Since returning home from The Race 5 months ago I have been faced time and again with the very simple yet daunting question, "Tell me about your trip!" At first this always seemed like such a simple question to answer but I was always left with the feeling of being dumbfounded as I could never quite put the words together to articulate what I had just experienced and gone through until now. So here it goes!
First, let me give you a frame of reference to the lens of my heart before I embarked on this 11 month journey. Before signing up to go on The World Race I was in a season of discontentment. I had heard about The Race a couple years prior but I never really gave it a second glance. I thought it was a noble trip and all but I never really pondered the thought of myself ever going on it nor did I want to.
God had already supernaturally rocked my life a few years prior and I knew as I read the scriptures there was more of God that I was missing out on. My heart burned for more of God but I had absolutely no idea how to really start living that out. My hearts desire was to actually live it and I came to the place where I wanted more of God at any cost.
As my discontentment grew so did my view of The World Race. As God brought up the The Race again, I no longer viewed it in the negative context of an "11 month waste" but as the pathway to my destiny! I would read blogs and my heart would come alive as I had finally found people who weren't just reading about it, they were doing it! I signed up the next week!
At training camp an alumni racer nonchalantly told me that not everyone who goes on The World Race comes back changed. My mind couldn't fully comprehend the reality that a person could travel the world as a missionary for 11 months and not come back completely changed but this nonetheless set the tone for the whole course of my trip. I knew God had called me to go on The Race for a reason so I was determined to "go for gold".
As I stepped onto that plane for the very first time headed into the unknown with God, I was overcome with joy. I remember I couldn't stop smiling as I truly felt like one of the disciples who answered the call of Jesus as he said, "Follow Me". I was being sent out into the nations and as my flight left the ground God confirmed in me, my life was never going to be the same. My heart came alive as I was on an 11 month journey to becoming a true disciple and I embraced this reality.
The World Race is a very unique mission trip in the aspect they have instilled a culture where God is free to redefine what it truly means to follow Him. I faced many trials which challenged me to the very core of my soul as God began to show me what it truly meant to answer the call of "Follow Me".
As the disciples left everything to follow Jesus, He instantly began to instill the culture of heaven into their lives as He constantly challenged them to break free from the status quo to become like Him and He expects this to still be the case today.
Matthew 10:25 It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master.
1 John 2:6 Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
Much like becoming a disciple I found out that The World Race is a process that takes you from merely preaching a message to becoming the message you preach. And this my friends is where life begins.
The Process:
For starters, living in constant community for 11 months straight with people who are aspiring to be Jesus to the world around them is certainly an environment that God loved using to burn away remaining "chaff" in my life… The Race has a culture of "feedback" where I was constantly being challenged and called higher for areas in my life where I wasn't reflecting the character of Christ. This is a time where my teammates call me higher in love and brought to the light areas where I could become more Christlike. At times it was painful "pruning away" bad habits but I now see the fruit and I'm a better man for it!
More times than not I felt very defeated by the language barrier. From this, I learned that it's never good enough to simply tell a person in a hard situation that Jesus loves them and walk away. Jesus never did that, not once. Often times I wasn't able to talk to a person so I had to actually show them I loved them by my actions! God showed me that there is a huge difference in just having sympathy for a person and actually being moved by compassion for them. Motivated by Love and Faith, compassion will move mountains!
There were times when I was just simply worn out. Times that I had had enough ministry, sleeping on the ground, eating rice and beans, being in community, taking bucket showers, being in the heat, getting sick, not being comfortable, etc. but often more times than not I found that I was just lacking intimacy with God. The first time I had this revelation I felt like someone kicked me in the jaw but it was so true. I lived out of a backpack for practically a whole year and was more content than I ever have been in my whole life simply because I found my satisfaction in God alone.
I was exposed to so many different ministries that I often joked that they were trying to turn me into some sort of hybrid missionary. Some ministries were more life giving than others but the message always remained the same, I was to be Jesus to the world around me. Often times I would forget that religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (James 1:27). I think that I'm finally beginning to understand this! Whether I'm preaching the Gospel to a thousand people or simply just loving the person in front of me, I found that God loves it all the same.
There were definitely growing pains along the way but Jesus is always faithful to complete the work that He starts in a person. Throughout this whole process my life slowly began to change as the world around me started to grow strangely dim. As I was submersed into a culture of love where everyone is compelled by the love of Christ to be Jesus to the world around them I couldn't help but join in.
I am not perfect by any means and I still definitely am in process and always will be but as I truly answered the call of "Follow Me" my life as I knew ended, only to begin anew. By the worlds standards I had lost everything, yet in reality I had come to possess everything.
Wherever you find yourself in life today, whether you've already started your process or not I invite you to go deeper into the revelation of the love of God that transforms a person from glory to glory. In the end you'll look more like Jesus because of it and you'll find yourself becoming more content and alive than ever before!
The world is starving and craving for an encounter with love.
Will that be you today?
-Robert
"Love Looks Like Something": Heidi Baker
