We were going to Burma! I rolled out of bed and tumbled from the third level of our triple decker bunkbed to the floor trying to get out the door quickly.
Border hopping is always fun, and I was looking forward to this one because I have a passion for refugees and the war-torn country of Burma, now called Myanmar, has refugees flooding over the border.
We piled into a single truck bed, all eighteen of us, and drove the few kilometers to the border. As we walked across the bridge in no-mans-land, we looked down at the river and saw boats racing back and forth across the river.
“The Thai military is corrupt and runs an illegal border-crossing operation bringing Burmese across to work” explained one of the local missionaries.
We crossed through the Burmese side of the border and immediately the atmosphere felt different. If felt heavy.
After piling into a couple of vans, we rambled across a couple of dirt roads to a remote village.
You see pictures in National Geographic of people living like this, but seeing it in person hit me like a load of bricks…..not unlike the bricks that they made as their only source of income.
We sat in a single room hut and tried to chat with the mother, but all six of us trying to communicate with her via one translator was quite difficult. The translator told us that past teams had shared the gospel with her so we just chatted and shared a couple of our testimonies and asked her to share her story as well.
After a little bit our host pulled some coloring pages out of his bag and we, along with a dozen kids, sat on the ground and colored pictures of Noah’s ark.
After eating a Burmese lunch of questionable content (I’m still not sure if we ate something that was still alive), we piled into the vans again and travelled to another village.
This time we came into a small community of huts that were packed into a small part of the town, basically, the slums. After chatting with a lady and her husband, we asked her if there was anything we could pray for on her behalf. She replied that she only desired health because if she was healthy she could work.
Something about that set our translator off and he began a 20 minute monologue while we sat there awkwardly not having any idea what was being said. After a while, the lady replied with a single sentence which silenced our translator.
“What did she say?” I asked him.
“I shared the Gospel with her and she said that ‘the Muslims have their God, Buddhists have their God, and Hindus have their gods. They all believe that they are worshipping the right God. What makes yours the right God?’ “
…………
We sat in silence for a moment. I can’t speak for the others, but personally, my mind was racing. This was a question that I had before the Race. I desperately wanted to share what God walked me through, but I also knew that now was not the time for an apologetics discussion and that His word does not return void.
As we left that village, I knew that our job of sharing the Gospel with her was done, and the ball was in the Holy Spirit’s court now.
I wanted to share with you how God walked me through the Burmese lady’s question over the last few months.
When I was young, I went to church cause that’s where my friends were. Had God kept me in Ohio and not walked me through what he’s taught me over the last year, chances are, I’d have walked away from the church.
“I had much better things to do with my Sunday mornings” was a thought that frequented my mind.
After I moved to Texas, my community kept me in church but personally, the only motivation I had to stay in church was because life kinda sucked when I wasn’t surrounded by community and constantly listening to sermons. I didn’t have a relationship with God, all I knew was that life sucked without Him.
That’s not much of a motivation to go to church, honestly. It felt like a leash. “Ugh, life is sucking again, I better read another chapter of Romans”.
Then the Race happened, and God taught me what it meant to have a relationship with Him.
First, he taught me who I was.
Who I am and my identity as determined by what He says about me.
Then he taught me whose I was.
He began to show me who He was. Not this God of the Old Testament that rains hellfire nor the God of the New Testament that pours grace with equal ferocity, but both at the same time. Whose I was changed and morphed my identity as new revelations of who He is defined who I am in different and more dynamic ways.
Now, He is teaching me to dream for the future and have visions of how to step into this identity in practical ways that will bring kingdom to Earth.
I didn’t have this before I left. I didn’t understand this, and without it, my religion was simply that, a dead religion. I was no different than the millions of Buddhists and billions of Muslims. I worshipped a God that was confined to a book and behind church doors. As some would say, I de-clawed the Lion of Judah.
Now, God speaks to me, and I speak to God. God uses others to prophesy and speak life into me and vice versa. I feel the leading of God to minister to others with timing that defies statistical logic, I’ve seen miraculous healings and been on the front lines of spiritual warfare staring demons in the eyes. But most importantly, when I spend time with Him alone, I feel Him transforming my heart in a painful but oh so sweet process.
Now I sit alone with Him and feel His love washing through me.
Now I don’t have a religion, now I have a relationship.
Now I have something I wouldn’t trade for the world. Now I have something that I’d give up everything to keep.
