At Training Camp we were told about a business called Keys For The Kingdom. Its run by one of the staff at AIM who also did The Race and He uses it to help him fundraise. What it is is keys that you wear as a necklace and they each have a word, phrase or scripture on it. The cool part is that he prays over each key and asks the Lord for a prophetic word to write on the key. The object is to get you key then ask the Lord what He wants you to learn from it. Once you learn what your keys means you are encouraged to give it away to someone when you feel like it is time. Naturally being myself and loving the prophetic I signed up for a key. The keys get delivered at Launch so I had to wait a few months in order to get mine. Launch finally comes around and the Squad Leaders are handing out the keys. I’m super excited and can’t wait to see what mine says and hopefully have this amazing story about it later. They give me my key and all it says on it is 1 Corinthians 13…. I was like really? The love chapter?? Why can’t it be something crazy cool? For the first few months of the Race I would sit and read the chapter and ask God what He wanted me to learn from it, but never got an answer. Let’s fast forward to here in month 9 in Ethiopia.
We were sitting in a session and our squad mentor was talking about coming home and she brought up the topic of love and how in her own story she was searching for love in all the wrong places and how when she fully encountered the love of the Lord it fully changed her life. This is me, I went through a season in looking for love in the wrong places and not believing or fully encountering the love of Jesus for myself, even as a Christian. Plot twist! As she is talking about this the Lord takes me on a journey about my key. He reveals that part of it was to show me the true love of the Father, but also how to display that love to those I encounter. The Race is all about bringing kingdom everywhere you are and letting the love of Jesus encounter those you meet. Truthfully, I’ve been loved so well on the Race, by my squad my teammates and even the little kids in the villages we’ve been in. So, the Lord is showing me all of this as the teaching is going on and it clicks with me about how far He has brought me on the Race. He then tells me to give my key to my best friend here on the Race, Ben. Ben and I were on a team for the first five months of the Race and he was my team leader. Throughout those months we got really close and he loved me well. One of the things I needed coming onto the Race was good guy community and friendship and I got that. Despite our stories and our pasts we have pushed each other to be our best selves. He’s one of those quiet people but when he speaks its with so much wisdom and knowledge and the Lord has taken him on his own journey here on the Race. Proverbs 18:24 says “There are “friends” who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother.” This verse rings so true, I didn’t grow up with a brother and didn’t really have a ton of guy friends growing up either, so to come on the Race and have a friendship like this, plus the other guys I’m close to has been a HUGE blessing. God has shown me what a brother looks and acts like, how they pursue you and keep you accountable. How they sit and listen when you need someone to, how they call you out when you’re being dumb. All of these things are how we are supposed to act in the body of Christ. So the Lord asked me to give him my key. Do I know the reason? Sure don’t, but I know he will show him and it’ll be amazing.
