Something is happening within me, and I can't explain it fully – it is a movement deep within me that feels like a deep-clean full-fledged, high-setting washing. I am being wrung through that spin cycle, holding on for dear life, and loving it. Upon entering Romania, I felt like something was shifting within me, but I was waiting on God to fully reveal it. And here it is, loud, clear and bold…
I AM SOLD OUT FOR CHRIST.
The last few years, I have honestly been ashamed to associate myself with 'Christianity' on many levels. Please don't get me wrong, or get offended. I just have such a hard time seeing the judgmentalism of the Christian subculture that exists in so many churches and youth groups in the U.S., the hypocrisy of the way the Christian world has messed up what the Gospel is really about. A selfish mentality has been created that keeps the 'right' people in and the 'wrong' people out. It has broken my heart in the past, and jaded my perspective on what it even means to be a follower of Christ. And please know this is not just a podium I am using to make you feel bad – I am just as much at fault for the way I have not loved well in the past – in ministry, I confess that it is easier to love with an agenda – to love when it is 'comfortable,' clean, and safe – when loving doesn't require so much of a sacrifice. But is that love? Or is that checking off some clean-cut item off of a list of to-dos to be a good, responsible Christian, or person?
Even coming on The Race, I held back a lot in regards to embracing the spiritual side of me, because I was so worried about "what will people think of me?" I don't want to be one of those crazy, sold-out Christians. I kept my mouth shut at times when I needed to be vulnerable and speak out. In a lot of senses, I hid from the work I knew God was doing in me.
And what does it mean to be sold-out, anyways? Why did I have such negative connotations towards it? Well, I think part of the negativity comes from the culture I left behind in Seattle. Knowing so deeply that my heart is to just love with the love of Christ – but that my motives can be so distrusted to the people I am trying to love – based on their preassumptions, their hurts, their struggles with The Church and Christians – that often I used it as an excuse to really do nothing at all. The problem with that was – there was a part of my soul that was literally choking to death…
Everything within me yearns for Jesus. It is just who I am. I can't help it, I can't filter it, sensor it, or deny it. Who I am longs and aches for the incredible, passionate love of Jesus, and I am done hiding it.
I AM that crazy, passionate, desperate-for-grace every moment soul –
who is done hiding the fact that everything I am is
created for eternity and not for the approval of this world.
