______________________________________________________________________________
This is my final blog for the WorldRace. I appreciate you taking the time to read about my year and for everyone who has followed my journey. Please comment, share, and subscribe. I hope my words can accurately convey the overflow of my heart.
______________________________________________________________________________
Amidst the decimated ruins of a war torn city, Captain Miller looks out to a bridge that remains intact—an objective failed. His best friend stares lifeless at his side as the rest of his platoon falls around him. The German army presses forward, relentlessly encroaching on their position. All hope is lost. For his last words—among short struggling breaths—Captain Miller reaches out to a young Private Ryan and whispers “Earn this. Earn it:” These are his final words to a soldier who has witnessed all laid on the alter of freedom to bring him home.
So the question is, what does one do with a life for which so much has been sacrificed?
I have asked myself this almost daily while on the race. I have been overseas for 320 days. I’ve seen 17 different countries, lived for a month in 11. I have done things which I could only dream: staring at the face of Everest, diving with sharks, hiking the Himalayas, riding motorbikes through the jungle, eating the craziest of foods, camping on the Aegean Sea, and hiding from the Russian government.
I have shared the gospel with gangs in South Africa, ministry students in India, villagers in Nepal, and orphans in Thailand. I’ve named babies, cried as I held the hand of a leper, and planted fields in Swaziland. I taught English in Cambodia and Romania, dug ditches in Transnistria, lived with locals in Laos, and witnessed firsthand the abject poverty in which so many around the world are living.
I’ve cried from exhaustion, been sick for two weeks straight, slept on so many floors a bed feels foreign, and nearly come to blows with teammates. I’ve sobbed from goodbyes that tore my heart asunder—knowing I was leaving for a new country and they were to remain where I struggled to live for less than a month.
So what has it all meant? What’s the point of being a “missionary”? Have I even made a shred of difference? Has this entire venture been only an attempt to satisfy my selfish desires under the guise of “a call”?
Let me divert. I want to be abrasively honest.
I am fearful, terrified perhaps. What happens when I go home and I no longer recognize what I left? What happens when my heart is no longer there but placed in the hearts of so many around the world—their hugs and midnight conversations, a smile amidst a hopeless backdrop, a tiny hand in mine, or the smile of a student who finally gets it?
I have learned so much. I have seen so much. It would be impossible for me to remain unchanged. I hope that I am far removed from the insolent, petulant, childish and selfish person that dawned a fifty-pound pack, wide-eyed with adventurous expectations, and stepped on a plane 11 months ago.
Still, I am more fearful yet: of returning home and slowly sliding back into a self-serving lifestyle and calling it obedience: using my beliefs to judge others, to place myself above them. To justify my action or inaction and calling it “Christianity,” spreading hate and reflecting a Christ-less gospel for convenience alone.
So is this what I’ve learned? That being a missionary is the only way? That you have to leave your home and live in nothing to be an affective purveyor of the Gospel?
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
In fact, the answer is most likely the opposite. This brings me back to my original question—what have I done to be a life worthy of the sacrifices made?
In short—nothing. And that is where the beauty lies.
That is the beauty of the Gospel. That is the beauty of the life we have been given.
In this, we have the most exciting of opportunities before us. Challenging? Yes. Impossible? No.
Christ lays out all we need in the Matthew 5-7. The Sermon on the Mount as such a quintessential part of Christian doctrine is often as skimmed-over or unappreciated at the earth shattering truth of John 3:16.
These verses are not bumper stickers. They are not bracelets to be worn without thought, or a cheesy T-shirt to buy from your denomination’s one-stop-Christian-stuff-shop.
These truths are as pervasive, unyielding, revelatory, and pertinent as they were two millennia ago. Christ came to give new life and freedom. When He says the way is narrow, but the path to destruction is wide—he isn’t speaking only of the literal heaven and earth. He is speaking of what we can have here if we seek Him.
My problem, and I will be so bold as to say the Church [in general], is that we pervert absolute Truth for our own version. We elevate one sin above another. We say that one type of spiritual service is more imperative or honored than another. We seek to change without grounds or stand in prideful arrogance that our way is best.
God lays out a different plan.
God is not impressed with the depth of your theological clout, nor the time card you punch for spiritual things. He wants your heart, and when you actually give it to Him, things have a strange way of taking care of themselves.
So in the end, it doesn’t matter if you: Drink or don’t drink, cuss or don’t cuss, have piercings, tattoos, or watch R rated movies.
God doesn’t care about Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, or Catholics.
He cares about your heart. Are you relentlessly pursuing His? Because when you are, suddenly the world doesn’t look so black and white, but more like a beautiful canvas on which to reflect and imitate the life of Christ: to challenge, admonish, encourage, and love.
When you start to look at others not as you want to see them, but as God does—there’s a lot more love, grace, forgiveness and freedom. The beauty of so much travel and seeing so many different Christians in a myriad of cultures and churches—is that God never changes. The outpour of obedience to Him is always the same.
We don’t have to wait for death to experience the peace of a life in tandem with our creator. Heaven really can come to earth, and it starts with you.
You don’t have to go overseas, leave it all, and live on nothing to do that. It all starts with simple obedience where you are. Being a light in your community, to those around you, and pointing everyone you meet to Christ—because it’s all about Him in the first place.
Part of me is sad that I had to be stripped of so much to see a truth so simple. But as I close out my last few days overseas, hiking the endless mountain paths through a hopeless city, full of abandoned people—I take solace in knowing God is bigger. I can’t change the world, and I didn’t over the past 11 months. But I was obedient, and for that I am grateful.
What does this next season of obedience look like? I am at complete peace in saying I have no idea… but I have the strangest of feelings, my greatest adventure is yet to come.
______________________________________________________________________________
This is my final blog. Please subscribe for updates on future ministries or add me at facebook.com/nathanehauser.
Endless gratitude to everyone who has supported me over the year. Your prayers, encouraging words, donations, and more have kept me afloat. I am forever thankful. I am forever changed.
I might just write a book. 🙂
Most Sincerely,
Nathan Hauser
______________________________________________________________________________
