A few weeks ago while up at Adventures Main Campus in Gainesville a friend looked at me and said, “Let’s go on a walk!”
My mind immediately, internally, ran through all the paths I knew. I had lived right next door to the campus during the height of Covid “safe at home” shutting down the world, so I had walked this campus hundreds of times and in my mind, knew every inch of it.
I joyfully agreed to the invitation. But when we started to walk, I found us taking a left instead of the right I had always taken. I had no idea the path ever even split off. But suddenly I found myself at the edge of a creek standing in awe of the beauty of this secret space I had somehow missed.
It didn’t take but a second for me to see what the Lord was speaking to me in this moment. After having been in the World Race space for over three years now, there’s a lot that comes easily out of experience and founded knowledge.
I know how to pack everything up in a backpack and leave everything behind. I know how to do team time and feedback and all the logistics needed to navigate life on the field. The staff have become sweet sweet friends of mine. And foreign airports feel like a second home. I know this place and these people well, so I thought I knew where the Lord was leading, what He was up to.
After all, for a while now I had been working on some projects that the Lord had laid a deep passion in my heart for and they were beginning to lead into the potential for even bigger possibilities.
I thought I knew.
And then we took a left.
While out at a debrief in Costa Rica with G Squad (the Squad I’ve been working with from the office side for the last 10 months), I felt the Lord ask me to lay down what I had been doing and say yes to something new, with deep trust that this new thing would prepare me even deeper for what’s to come.
So here’s the news: I’M SQUAD LEADING!!!
Where are we headed? Great question! What are we going to be doing there? Serving the Lord in whatever He places in front of us!
In fact, so many times, already, in the midst of this process of leaving, amidst a very covid world, my answer to anything and everything has been “I don’t know.”
What I do know, is the Lord gave me the invitation of a lifetime for the chance to journey with these people, and I couldn’t help but look at the goodness and faithfulness He has showed up with in the last three years with this program and (prayerfully) respond with a resounding YES.
Because I know when He says “Go,” it’s because He’s already gone ahead. I know that He promises that His word never comes back void. I do know that He’s on the move in my life and this is an opportunity to get to partner with Him in the beauty and life exposed in His Kingdom plan.
But other than that, at this point, I don’t really know much.
And thank goodness I don’t.
When we gain knowledge we lose curiosity. We are robbed of the chance to dream, our eyes are blinded to opportunity and adventure, and we choose to settle into comfort over possibility.
When we think we know, we no longer ask.
And I never, ever want to live by the restrictions of what I can know and understand when we were formed by an endlessly creative God who longs to inspire within us and create through us a life of mystery and curious discovery of the endless goodness of His character.
So in a few short days, on August 12th, I’ll be boarding a plane to Romania with M Squad, under the leadership of one of my sweetest friends, and mentor, Ari. Together, we will have 29 incredible participants, 3 Alumni Team leaders, and 2 Alumni Squad leaders (Josiah and myself).
One thing that stands out about Romania is that it has a staggering 18,000 churches within it’s boarders (each represented by a dot below). Yet, according to 2018 stats, Romania holds the highest poverty rate in Europe, the lowest tertiary education completion level in Europe, 40% of students are functionally illiterate, 1 in 5 rural citizens don’t have access to clean water, the Roma minority group have a staggeringly 70% living below the poverty line, and 30% of the entire population is living in destroyed dwellings or slums.
The people are hurting. And the number of churches makes it clear that if what the people needed was more preaching, the whole country would already be saved.
But hurting people don’t need more well meaning words tossed from a pulpit.
Last week a visitor from Europe flew all the way across the world to attend the local church I go to here in Dawsonville, GA and walked up on the stage with these words. “You don’t see the church actively working in Europe like you do here. We have to fly halfway around the world. But it’s worth it, because we need a move.”
The people are desperate to see the church in action. To see love in action. To see the Lord in action. But they’re strangled by religious law that chokes out freedom and redemption.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
“But thanks be to God, that he always makes his grace visible in Christ, who includes us as partners of his endless triumph. Through our yielded lives he spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God everywhere we go. We have become the unmistakable aroma of the victory of the Anointed One to God —a perfume of life.
2 Corinthians 2:14-15
As reflections of Christ and His ministry on Earth, we get to go out and be that move. We get to be love in action. We get to see freedom taken back.
So we go, with great joy and anticipation.
Into the unknowing.
