Welcome to my blog: friends, family, fellow World Racers, racers-to-be, and people the Lord has led to this site! Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and for those who are a part of my life, thank you for taking the time to support me in this next adventure…I hope you will visit the blog many more times throughout the course of these next months!
Let me share how I came to be gearing up for the World Race: although I heard about the World Race several years ago, my journey towards this journey began about six months ago. That’s when I first learned about the legend of Honi the Circlemaker through National Community Church’s Mark Batterson. Honi lived during the first century BC, and a devastating drought threatened to destroy his generation, the generation before Jesus. But Honi was bold, and a little bit crazy—despite the fact that the last of the Jewish prophets had died off nearly four centuries before and miracles seemed like a false memory, he dared to believe and pray for rain.
Outside the walls of Jerusalem, Honi drew a circle around himself and proclaimed that he would not leave the circle until God brought rain to that place. Talk about a bold prayer! Then something happened: raindrops hit the Earth, and people rejoiced as the drought came to end. BUT Honi declared that it was not for such a rain that he prayed, and that drizzle turned into a downpour. BUT Honi prayed again that it was not for such a rain that he prayed, but a rain of the Lord’s favor and blessing, AND that downpour turned into one beautiful summer rain. As Mark Batterson writes in his book: “It had been difficult to believe the day before the day. The day after the day, it was impossible not to believe.”
I share this story, first, because it is an awesome representation of how the Lord answers prayer, and second, it is an awesome representation that bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers. Weeks after first hearing the story of Honi the Circlemaker, reflecting on stories in the Bible like the Israelites and Jericho when a circle was a very tangible form of prayer coming through, and realizing there are promises in Scripture that we can pray circles around, I got one crazy idea in my head one morning during a quiet time. Do a prayer circle around Africa. A physical prayer circle. My first reaction: that’s crazy. My second reaction: that could just be a God idea. So I prayed, wondering whether this was just silly, inspired, or both. And God did me one better: “Circling Africa?…How about circling the world?”
And so another truth in Mark Batterson’s The Circlemaker that I try to remind myself of everyday: if you pray, all bets are off. I cannot wait to meet my teammates for this adventure, and see how the Lord is going to totally re-shape us in this, and shape lives that we come in contact with over the 11 months. We’ve dreamed big for going on this trip; now let’s dream even bigger for what can happen on it.
