World missions? Not a big priority for me if I am being honest. Or at least it was not before God started to get hold of my heart. During the Fall, Passion (www.268generation.org) was doing the World Tour. I am a passion kid at heart seeing as it has had so much to do with my spiritual growth since 2000. Louie did a podcast in every city that they were in which I loved to listen to. In the middle of almost every one of these podcast, Louie would cut to a stage recording where he would ask the crowd, “is there a generation in ________ that loves Jesus and wants to live for His fame in the world?” And let me tell you, the crowd erupted and my heart dropped.
Tear began to flow and I could not for the life of me figure out why. But in the process God was moving my heart towards the world. There was just something amazing about listening to a generation of college students all over the world proclaiming in a holy roar that they wanted to make their life count for the glory of Jesus Christ that blew my mind away. So my heart for the world began to grow like crazy.
The second major marker in this process came after I had committed to a one-week short term trip to Brazil. Watermark Community Church, my awesome church home, was requiring us to go through a training class which I was honestly not excited about at all. I knew my spiritual gifts and had a heart for the lost. But I knew that it would be a good chance for me to bond with my team so I was down. Little did I know that the Lord was about to totally rock my world.
There were two videos that we shown. One was a video on evangelism from Penn and Teller and the other was the video right below from the last post. And God pretty much opened my heart up even more to the world through that. Seeing the brokenness of the world on an even greater level totally floored me. It was during this time that I was having a conversation with one of my good friend, Brandon Avance, about missions and he told me about the World Race. Had never heard of it but I was willing to check into it. And the Lord gripped my heart.
It was during this time I was starting to feel the Lord move my back toward full time ministry but I was unsure of this. The Lord had brought me out ministry to go through Celebrate Recovery and I was pretty content working at Starbucks. After all, who does not love making latte’s? And during this time, I started to interview for a Community Group Director position with my church. I had no idea what the Lord had for me but I was at a place of surrender through it all and was totally fine wherever the Lord was planning on landing me.
