After telling people about the world race they either react with excitement, concern, and others just ask if I am crazy. And honestly I have asked myself that a few times when i think about leaving my family, friends, and comfortable life here.
So why am I going?
To give a little background, I have spent the past several months trying to figure out what I was going to do next. As much as I love and enjoy working with my kiddos at the preschool I know that it isn’t where I want to be long term. Logically the next step was either to go to grad school or begin a career. I didn’t want to go back to school so I began applying for countless jobs and internships. Many of them I was genuinely excited for and I was really disappointed when for one reason or another they didn’t work out.
By the time August rolled around I had been searching for almost six months. I felt discouraged and frustrated. I knew that God had a plan for my life, but honestly I felt forgotten. I wasn’t excited for the jobs I was applying for anymore and couldn’t believe that God’s best for me involved a job I wasn’t passionate about.
I had a desire to go and serve people around the world; I wanted to see God use me to build His kingdom. I didn’t believe that desire was for nothing.
About that time I came across the world race. I had heard of it before, known a few people to go, and even considered it briefly once before but thought “no way! I could never live in a tent and never shower!” Ha
I prayed about the decision, read countless blogs, and began to get excited about the possibility of the world race. I still wasn’t entirely sure that this is what God was calling me to but I decided to take a step of faith, apply, and see what happened.
During the application and interview process I continued to wrestle with whether or not this was where God was leading me.
I questioned it… “Would God really call me to something this crazy?” But I couldn’t ignore that the world race lined up with so much that I wanted out of the next phase of life. I wanted to serve others, share Christ, and allow God to use me. I wanted to try working in different areas to really see how God has gifted me. I wanted to experience new places. I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and have an adventure with Jesus. I wrote every single one of those things in my journal months before I began even considering the world race. In Psalm 37 it says that God gives us the desires of our hearts but I think that God places His desires in our hearts when we are seeking Him. So by the time I got the call saying I had been accepted I was confident that this was what God was calling me to.
And I could not be more excited! God is so good and once again He has shown me that His plans for us are far better than the plans we could make for ourselves.
I realize that this decision still may not make a lot of sense to some people but know God rarely calls us to things that make sense to others.
God called Abraham to leave his family and home with the promise that God would bless him and give him as many descendants as the stars in the sky.
God told Noah to build a giant boat for a flood that no one thought would really come.
The Bible is full of these stories of people doing crazy things for God that other people probably didn’t understand. But if we obey and follow Him it can magnify His sovereignty, power, and goodness.
