How The World Race Changed My Life
“How has the World Race changed your life?”
If you expected to read an epic story of how serving on the World Race changed the direction of someone’s life, this is not the story you are looking for. Click the little “x” in the top right of this tab and try a different World Race alumni. There are around thirty-five hundred people who have completed the World Race. The odds of finding a story of a dramatic life change because of the World Race are for sure in your favor (I could even point you in the direction of a couple of really good stories).
My answer to this question is not an epic or grandiose story, but it is a valuable, important, and on-going answer.
I cannot yet look back on my life and see the lasting, eternal legacy from my stepping out in faith to serve on the World Race. I am still a “baby” World Race alumnus, having returned to the United States around five short months ago. In these past five months, I have not stepped into another program with Adventures In Missions, whether squad-leading for new Racers, attending their Center for Global Action, launching on a Kingdom Journeys trip, or attending their leadership school in Spain. I have not moved to another country to help run a hostel through AIM. I have not returned back home and started a new ministry born out of the passions and desires that the Lord revealed to me while I was on the World Race. I have not launched a new blog or written a book. I work at the same job as when I left for the World Race. I still sleep in my childhood bedroom every night. I drive the same car and wear the same clothes as I did before I traveled around the world. There are days when it may appear that the only changes that have happened in my life as a result of the World Race are having passport pages that are more colorful and a social media collection of mementos from traveling around the globe. “But how do those things differentiate you from someone who has traveled the world but not done the World Race?” The World Race allows for God-ordained opportunities that you never could have dreamed of or created on your own.
Imagine that you are a farmer or a gardener who wants to plant new seeds into a field that you just bought. The field is in the best possible location and has enormous potential. The field has not been used to its full potential in the past and has some areas that have been taken over by weeds and rocks. It’s a bit uneven in some places. Before you are able to plant the seeds, you need to prepare the field.
You have an idea in your mind of what that field will look like in the future, and it is this plan that guides how you prepare the field. This plan determines which tools you will choose, which seeds and fertilizer you use, and the exact timing the seeds are placed into the ground. This plan determines how you will care for and tend to the seeds until they produce that which they are created to produce.
God is not distant or secretive in this grand plan that He has for the garden that He calls my heart. He has given me bits and pieces of how He wants my heart to look, how He wants my heart to love, and how He wants my heart to reflect His. “Over here, I’m growing this. I had to take this out over here to make room for this.” He is also giving me an option for some things—“I want to transform this, but it’s up to you to let me know when you are fully ready for it.” The World Race was a season of preparing, planting, tending, harvesting, and planting for my heart. Some seeds are unknown to me and will not be revealed until years down the road. I have been able to recognize some of the seeds by the fruit that they have started to bear already.
To everything there is a season.
We were in Zambia, the end of our fourth month, at our second debrief. One evening session started with worship and transitioned into an intense squad-wide time of prayer. We spoke truth over each other and prayed for deep things in each other’s lives. Andie started to pray for me, but before she spoke, she had an internal battle with the Lord. ”God, why did you tell me those words to pray for her? Am I really supposed to tell her that and pray for that? Everyone else is saying positive things and this doesn’t sound positive. Is this even Your voice? Do I tell her?” Andie decided to be brave and speak what was on her heart. “I don’t know why the Lord is telling me this to pray for you, but He told me to pray against loneliness in your heart.”
I did not have words for this part of my heart that I had grown familiar with and yet still loathed until Andie called it out during prayer. Fighting against loneliness had been a hidden, extensive, and prolonged battle for my heart. Struggling to believe that you are “enough” for years on end allows loneliness to enter into your heart when you are unaware. Loneliness disguised itself in various seasons of my life, rendering me unaware of the damage it did to my heart.
Andie and I took turns praying against the loneliness that had been in my heart. Acknowledge, pray, submit, speak truth, release in the Name of Jesus, believe, and walk free.
My heart experienced true freedom that night and in the months that made up the remainder of my time on the World Race. Heaps of ugly weeds were pulled out and discarded from the garden that the Lord calls my heart. In their place, seeds of freedom burst forth into bloom. “To see yourself the way God sees you is the beginning of freedom.” God does not see me as lonely. Loneliness does not reflect the heart or love of Jesus. After that night in Zambia, I have no longer described any part of myself as lonely in the present tense. Loneliness is no longer a friend of mine (sorry Backstreet Boys). “Lonely” is now only a descriptor from my past and an indicator of God’s faithfulness.
Glory to God.