6 Ways the World Race Has Ruined My Life

Community – Living in community is hard, especially when the people you are living with are a little more than strangers. Four weeks ago, I didn’t know anyone from my squad. And now, I am living with them. All day every day. There isn’t anywhere to hide. Everything is out in the open. It is hard. But it is beautiful. The genuine love that overflows is something that I never imagine I’d get to experience.

Ministry – A phrase that has been said again and again is “life is ministry and ministry is life”. Even if we are not officially at our ministry site, that doesn’t mean that our job as believers stops. If we’re walking down the street and the Lord tells us that we need to speak to the man standing on the corner, then we should speak to the man standing on the corner. If we are at the grocery store and the Lord tells us to pray for the cashier, then we pray for the cashier. Ministry doesn’t stop at a certain time. It is a way of life that we need to choose to live everyday.

Vulnerability – It is so important to be willing to be open and vulnerable with the people around you, especially if you’ll be spending the next 11 months traveling and serving with them. But knowing and doing are two completely different things. One thing I’ve learned is that vulnerability cultivates vulnerability. We never know how our story will impact someone else. If we can trust the Lord and be brave enough to be open, then we can play a part in helping people move the mountains that have seemed impossible to move.

Trust – What does it mean to truly trust God? We can tell each other to trust God until we’re blue in the face, but what does that look like practically? Trust in His plan for our life? Trust that even if everything is crumbling around us, that God is still good? Trust that if He doesn’t answer our prayers the way we expect, or even in our timing, that He still cares? Yes. All of these are true. These are things that I have had to learn both before the race, and while on the race. They are not easy truths to believe. But since being here, they have cemented in my life in a way like never before. If I had chosen to not go on this journey, it’s something I may have never come to truly believe.

Rest – It is okay to take a moment of rest. After God created the world in six days, He rested on the seventh. Not because He needed to, but to show us how important it is to rest. As humans, we need to take time away to rest. To reflect. To process. And that is okay. That’s why God gave us the Sabbath. So that we can take time to care for ourselves, and to rest in Him. It is good to recognize when we need to take a step back and breathe. If we don’t, then we’ll spread ourselves too thin. We can do more harm than good. Rest is good. It is a gift from God.

Surrender – If you’ve grown up in church, you have heard a thousand times over how we need to be willing to surrender ourselves to Christ. A popular phrase is “die to yourself” or “pick up your cross daily”. But what does this even mean? How do you truly surrender to Jesus? Before I came on the race, I thought that I had surrendered everything to Him: dreams, past hurts, current hurts, and physical needs. But the truth is, there is so much more to surrender. One thing I had to learn to surrender was family. Being away for 11 months from my family is not easy. Homesickness has begun to drench itself over my being. And this is just the first month. True surrender means giving everything to God and believing that He will take care of it. We have to trust that He will not abandon the things that we hold most dear. Because at the end of it all, He is good and He is faithful.