking that he help me be obedient, and the Lord always provides. I am walking into this next season both in obedience and in excitement. I am ready to pursue the call of the Lord, I am ready to step away from my cowardly flesh and into the confidence that comes from aligning my spirit with His spirit.
Making the choice to follow Jesus wholeheartedly will always be a radical way of living. Saying yes to the Race was scary, wild, and crazy but obedience doesn’t just end. Obedience to our holy and heavenly Father is what I desire more than anything, and that is both a lifelong choice and a daily choice.
“God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.”
– Elisabeth Elliot
God’s biggest lesson to me in this season was all about obedience, but that is never to dismiss all the other works he has done in my life and in the lives of those around me in this past year. I could write a thousand more blogs and never see the end of the Lord’s provision, teachings, and love that he has revealed to me. Yet, the season of the World Race is closing up. It is time for a new season with new things to be found and experienced. This is my last blog so I wanted to thank you all once more.
Thank you for the continued support and prayers that each of you have given me. I wouldn’t have made it through without you all standing behind me and beside me.
If you would like to catch up on this last year, or hear about what the future might hold I would love to write a few emails or grab a cup of coffee!
