My World Race Adventure actually began back in 2009, when I was accepted in early February and set to launch with K-Squad in August. That semester was rough! I was house parenting with ETBFM, finishing up grad school, and had a full time internship doing Foster Home Development with Azleway Children’s Services. With little time to fundraise, I trusted God to provide and when He showed out big time with a $10,000 check the day before training camp at the end of May, I just knew this was supposed to happen!
HOWEVER, that first night at camp I ended up falling and breaking my foot… and then by mid-week it was decided that I was just not physically, spiritually, or emotionally where I needed to be in order to go. I was completely in shock! That last night during worship, God gave my friend Anna a vision and prophecy for me:
My heart was covered with some seriously strong walls and God was standing there with a sledgehammer, having just took a massive chunk out of it. However, that was all He could do right then, because in order to avoid destroying my heart, He was going to have to do take things some things down brick by brick until He was able to bring them all down eventually.
After leaving training camp it took me a couple of weeks to figure out what the heck had just happened. When I finally set off into this next season at the beginning of July, I tried to decide whether or not I needed to pursue another race or just go back into the Children’s Home Ministry that I absolutely loved. Instead of getting a clear direction, God asked me to give Him a year and then at the end of that I’d know where He was leading. I definitely was not the most thrilled about that answer, but I headed back to the ATX as I watched my friends from J & K head off to Europe.
I saw how the past 13 years of my life I had gotten so caught up in Religion and learned what it really meant to love God with all of Me (Mark 12:30).
I realized what it meant to love other’s… as yourself. Up until then I had been the perfect checklist Christian that served everyone out of a formula of performance, legalism, and compromise. Through 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, I saw how everything I had done was all for nothing!
Just like Ezekiel 36-37, God gave me a heart transplant and a new breath of life… And then used Matthew 6:33 to give me a new Spiritual vision, awakening me to the Kingdom I was meant to live for.
I learned that God has the power to do immeasurably more than I could ever imagine (Ephesians 3)… God’s name isn’t Jack, so I need to quit putting Him in the box I try to contain Him in.
I started to understand the full power of the Holy Spirit… and the authority, boldness, and confidence we have once we truly start believing that the very same power that rose Christ from the dead is alive in us! (1 Corinthians 4:20)
God really did use this year to help remove the walls brick by brick, but yet a big chunk remained. This past week God started speaking to me about Trust. This is one of the hardest things for me, and to be honest the only person I really trusted was myself. At least, until now. Through some situations that recently came up in my life, God reminded me of Jeremiah 17:9 where it says our heart is deceitful and Numbers 20:12 where Moses and Aaron didn’t access the Promise Land because they had trusted in themselves and not God. As I realized this, my selfish trilogy of me, myself, and I was shattered, and for the first time in 27 ½ years, it was through this that the walls came crashing down.
Now rewind back to that night last May. Within an hour of Anna’s prophecy I found myself on my knees and broken in the middle of one massive WR worship session. As I sat there on the floor the only prayer I could manage to sing through my tears were these words from Jars of Clay… ‘Take my world apart, I am on my knees, Take my world apart, Broken, on my knees’.
This morning I was at work when all of a sudden the question ‘Do you trust me?’ popped into my head. What is this… Aladdin?! Instantly, I see him on the magic carpet asking Princess Jasmine that same question. It was totally random… even for me, especially since I hadn’t seen this movie in years. I couldn’t quite figure it out what God was trying to show me, but then it hit me… Right after this, they’re on the magic carpet singing, A WHOLE NEW WORLD! Are you kidding me?! Had I not just felt the day before that my world come crashing down?! And here’s God offering me to take the ride of my life and give me a whole new world!
There’s actually truth in this ridiculousness though. God brought so much truth, healing, and freedom to my life as well as how faithful He really is to his children. This week marks the end of the ‘one year’ that God asked me to give Him, and in two weeks I’m headed back to Georgia, where I’ll attend training camp with S-Squad, the October 2010 World Racers! To say that I’m ecstatic about this second chance is an understatement… I can’t wait to head out into the Nations and allow everything I’ve learned this year to overflow into the lives I come across!
