Being a World Racer is this odd mix of glorious and miserable. It means being susceptible to constant circumstantial and inward change.
The Race is hard on your body. You carry around a lot of weight on travel days. Your ankles swell on 15 hour bus rides to a new country. You are constantly exposed to different environments. You encounter more mosquitoes than you ever thought possible. You are around children or elderly people pretty consistently, and if one of them is sick, chances are you will be sick soon, too.
As World Racers, we like to challenge ourselves. The World Race is considered a year of intentional living, meaning you are probably reading the Bible and praying more regularly than before. Many people challenge themselves/set goals to learn a new instrument or read a certain amount of books, etc.
There are so many things we want to accomplish while on the Race: get better at playing guitar, build lasting relationships all over the world, preach the gospel boldly, hear God’s voice often and clearly, witness God healing and saving his people, and many more.
Sometimes, I will say, all of this surmounting pressure is exhausting. It begins to crescendo, and can eventually collapse into a spiral of self-doubt and fear/worry. When you start tacking all of these expectations onto yourself, you start to think, “How am I going to accomplish all of this? Is it even possible?”
No, it really isn’t.
The World Race is many things, but it isn’t some kind of glorified spiritual catchall. I think it’s probably impossible to come back from the Race unchanged by the need and the call of God to the nations, but it’s also impossible to accomplish all of your spiritual formation goals in the time span of 11 months. I know you know this, but I promise you, as a Racer, it is very easy to forget that the end of LIFE is when you’re a finished product, not the end of the Race.
All of this to say, there is absolutely no way we will accomplish all of our goals for the Race. Unfortunately, there’s no way to guarantee we’ll come back skinny, sanctified, and 100% confident in who God made us to be. In fact, our reentry into “normal life” may be a very rocky one. I’ve heard stories of alumni bursting into tears behind the steering wheel of a vehicle because they hadn’t driven in 11 months, or because they didn’t have to walk 3 miles for internet.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay…
It would be foolish to think that World Racers, or just missionaries in general, are not a broken people. We are still sinful. We are not, nor will we ever be, Jesus Christ himself. We carry the gospel with our hands outstretched. And sometimes, admittedly, it slips through our fingers. We strive to walk in obedience, but there are days when it is exceedingly difficult to do as God says, mostly because it’s never the easy thing to do.
to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
We are often under attack from the Enemy. Whether he is skillfully twisting and manipulating our emotions (about ourselves/our teammates), or convincing us that our part in the ministry is worthless, or invading our dreams. He desires our communion with God to be severed so that we may walk in darkness and feel an intense disconnect.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
You might have heard the phrase “dying to yourself” many times in your Christian walk. This is so on the Race as well. Sometimes, though, the parts of ourselves we have to die to are priorities we put before Jesus on the Race. None of the things I’ve mentioned are terrible things to strive for. It is not bad to want to get better at guitar or read a ton of books or become a skinnier version of yourself. However, there are instances when you have to put those desires on hold, perhaps forever, in order to further the gospel. Jesus has to take precedence over all else. And that may mean going to do door to door evangelism instead of practicing those chords on guitar.
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake…
The good news is that God can and will (somehow) be glorified through our sinful selves. As this scripture states, we carry around the death of Jesus so that his life may be manifested in our bodies. Admittedly, when I first read this passage, I thought it was an odd order of events. After all, when was the last time life followed death in succession? That isn’t the natural order of things. But, as he often does, Jesus flips our conceptions of life and death on their heads. We have to choose to die everyday. We choose this so that we may live for Christ instead of ourselves. We identify with Christ’s death so much because he died for our sin, and we strive to kill our sin in that same way. Because this is what we are chasing after, we align our lives with Christ so that we may become more and more like him; more and more like his life.
so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
We hope for things we cannot yet see. We hope for the entire world to come to know the love and grace and mercy and power of the triune God we worship. We long for them to know the person and work of Jesus, the gentle correction of the Holy Spirit, and the overwhelming love of God, the Father. This, and only this, should have priority in our Race. We have a great hope that God will prove and show himself to us, but He can only do so if we are seeking him before all else. In one of Mark Driscoll’s sermons on Acts, he talks about prayer coming before anything else we do for the Lord. It is important to start with prayer because God IS sovereign. He has the ability to change whatever he wishes in our favor. Incredible.
So, while we are frustrated and dejected and irritated and sleepy and homesick and weepy, we cannot let it overtake our entire experience, lest we be eaten alive by bitterness. Jesus is a good god, and even though that is a truth we can stand on, things were not always easy for him. If we’re following in Jesus’ footsteps, it would be naive of us to presume that we will be exempt from suffering. It’s pretty much guaranteed. But what we can rest in and hope for is that Jesus will come and rescue and redeem his people. We wait with expectant hearts. We hope for him who we know, but cannot see.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
God will redeem the World Race. He will show up in ways I will not anticipate. He already has. But he will do that whether I learn to play the guitar, read a million books, work out every single day, or not. When he is most important to us, we will begin to see his love woven into everything. And isn’t that what we hope for?
(Scripture from 2 Corinthians 4)
Grace and peace,
Sarah
