After living, loving, and serving around God’s green earth for a long, but rewarding ten months, the moment finally arrived—month 11. World Racers discuss what month 11 will be like for a good portion of the second half of the race with what I have found—now that it actually is month 11—to be shockingly low accuracy. Things I thought I’d miss about home have had very little pull on me and things that I never missed the whole race, I just started missing this very month. Overall, these first nine days in The Philippines have amounted to a shocking exhibition of how little I know about my own self—and a forcible reminder of how much God knows about me.
Though I was revved up and ready to attack this final month, God certainly had other plans for how I would start the month, and I began feeling very sick as we flew from Phnom Penh (through China) to Manila, the capital city of The Philippines. Right before we passed through the Filipino customs line, my teammate, Brandon, told me that he really felt as if he needed to go to the hospital. At this time, I wouldn’t say I felt as if I needed to go to a hospital as well, but I was far from one hundred percent, as the ibuprofen I had borrowed from my squadmate, Hannah, was wearing off rapidly, as my body became replete with chills and cold sweat and as my head began to pound rhythmically.
After leaving the hospital at close to midnight that night (Brandon had been admitted for more testing), I collapsed into a bed at our missions home and spent the night shivering, with a trash can at my side. Finally, when I learned, come morning, that Brandon had been diagnosed with the Dengue fever, a tropical, mosquito-borne illness, I was forced to return to the hospital for testing.
At this point, though I knew full well that I needed to be in a hospital (my fever had gotten worse and I was exhibiting the same symptoms as Brandon), I could barely stomach the thought of leaving my bed and making the van ride over to the hospital. My squad leaders convinced me it was necessary, however, and actually forced me to go to the hospital.
The second we arrived, I actually got out of the van and without so much as waiting for or speaking to another human being; I walked myself straight to the ER to get checked out. To make a long story short, I ended up having a 104 degree fever and, like Brandon, Dengue. I was admitted to the hospital for five days and five nights.
So, that’s the way my Filipino month began—stuck in a hospital bed with an IV hanging out of my arm. My fever broke quickly, but it took me quite a long time to regain both my strength and my appetite. It was not what I had planned (and certainly not what I hoped for!) in the slightest, but it was, after all, what God had ordained. I would be lying if I failed to mention that I went a little—or a lot—stir crazy in that hospital bed, but in hindsight, I am beginning to see that that bed was exactly where God wanted me to be. God, the master calculator, knew better than I did that my first ten months of exertion and rest had left me with sufficient fuel in the tank to attack twenty-five days of ministry—but not thirty.
The hospital stint also helped me to get over my own self. I found, believe it or not, that ministry chugged along just fine without me! It started before I ever arrived back at the ministry home from the hospital and it will surely continue when I leave the Philippines in a few weeks. Quite simply put, it revolves around Jesus—not me—as its perfecter and sustainer (Colossians 1:17).
This idea—that ministry doesn’t revolve around me—has proved to be a huge relief. I am a co-worker with Christ—not the foreman. Yes, I have responsibility as both a leader and a man, to play a role in shaping the dynamic of ministry. If I am absent, however, things won’t fall apart—precisely because the core of good ministries like this one is Christ, not me.
I have been blessed, though, in these last few days, to finally begin ministry. This month, we are working with K.I.M. (Kids International Ministries), an organization that serves orphans and street children in Manila. In the end, however, God is still the potter and I am still the clay (Romans 9:19-21). Sick clay or healthy clay, God will use me as a vessel to bring glory to his name in the ways he best sees fit.
I don’t know why I am always surprised by the fact that God answers prayer. It’s as if a recognized answered prayer is some sort of supernatural, earth shaking occurrence to me, rather than just an everyday product of God’s nature. This past month, we have seen answered prayer after answered prayer, and my faith has skyrocketed because of it.
On the first day of the month, the other team leader, Kendall, and I decided to make it a month where we would be absolutely tireless and unrelenting in prayer. So, with the glory of God in mind and with great accountability from each other, we sought God together and did so every night. We prayed for supernatural physical energy, supernatural desire, a higher and higher view of God—that we may cast out cheap, mundane views of God from our hearts and minds—and for health and protection. In addition, we interceded for family, teammates, classmates, and everyone in between.
God showed up, without a doubt, but it wasn’t until the second half of the month that the answered prayers began to become more tangible. We were both convicted of the specificity of our prayers. There is absolutely nothing wrong (in my opinion) about praying more “general” prayers—prayers for joy, health, and a deep relationship with God, for example—and all of these prayers serve as fuel in the tank for an effective Christian life.
It was when we started praying the specific, however—for specific people and specific occurrences to happen, that my faith was really stretched. Admittedly, I am often so nervous about praying the specific. I feel as if, were God not to answer my prayers (which is indeed the case, sometimes), my faith would decrease. This is a double-edged sword, of course, because the only way for my faith to truly grow will be to pray the specific.
So, with a beautiful and seemingly contradictory mix of timidity and boldness, we began to pray the specific. We prayed for specific individuals to show up to class, for specific individuals to have softened hearts, and, most of all, for one person to come to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Throughout the month, we named this unknown individual “The One”. “The One” was something we talked about and prayed about all of the latter two weeks of the month.
I also used to assume, though, that praying for God to save people was off-limits, or even cliche. After all, “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.” (Romans 9:18). I finally realized, however, that it was ridiculous for me to think that I can’t or shouldn’t pray for God to show up and save souls. After all, things like heath, rest, and peace are entirely under the sovereignty of God as well, and we pray for those things unashamedly! The Kingdom of Heaven will be brought on the backs of saints who plead—specifically—that God may save specific souls. So, with that in mind, we persisted in prayer for “the one”.
Finally, and when I assumed all hope was lost, one of our Knowing God students, David came up to me after church, unannounced, and asked to talk to me. He told me, nervously, that he had news for me. “My mother came up to me last week,” he said, “and told me, David, ‘I want to be born again. I want to accept Jesus Christ.” I congratulated him excitedly and franticly talked about all that would follow—it was our last day in Kampot—but my mind was elsewhere. I knew God had answered the specific. David’s mother was “The One.”
Another thing we had prayed for was for David to develop a love for reading the Bible. On the first day of class, David asked me why he didn’t really like to read the Bible, and I didn’t have all that great of an answer for him. Instead, we lifted his desires up in prayer, asking that God would supernaturally intervene to change his desires.
“Ben,” he told me, while I my head was still spinning from the first answered prayer, “I want to show you something.” He opened up to the book of Matthew in his Bible and preceded to show me all the highlighting he had done. “I like to read the Bible now.” What he said next was the kicker, however. “I don’t know what changed, I don’t know why, and I don’t know what happened.” Luckily, we do.
It was a beautiful reminder, as we prepare for the Philippines, that God truly does answer prayer. It’s simply part of his nature. Not to take advantage of the fact that we have a say in the unfolding of the universe would be a colossally wasted opportunity. “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16).
With only three days remaining at our ministry site here in Kampot, Cambodia, I can honestly say that I will be incredibly sad to leave. Cambodia is definitely a place that I can see myself returning to, as the people and the culture have captured my heart. Now, I’d be lying—severely—if I didn’t mention that I am ready to move on. I do miss my family and friends and I, whether sinfully and selfishly or expectedly and acceptably, long for what is next.
This whole dilemma—being ready to move on, yet longing for more time—seems utterly contradictory, yet it’s one I’ve faced time and time again on the World Race. Some months I lean much more towards the “ready to move on” side and some months I lean much more towards the “longing for more time” side, but as a generality, I fall somewhere between these two extremes every month.
Showering with buckets and muddy water really does get old, and as much as this may sound fun and adventurous to aspiring World Racers or missionaries, it really does get old—not bothersome, but old. Wearing the same four shirts and two pairs of shorts gets a little bit old too, as do repetitive meal options and the lack of contact with my family. This is the part where I say I am ready for what is next.
At the same time, however, I would be fooling myself if I failed to admit that the whole idea of “what’s next” is completely an idol. It’s pure idolatry to worship the future as savior—to think, “all of my longings will be satisfied at home, or in the next month of the race. That will save me.” Anything other than Jesus Christ as savior is idolatry. When the Israelites resolve to leave Babylon and go to Egypt as a way of fleeing their struggles, in Exodus 42, Jeremiah makes it abundantly clear that all of their struggles will simply follow them there.
I don’t want any talk of idolatry, however, to overshadow the simple truth that Cambodia is incredible. The caring adults and carefree children have drawn me in. From engagements to weddings, sugar cane juice to worship, palm trees to dirt roads, and from sweating in the relentless sun to dancing in the pouring rain with a ragtag group of muddy children this very afternoon, I have been so sucked in to this vortex of Southeast Asia, like a twig in a tornado, that even the prospect of being unchanged by this place is utterly unthinkable.
This is precisely where the “longing for more time” aspect comes into play. I long for more time here, both in the enjoyment of its simple pleasures—enough smiling, sweaty, children to override any cheap “joy substitute” I may try to fill my heart with back in the states, and enough star-drizzled skies to make almost any “great outdoors” experience I had yet experienced seem like New York City—and in the fulfillment that comes from deep pursuits. There are too many deep pursuits to count here, from the pursuit of deep relationships in house visits to the transmission of knowledge in the classroom, and they will be (sadly) unnatural to uproot in three days. I need more time.
The primary place where I simply need more time is in our Knowing God class. I do not presume to put a limit on God’s capabilities by declaring that he can’t save or sanctify instantly—what is impossible with man is possible with God (Matthew 19:26)—nor do I presume that everything God will ever do in and through that class has to be done while we are still here—that is selfish. Nevertheless, there is so much that I want to experience with that class that I just need more time to do it!
The class is truly blooming into something beautiful. We’ve walked through the Gospel in all its fullness and splendor. We’ve worshipped, told testimonies, prayed and interceded. Class attendance is rising, as is participation and conviction. The young adults are stepping into the roles God has given them as “shining stars in a crooked generation” (Philippians 2:15). God is on the move, and we are about to leave. I need more time.
The class has only crown closer to the center of my heart as Kendall and I have fought hard for them in prayer every night. With great emotion and greater conviction, we have interceded for them, and God has answered our prayers mightily—not that I should be surprised. He has brought increased numbers of students to the class, overcome language barriers, and filled the class with joy and fellowship. Tonight, we are praying for one more student to come to saving belief in Jesus Christ before we take communion. I need more time.
The tension is here. I long for what is next, but I both want and need more time. I’ve never seen it put better than Paul put it in Philippians 1:21-26:
“For me, living is Christ and dying is gain. Now if I live on in the flesh, this means fruitful work for me; and I don’t know which one I should choose. I am pressured by both. I have the desire to depart and be with Christ—which is far better—but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I am persuaded of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that, because of me, your confidence may grow in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.”
In the end, this life and the tensions we experience is a model—a “shadow” and a “copy” (Hebrews 9) of the real thing. With this mindset, I find that my seemingly contradictory feelings all work towards the same end. What permanence—what “more time”—could I long for that is, at the same time, represented by “what’s next”? I see this as a clear picture of eternal life, where a longing for sweet permanence and a longing for what is next crash into each other beautifully. I long for what is next, but I am too tired of being a sojourner. I need to remain. I need more time.
Update: After writing this in the afternoon, and with some difficulties in translation, it appears that a girl came to Christ at class tonight! Praise be to God who answers prayers richly!
This past Tuesday, my teammate, Emily, planned a “house of prayer” night for our team and the team with us. It was an awesome night, as it was based on the word of God (John 15, in specific) and highly conducive to the ushering in of the spirit of God. We started by reading quietly the words of Jesus from John 15:1-17—“I am the true vine…remain in me, and I in you…”, and continued into prayer and intercession throughout the night.
What was most significant about this night for me, however, were two specific visions that God gave me. Let me make this clear: I am not a man who receives supernatural visions often—almost never, actually. I think it’s likely a combination of both the simple fact that God anoints everyone differently (Ephesians 4:11-12), and I see my anointing as a pastoral and teaching anointing, rather than a strong prophetic anointing, and the fact that the doubt I fight with in my “show me the proof” type of faith doesn’t always lend well to wholly supernatural visions. Though I am certainly striving for a more child-like, “blessed are those who believe without seeing” (John 20:29) type of faith and am also growing in the comfort that comes from knowing that there truly are “many gifts, but one Lord” (1 Corinthians 12), Tuesday night was, by all means, a welcomed occurrence.
This blog is a bit different in that I normally do not post blogs unless I can wrap them up in neat bows, complete with an overarching spiritual point. Even when I admit that I am in the middle of a certain journey, I am still typically able to sum it up neatly by simply declaring something to be true of the journey itself—that it was worth beginning or will be worth completing. The visions of this blog, however, make absolutely no sense outside of the context of future events yet to be fulfilled. I often joked with my old teammate, Hannah, about the length of my blogs, saying, “may God punish me and do so severely if I ever write a part two.” This blog, however, requires a part two—describing events, or even a lifestyle—that have yet to happen—to make any sense. You win this one, Hannah.
As I read from John 15 early in the night, it seemed as if the dimly lit words of the page faded into manila-colored oblivion as God crowded my mind with a startlingly clear picture. A thick vine—almost too thick to be a vine, for it was tree-like in nature—ascended as far as I could see into the sky. I was wrapping both my arms and legs tightly around the vine and I rested my head peacefully on one of my shoulders. Far below the thick vine was a raging fire. The fire enveloped the entire area below the vine and crept up to the point of hugging its circumference, yet the vine itself was never consumed. Despite the fact that all it would theoretically take for me to be consumed by the fire would be a slip of my feet or a failure of my own arm strength—an altogether possible occurrence, I now realize, as I have tried and failed to climb similarly constructed trees here in Cambodia—I felt absolutely no fear of falling off of the vine. It was as if my arms were glued to the vine, enough so that I had to assert little to none of my own strength to remain on the vine.
I have no doubt that God gave me a clear image of a vine because I had just read Jesus’ statement, “I am the true vine” (John 15:1), and it is highly likely that the fire represented hell, but over and above that, I want to allow my vision to retain its mystery until I gain more wisdom.
What was absolutely incredible to me, however—and I actually didn’t realize this until the following morning—was not that I had this clear vision, but that I had had it before. When I was a young boy—younger than ten years old, even—there was one reoccurring dream that I had quite often. This, too, is an odd occurrence, as I had (and have) very few reoccurring dreams—or even dreams that I can remember. In my childhood dream, I was grabbing firm to the top of the same thick, trunk-like, vine, with the same raging fire below me. Just like Tuesday night’s vision, I was aware that my life depended upon my staying on the vine, well above the fire. The difference, however, was the accompanying emotion.
When I was a child, the emotion I felt on the top of that vine was fear—fear that any second, if my strength gave out, I would fall into the fire. Even if my strength didn’t give out, the fire below could always starve me out up on that pole, resource-less and alone. On Tuesday night, however, I felt not fear, but peace. It was truly one of the most peaceful feelings I had ever felt—peace in knowing that I was beyond secure on the vine. I have no idea what to make of all of this. I want to be slow to make presumptions about a God whose “thoughts are higher than (my) thoughts”, but nevertheless, I smell God all over this connection.
The second vision I received involved children. Along a dirt road, and through dirt-floored villages stood, shoulder to shoulder, hundreds of children. Many were nameless, but many I recognized from this year and before—Pheck and Mai from Cambodia, Shaffiq from Uganda, Laxmi from Nepal, and myriads of other children from India and even Romania. Every one of them looked longingly out into the distance, though it seemed as if their senses of longing had all been significantly eroded by the stark reality they had come to know in the short years of their lives—the reality that nobody is coming for them.
I then saw, at first myself, then others (some of whom were people I didn’t even recognize), step forward and select random children from among the line. When a child was selected, a sparkling silver necklace was placed on his or her neck. It was almost as if they didn’t know what to do with the necklaces, and the narrative tension in and of itself was heavy—necklaces as expensive as these, by principle, shouldn’t be squandered on children who didn’t have the slightestideawhat todo with that type of luxury.
Either God is at work or I have gone crazy. I can just picture it now—my Christian friends pumping their fists in celebration of God’s delight in liberally providing humans with a glimpse of what he sees, and my secular friends burying their heads in their hands and lamenting, with rolled eyes, another potentially good man ruined by the intoxication of the religious placebo effect. Either way, I thank God for giving me two visions that I cannot yet understand. When the time comes, however, to see these visions gloriously come to their points of manifestation, I look forward to providing a link back to this blog—from wherever the heck I will be—and celebrating divinely planted seeds, now blossomed.
As this month nears its halfway point with startling speed, God has graciously given me exactly what I had been praying for—a focus. An all-consuming focus, or a rallying point, so to speak, was exactly what I needed to keep my head in this month and to soak up all of the beauty—sometimes hidden, sometimes overt—that Cambodia has to offer. This consuming focus has taught me two things—or, brought to light two things that I had been learning for a while, rather. Let me explain.
Every day I am swarmed by smiling children, sweat stained and unashamed of their innate joy, so wholly immersed in that precious state of life that all-too-often erodes as the “cares” of teenage and adult life fight tooth and nail to destroy it, or, at the very least, coax it into dormancy. Toothless grins and fingers too small to be human meet me in the morning and close out my evening. Despite the vibrancy these children unknowingly bring to my daily life, and despite the fact that these children give me an opportunity to practice and walk out the Biblical picture of “loving the little children”, these children are still not the focus God has given me. The focus God has given me for this month is on a class of late teenagers and early 20-year-olds called Knowing God.
Our contact, Vuthy (pronounced “woo-tee”), was a former tuk-tuk (the Southeast Asian version of a taxi) driver and a Buddhist until just four years ago. After he came to Christ in his mid 20’s, he moved out to this province, Kampot, and this village where there were literally no Christians at the time. Since his time here, he has seen both his family and thirty youth become Christians and get baptized. Because the first wave of new Christians is now growing into spiritual maturity, Vuthy’s goal is to see 150 children come to Christ in the next year. The principle agents of this mission will undoubtedly be the young adults in the Knowing God class.
With this in mind, it is such a great honor to me that Vuthy has entrusted me (and my squadmates, Kendall and Jess) to love, lead, and teach this great group of young Christians. This class does have a book, but at its core, it is essentially an open-ended class about how to live a fruitful and fulfilling Christian life.
Kendall and I decided that instead of going through the book immediately (or at all), we would rather feed their senses of longing and relationship and teach them in such a way that presents them with a beautiful picture of God and his Gospel. The most effective way, we figured, for them to bear great fruit, would not be for them to remember a practical system of spiritual tips, but rather to present to them a picture of Jesus Christ high and lifted up, and then see the fruit flow out of their increasing sense of adoration.
So, for the last week, we have been teaching our hearts out about the Gospel in all its richness and all its depth and it has absolutely rocked me with joy. I am finding, however, that as much as it truly does give me joy to teach, and as much as I derive joy from the refreshing nature of what teaching Biblical truth does to me, I am finding that my greatest joy, in this exchange, is in them.
I could barely focus during dinner last night, following a Bible study of ours on Rahab (Joshua 2). The students asked amazing questions, underlined their Bibles left and right, opened us up in joyful worship, and closed us out in heartfelt prayer. My greatest joy this month is in their growth and their increasing spiritual maturity. This is perhaps the first time that scriptures like 2 Corinthians 1:14 made sense to me:
“…we are your reason for pride, as you are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.”
My pride and my joy are in their growth. The first thing that I learned is the fact that it truly is possible to find great joy in others’ growth and maturity. I’m sure if I was a parent, I would have learned this by now, but seeing as I’m not, this was a fairly new occurrence for me—at least on a non-superficial level. This was one of the many examples of scriptures—or even bits of spirit-directed wisdom in general, that only made sense to me through experience. That is the second thing that I’ve learned recently.
Don’t get me wrong—I believe strongly in the absolute authority of scripture—that it is not defined by, but rather defines the realm of personal experience. The most telling example I always use of this is Psalm 23:6: “Only goodness and faithful love will follow (those in a covenant relationship with God) all the days of our lives…” If we let personal experience define how we view scripture, we might say, after a few minor shake-ups, that perhaps mostly goodness and faithful love follow the Christian all the days of his or her life, or that goodness and faithful love will follow us some—not all—of the days of our lives. If we let scripture define our personal experience, however, we conclude that somehow and in some way, fully embracing our own limited wisdom and understanding (Isaiah 55:9), what seems like misfortune to us is actually a representation of God’s goodness and faithful love.
I simply mean to state that it is largely personal experience that makes scripture and spirit-led wisdom come alive. I hearken back to “training camp”, especially. For future World Racers: there are things that you will be taught and told at training camp that will only make sense to you in the context of having experienced many months on the World Race. Even some worship songs only make sense to me after I have had experiences that brought them to life.
The lyrics “you’re never giving up, you’re never giving up, you’re never giving up on me,” make sense to me, at the deepest levels, only now that I have experienced trial after trial and seen God’s faithfulness shine through. Before God gave me a context within which I could internalize that song, it represented little more to me than an over-emotionalized pump-up song. Or the Chris Tomlin lyrics, “I hear the sound of many angels sing, ‘Worthy is the Lamb’”, with all its Book-of-Revelation-laden imagery—make so much more sense to me after experiencing worship rising up from countless skin colors and languages around the globe. Or even the spirit-led advice I received a few years back from one of my friends and mentors, “Coach” Gary Cramer—namely, that “God will change your plans, but he won’t do so without changing your desires beforehand”—makes sense to me, only now that I have seen God, well, change both my plans and my desires.
The reason why this all excites me is because it means there is hope. Just because I haven’t yet experienced the full weight of a scripture or the full truthfulness of a piece of advice doesn’t mean that I the word I received was untrue or even exaggerated. I no longer have to pretend that verses like “As a deer pants for water, so my soul longs for you, God” (Psalm 42:1) apply to me fully and at the current moment. I don’t have to fake it! I can be free to admit that I want God really badly and I focus on him with a good bit of my time and energy, but that I am not quite at the level of a “deer panting for water” yet. And, lastly, I can admit this because I have confidence that “he who started a good work in me will carry it on to the day of completion” (Philippians 1:6), and will do so largely by providing a context of personal experience by which I can soak in, with true understanding, its value.
Our time in Cambodia has moved along at what I would call a “World Race pace”—yes, a World Race pace. The hours of the day meander on slowly. The sun yawns, with its hands in its pockets as it crawls across the Asian sky, leisurely and distracted, with no intention of setting quickly. The days themselves, however, they fly by like thieves in the night. It’s as if the hours and the days are coconspirators; the former drags on in an effort to sap the sustainability of your zeal and the latter flips the pages of the calendar at lightning speed in an effort to keep you from realizing that the former is even happening.
Despite my time-related hallucinations, the village life has done well to preserve the magic, for me, of this adventure I call the World Race. Like I’ve written about before, this place (Toch village, Kampot province) also moves to its own rhythm. The roosters exercise their sovereignty over alarm clocks as skinny white cows share the dirt roads with old motorcycles in the morning. Smiling children come in and out of our property at ease throughout the day, seemingly unaffected by the scorching heat and humidity. Shirtless old men puff cigarettes and watch teenagers—younger versions of themselves—play volleyball as women cut mangos and coconuts. Everyone is up early—the sun leaves no other option and everyone is in bed early, too—the day’s heat leaves no other option. It’s a completely different rhythm than the States, but it’s a rhythm I can dance to.
Despite the ethnic flavor and the cultural flourishes of village life, however, there has always been a sense of mission for every month—a driving sense of mission that works under, around, and through any local peculiarities. Though the mission is always, with unswerving focus, to know God and to make him known, that mission always expresses itself with different emphases in different months. In Serbia, God cut right to the chase and broke me to the point where humility was my only option. In India, he taught me about faith, in Kenya, purity of focus, in Uganda and Thailand, obedience. It’s been something different every month. This month—month ten of eleven—it’s taken on a beautifully simplistic form: love. 1 Corinthians 13 love.
This sounds so simple, but it’s been a real shocker for me how high of a concept Christian love is. I was surprised that God chose “love” as my mantra for this month specifically because I could discern, until now, a clear pattern of God “starting with the basics”, so to speak, and then building on the foundation he’d laid, month by month. I couldn’t have learned obedience in Uganda, for example, if God hadn’t taught me how to be humble enough to be obedient in month one. I am finding that love, though, is hard.
The words that God has repeatedly whispered in my ear have been, “love the one in front of you, love the one in front of you, love the one in front of you.” I have several opportunities throughout each day to put this into practice, as we are teaching English, doing children’s ministry, and doing house visits this month.
Many times, the act of extending love is as easy as throwing a child over my shoulders or being patient when students struggle with English. It’s a constant dying to myself and seeking others’ best interests. I have found, however, that it is nearly impossible for me to love the people of this village in the way they deserve to be loved if I am not seeing them with Jesus’eyes. Now, this is clearly sounding very cliché. What World Race blog doesn’t mention something about love, children, and the eyes of Jesus? But, as common as all of this talk about love is, I believe that it has huge implications on how we carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19).
To put it bluntly, I have made people into projects in the past. I would often “love” people insofar as those people were potential projects—future Christians in the making—Gospel files only 50% downloaded. People were to have tabs kept on them and my acts of love were to be calculated and premeditated—steps in a mechanical factory flowchart of good deeds—assembly line evangelism. Don’t get me wrong—spontaneity doesn’t equate to higher love—but there is something about on-the-spot love that attracts me.
To his disciples, Jesus said:
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matthew 9:37-38).
I have always pictured these verses very mechanically—battle plans devoid of emotion. State of harvest: plentiful. State of workers: few. My battle plan: go into already plentiful harvest field and reap souls. What I completely forget to take into account however, was the verse before these two verses: “When (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36). Jesus’ “battle plans” to his disciples were a direct result of what he felt when he looked out at the crowds—compassion, helplessness, lostness.
Make no mistake: I am here to preach Christ and Christ crucified. I am here to make disciples. But “loving the one in front of me”—in whatever small way that looks like—in no way works against, or even works to damper that driving goal. “Loving the one in front of me”, I realized, is not synonymous with a simplified, politically correct, secular version of the Great Commission. Rather, it is the oil that lubricates the wheels of the Great Commission. Scripture tells us that “(saving) faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). Without love, however, all people will be hearing is a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1).
I truly desire for God to give me the ability to “love the one in front of me” as the oil in my Great Commission. I want to do so with the compulsion of my heart as the driving force. There are too many lost people in Cambodia not to love this way. Again, however, people are not projects. Let me love them, Father, not as projects yet to be finished but as heartaches yet to be fulfilled.
(All photos taken by my teammate Mallory Martin. Click here for a link to her blog!)
After spending less than five days in Cambodia, I can already tell that this month can easily be categorized as “a world racer’s dream month.” Though months have come and passed, each one offering varying degrees of conformity to or distance from my naive pre-race expectations of foreign mission work, I can truly say that this one is one of the few months that has been right on par with my pre-race expectations. We sleep in a hot, wooden, tree house, bathe using buckets of muddy water, and are accompanied by dogs, ducks, chickens, cows, and pigs on our property. We wear the same clothes every day and entertain ourselves by walking five minutes to the local “store” to buy forty-cent ice coffees in plastic bags. We enjoy watching the orange sun set over steep palm trees—a precursor to star-studded skies—and are surrounded by so many loving Cambodian children that our innate human thirst for affection never goes unfulfilled.
Month ten has more than started here in Kampot, our province in the southern part of the country. Though we have enjoyed celebrating the Khmer New Year with children’s ministry and games, and though I personally look forward to teaching school in a few days, I can definitely say that it takes a lot of willpower for me to remain “in the present”. The one thing that has had the power to keep me in the “here and now”, however, has been God’s pursuit of me.
It’s a funny thing—God’s pursuit of us—because we so often talk about our pursuit of God as if we’re the only party in the relationship that’s doing any pursuing. Sure, we pay lip service to the fact that it’s a two way relationship—though even this is usually said in the context of convicting us of our own personal responsibility—and sure, I think we probably know, deep down, that God truly does delight in us (Psalm 18:19), but I think we often characterize God as considerably less relentless a pursuer than he really is.
Friends, God does not play fair. This race, for me, has been first-hand proof that God will hound medown until I realize that he—alone—is what’s best for me. At our month eight debrief session, before our time in Malaysia started, we sang the song “You Won’t Relent” by Misty Edwards. One of the main lyrics of the song is, “You won’t relent until you have it all,” and that lyric has been my banner for the last month and a half now.
Godhasn’t relented and it’s been highway robbery, I tell you. This race—no, these two and a half years as a Christian—have been nothing but highway robbery. God has left me with nothing. I used to run track and cross country—until God, in his greed, decided he wanted that. I used to have a comfortable college environment until God took that away too. I used to have an iPod until God broke it twelve hours after I prayed for abandonment—bad prayer, by the way. I used to have my own computer until God broke that one, too, a few days ago—again, a matter of hours (not days, but hours!) after I prayed to God that he may go to any lengths to increase my prayer life. I used to have a watch, but God broke that, too—a day after I told him I wanted to stop thinking about how many days were left on the race. I used to have nice clothes, but they all are hanging by their last threads now. I used to have a car, but I haven’t driven in almost ten months. I don’t understand why God can just barge his way into my life and take whatever he wants, whenever he wants. But, in some crazy sort of way, (maybe) I like it.
And again, here is the intersection where Christianity parts ways with every other world religion and man-made system of morality. From Buddhism to Islam to Atheism to the entire realm of secular self-improvement, absolutely nothing similar is offered to a God who throws rocks at our window. Perhaps this notion of a love relationship is complete lunacy, but the one thing that it is not and will never be is interchangeable.
The only thing, however, that makes a love relationship with the creator God a little bit different than a human relationship, I have found, is that God can do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Anything less than this would be to posit that God somehow needs us—and God, as God, has never needed anything. God will throw rocks at your window—a spiritual foreplay, of sorts—but when God comes to your front door, he won’t wait until you answer. God, I learned, is not helplessly waiting on my beneficent reply. Rather, when God’s at your doorstep, he kicks down the door, guns a-blazing, and—rather unashamedly, I may add—announces: “I’m about to start cleaning house in here!”
So, to bring this full circle, God’s relentless pursuit of me—not because I’m anything special, but purely because he delights in extending love to nobodies, yes even former enemies—is what has helped me to battle constant thoughts of the next season. God is pursuing me now. His heavenly caravan has rolled through town and ransacked me—in a way I haven’t always expressed in blogs. And, as I walk through the loving desert—southern Cambodia does not lack hot sand—I can see, glimmering off in the distance, something much more real than a mirage—the same heavenly caravan is back. Once an object of destruction—a wrecking ball—is now an object of invitation: “Come away with me, come away with me. It’s gonna’ be wild, It’s gonna’ be great, It’s gonna’ be full of me.”
This Easter marks our third major holiday (after Thanksgiving in Kenya and Christmas in Rwanda) on the field. On Friday, though, our team gathered with the men of B-Squad to hold our own Good Friday service. As we met in the hot top floor of a newly-rented (empty) apartment, it struck me how unlike a normal Good Friday service the evening was. Through an open window, we gazed at a painted sky, a collision of deep orange and lavender that fell over the top of the unfinished rooftop opposite us—a still small reminder that the glory of Yahweh answers to no one and has no qualms about touching down in the heart Islamic Malaysia. The same sun truly does, “rise on the evil and the good, and the rain on the righteous and unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45)—leading some to worship and others to repentance.
Despite the view, the service lacked the typical amenities and flourishes that I would expect from a church service back in the States. A circle of plastic chairs served as pews and a sole acoustic guitar as our worship band, as some sweaty, tired missionaries and a humble Malaysian family made up the entirety of our “congregation.” Nonetheless, all of this simply served to prove that God is not confined to displaying his glory in the ways and locations we would expect.
As Jess read scripture on the last supper (Luke 22:7-20) and led us in communion, and as Mal read scripture on Jesus’ crucifixion (Luke 23), God graciously gave me one of those “this is why I’m here” moments. The story of Jesus’ all satisfying, completely shocking, religiously scandalous, substitutionary death on the cross is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what makes The World Race “worth it.” Further still, it’s what makes life “worth it.”
When I first became a Christian, I viewed the cross as “Christianity 101”—a story to be understood, kept in the back of one’s mind, and then moved past, in search of the more “advanced” concepts of the faith. Every day that passes, however, I realize that the cross is nothing to be moved past—rather, it saturates the beginning, middle, end, and every moment in between of our faith journey.
The cross is what separates Christianity from every other religion—and every other system of man-made morality—from the World. The cross is the ultimate display of our own inability to save ourselves and the ultimate display of God’s good pleasure in saving us. When Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), the course of human history was changed forever. Everything in the Old Testament points forward to the cross, and everything after the Gospels in the New Testament points back to the cross. I want to spend every moment of my life displaying the power of the cross and enjoying the fruit of the cross.
This morning, I heard one of the most profound quotes of my life in a sermon that really resonated with my soul. “We will never see real change in the world until the cross of Christ is lifted up as the standard of love,” the pastor said. And it is so true. The cross of Christ is not one form of love, not one expression of love among many—but rather, the very standard of measurement by which we measure how loving or unloving other things are.
This is precisely why statements like, “let’s just forget the specifics, forget the cross, and just love people” are so tragically contradictory! It is impossible to love people without the cross of Christ, because the cross of Christ is the very standard that everything else revolves around. We’ve all heard John 3:16. It’s likely on a coffee cup somewhere in your attic. However, when the verse says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only son…”, the “so” doesn’t mean “God loves the world so much”, (which he does), but rather, “God loved the world in this way: that he gave his only son.” The very pinnacle of God’s loving self-expression is the cross of Christ—and we are called to act like God, for such is the definition of holiness (Hebrews 12:14).
But the cross is just scandalous, I tell you—it’s ridiculous. The whole point of religion is to gain advice on how one can gain God, gain peace, gain prosperity, or gain life. Such is the aim of the Barnes and Noble “self help” section as well. It’s not fair that the cross can just laugh in the face of all of that! It’s not fair that the cross can marginalize Plato, silence John Lennon, and push Ghandi to the side. But it does. It’s an expression of humility—yet without even trying, and by definition, it also ascends to the throne of all things important in the world.
If you’ll allow me the grace to be honest: I don’t know what I’m doing half the time I’m out here. I don’t know how to navigate deep theological waters. I’m not always sure of what to think about Evangelical versus Charismatic doctrine. I’m not sure how to counsel people. I am trying to figure this stuff out as I go. However, the one thing I am sure of is the cross of Christ.
I mess up a whole lot, but I want the cross to define my life. When people think of me, I want them to think of the cross alone. In fact, this is the reason why my Facebook profile picture (below) hasn’t changed in 18 months and why it never will. The same is true of the cover photo for this World Race blog. The only thing I want people to see is a dim Ben Friedman, off in the corner, and a sharp, distinguishable cross in central focus.
I don’t want this to be a long, complex blog, because the point is simple: the cross was everything, is everything, and always will be everything. I pray that I will not sell my soul, over the years, to anything other than the cross of Christ.
Eleven months is a long time. There is absolutely no doubt about that. It’s not a long enough period of time for your brain to get on “real life” mode—the mode that doesn’t count up or count down time— yet it’s not a short enough period of time to get by on the heightened emotion and exotic newness of a place. Furthermore, the constant (monthly) changing of seasons interjects a deceptively fresh feel to the accumulation of months, thus making the putting off of finding sustainable daily habits plausible.
This started to sink in as we taught English classes to a group of fourteen to seventeen year olds from 8-10 P.M. this past Thursday night. Thursdays are our long days. Though I tried my best to engage in the lesson—simple present and present progressive verbs—my mind kept wandering to a few of the things that I would need to pray about soon.
Keeping my focus definitely requires a constant, conscious, battle that it just didn’t require at the beginning of the Race. Though I taught math in Nepal, rather than English, the teaching was very similar in that it involved a whiteboard, ESL students, and the dissemination of oddly-put-together information via an intuitive mix of simple English, exaggerated hand motions, and universal facial expressions. Despite this similarity of process between now and Nepal, a whole lot more focus is required for me to do what was previously second effort.
As I pondered this, it worried me a bit. “Shouldn’t I be experiencing just the opposite?” I thought to myself—“Shouldn’t ministry be getting easier and easier?” Some of this is undoubtedly related to our circumstances, both Malaysia-related and “end of month nine”-related. The lack of ability to openly share the Gospel is definitely taking a toll on me as it has kept me from the type of Jeremiah 20:9 release I so crave. We sleep in the same place that we work, and though I am happy to know that this represents good Kingdom stewardship, it can certainly create a bit of cabin fever!
Over and above these challenges are the challenges that any month-nine World-Racer will face. Personal and communal challenges can no longer be overshadowed by the raw excitement of travel, and the aspects of the passionately abandoned lifestyle—I did my laundry today by hand, in the sink, with expired soap, and hung it over a plastic chair underneath a fan to dry—can be more tiresome and time-consuming than funny and quirky.
The victory in all of this, however, is that as the missionary-esque challenges that made the World Race so fun (initially) are now becoming burdensome, I can simultaneously see something that used to be burdensome—or, at the very least, dry—becoming vibrant and enticing. I refer here to the pursuit of God.
At the beginning of the race, the pursuit of God was fun, but only in small doses. I almost felt as if it took away from my ability—and I meant well (I think) in thinking this—to enjoy all the other, even spiritual, aspects of ministry and the race. I thought this even more so during my week-long mission trip to Honduras before the race started. I knew I was supposed to read my Bible and pray and meet with God while I was there—simply because those are beneficial things to do daily—but I almost didn’t want to, as I felt like doing so would rob me of valuable time to experience the Central American landscape, throw kids over my shoulder, and snap a multitude of awesome pictures.
That cultural high that I was on from Honduras certainly carried over into my pre-World Race thoughts. Before the World Race, I thought astonishingly little about what I wanted to see God do on the Race. Granted, my thoughts from nine plus months ago are a good but fuzzy, but I definitely remember being more wrapped up in and more excited about The World Race itself than about what God was going to do to me and through me while using the World Race as his vessel.
This was very much the sentiment of the squad as well—and I assume this is normal. Our “World Race July Two” Facebook group was covered in thoughts, predictions, and excitement about which cameras we were bringing, which countries we were most excited for, nasty foods we had heard rumors of past World Racers eating, and whether it would be smart or excessive to pack winter jackets. On the other hand, there were very few, in comparison, conversations about preparations for spiritual warfare, prayer requests, theological questions, or talk of that nature.
“The World Race”, in and of itself, was the talk of the squad. Everything I posted online or talked about with friends had the number “11” in it, and the world map was plastered on many of my friends’ support-raising merchandise. Though I look back on this season with greater perspective, I do not look back on it with even a bit of contempt. The fact that I idolized the World Race, to me, was not a bad thing, simply because a) I try not to be embarrassed at any prior step of my faith journey, as sanctification is a long process and our past mistakes only serve to highlight God’s grace, and b) because God has a funny habit of using imperfect means to unexpectedly woo his children into deeper relationships with himself.
Now, however, that it is month nine, and I can observe with greater perspective what the World Race has done for me, I can see a whole lot of wisdom—possibly in the founders of the World Race’s minds, certainly in God’s mind, and probably in both. I had relied—we all had—for so long on the World Race as an institution to be our source of joy. This has less to do, in my opinion, with the unique attractiveness of the Race to young Christians, and more to do with the age-old relationship of human beings to all things that aren’t God.
We have a sinful tendency to put an extraordinary—and unfair— weight of pressure on created things to satisfy us when we were created to run on God alone. In heaven—which is the representation of how earth is supposed to be now, we don’t have marriage (Matthew 22:30), because God is our full source of love, or we don’t even the sun (Revelation 21:23), for example, because God is our full source of light and warmth! The difference between then and now is not at all that, in this season, God has ordained created things to give us joy—because that is where idolatry starts!—but rather that God alone is still what gives us joy and we simply have to go against the grain and fight our depraved minds and hearts to comprehend that truth and put it into practice.
So, I am realizing that “the experience of the World Race” is amazing, beautiful, thrilling, riveting, challenging, and awe inspiring—yet I am realizing that it is all of these things for reasons other than I had expected. To summarize: “The World Race is not nearly what it’s cracked up to be, and God is way more than he is cracked up to be.” Or, for future World Racers: “As many blogs as you are reading right now, and as many pictures as you are looking at right now, The World Race will not satisfy you like you think it will. God, on the other hand, will satisfy you, over the course of eleven months, infinitely more than, at the deepest levels of your heart, you think He will or expect he can—despite what your lips say.”
I don’t think that the founders of the World Race, World Race staff, or anyone back home reading this blog that may be connected with the World Race would take the slightest bit of offense to this statement. They know what the World Race was created to be. In the end, the World Race, like so many other things—friends, marriage, work, school, money, sex, clothes, and yes, even ministry—are only designed, by the author of the universe, as scaffolding. They are flimsy pieces of wood that we stand on to build our masterpiece and to watch it be built. At the end of the project, the scaffolding is always removed.
Sometimes, the whirlwind experience of foreign mission work creates a spiritual high so infinitely complex that it is difficult to tell how much of our joy is coming from God and how much is coming from our circumstances, our scaffolding—they are intricately intertwined. Sometimes, the only way to tell is to remove the circumstances that form the scaffolding, so that we may stand back and examine the product of our faith journey. 1 Corinthians 3:11-14 describes this concept so perfectly:
“For no one can lay down a foundation other than that which has already been laid down. That foundation is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on that foundation with gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, each one’s work will become obvious, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire; the fire will test the quality of each one’s work. If anyone’s work that he has built survives, he will receive a reward.”
God has been gracious enough to remove the scaffolding for me this month, through a variety of means. It’s as if I am taking a cast off and seeing if I can walk on my own. The result—the state of my faith and the state of my Christian walk—is a beautiful mix of many victories and a few defeats—Mount Rushmore with a crooked nose.
God loves us relentlessly enough to guarantee that our “joy-substitutes” will fail us. If our circumstances are giving us the most joy, he will change them. If people we love are giving us more joy than God is, he will remove them from our lives. If something we own is giving us more joy than God is, he will see too it that it will break or get lost. In the end, though, God is only accelerating the natural outworkings of created things—our friends will fail the deepest longings of our soul, our bodies will fail us, our possessions will acquire moths and rust, and our own lives will end. God knows this, and, out of love, blocks these things as paths for giving us temporary joy:
“For (Israel) thought, “I will go after my lovers,”…Therefore, this is what I (God) will do: I will block her way with thorns, I will enclose her with a wall, so she cannot find her paths…Then, she will think, “I will go back to my former husband, for then it was better for me than now.” (Hosea 2:5b-7).
Praise be to God that he points us towards the one thing that remains after the scaffolding is torn down: Himself.
As we move into the middle of our ninth month on the race here in Gua Musang, Malaysia, and continue to teach English to the children of this community, one thought in particular has bombarded my mind, namely: “I do no want to be anywhere else.” Because we are in a fundamentally Islamic state and there is no direct speaking about our faith allowed, I have had to work that much harder to “set my mind on things above” (Colossians 3:2), so that I may consciously and actively grow in my relationship with the living God—but it’s worth it.
Teaching is definitely my forte, so that definitely helps me to engage in this ministry with passion. And, as we are now past our first week of classes, the students know us much better than they did before—which makes everything a whole lot easier. Though the work is fulfilling to me, it’s not exactly the type of work that makes for epic Facebook statuses or profile pictures.
Gua Musang is a beautiful town, without a doubt, but the fact that it is within only a few hours’ travel from both Kuala Lumpur, one of Southeast Asia’s (if not all of Asia’s) most westernized and technologically advanced cities, in one direction, and beautiful tropical beaches in the opposite direction has not totally escaped my mind. My daily scenery consists primarily, not of white sand and blue waters, but of white boards and blue markers—but that doesn’t bother me. Brandon and I sleep on couch cushions in the back of our teaching center, but that doesn’t really bother me either. As a whole, I really don’t feel as if I’m missing out on anything. To make a long story short (which has never been a talent of mine!), the things of the world—not even sinful things, just things—are becoming, well—boring. They have lost almost all of their attractiveness and almost all of their pull.
I’m becoming a really lousy tourist. I’ve been to Romania, but I didn’t see Dracula’s castle. I’ve been to India, but I’ve didn’t see the Taj Mahal. I went to Nepal, but I didn’t see Everest and I went to three countries in Africa without ever going on a Safari. Despite all of this, however, I still don’t feel as if I have missed out on a thing.
Now, I’d be lying to you again if I failed to admit that thoughts of seeing these places and doing these things haven’t crossed my mind—even if for no other reason than to post about it online and try and impress you. And, if you’ll allow me to expose one of the raw, inner caverns of my heart, I would also admit that I am not yet at the point where I find all of my identity in Christ, thus eliminating the need to try and impress anyone. Praise be to God that I am moving there—or, more accurately, he is moving me there—rapidly, but I am not all the way there yet.
Identity issues aside, though, I really don’t enjoy the things of this world as much as I used to. They’re not enticing. They’re not captivating. They’re not evil, either—but they’re dry—mundane, cheap, plastic, and black-and-white. The epitome of this idea is found in something I read in Philippians 3:7-9 a few weeks back:
“But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ.”
Whatever used to be a gain—luxuries, trinkets, souvenirs—is now a loss—because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ. This doesn’t mean that these things are intrinsically valueless or intrinsically sinful—because they’re not all—but rather that they’ve been eclipsed by tastes of the glory of God. These things are starting to truly feel, to me, like garbage.
Now garbage is not something I crusade against. If we crusade against garbage, we come off as insecure and as head cases—and we might well be! Garbage is not demonic. Garbage is not lurking around every corner, trying to take us captive. That’s the stuff I crusade against. Garbage doesn’t really want to harm me and garbage isn’t that harmful. Garbage is simply something that I throw out. I disregard it and throw it out. It’s simply something I say “ehh” too and move on.
But as detached and dispassionate as the disinterested, shrugging, “ehh” sounds, it can bring great glory to God when it is truly meant. Imagine if you saw a brand new rolex sitting in the garbage. Imagine if someone received a Lamborghini, decided it wasn’t all that great of a car, drove it to the junkyard, shiny and new as ever, and dropped it off. That would be shocking. This same concept is true of the Christian life. When we shrug off—disregard, yawn at, throw away, pass up—many of the things this world esteems as valuable, people notice. It is shocking.
This, for me, has been a huge answered prayer. Admittedly, I am not nearly the prayer warrior that I could and should be, but one of the few things that I do pray day in and day out for is for God to make the things of this world uninteresting to me in order that I may not water down my view of his glory. And God, being the God that he is, has ruined my life by answering that prayer!
I can’t even make it through a movie anymore! I try to watch Talladega Nights and my mind wanders to 2 Corinthians before the movie is halfway done! Now, please, don’t get me wrong. The last thing I want to do is triumph my own righteousness. I am dead flesh. Dead flesh can’t will itself to embrace life. Any and all change in me is purely the grace of God actively working out change in a passive me—which I have to imagine Paul is getting at when he finishes his famous “garbage” zinger with the caveat, “…not having a righteousness of my own…” I could not have willed myself to consider things garbage. God alone has to do that in me and for me—but he does respond to prayer. So, in that light, Pauls’ Philippians “garbage rant” is not a command, but a diagnostic. Do you consider the things of the world as garbage? If you don’t, then beg that God would create that mindset in you and for you.
The last thought that runs through my mind is always, “Why can’t I have both?” I was thinking this just a few days ago. “Why can’t I both ‘gain Christ’ and be largely a relaxed, leisurely, tourist in this beautiful country of Malaysia?”. In my opinion, the answer lies in the understanding of what God’s truly after.
If God’s main purpose—his end goal—is to save souls, then there is absolutely no reason why I can’t “gain Christ” and “consider the things of this world as something more than garbage.” For one, I’m already saved, and secondly, the salvation process (Romans 10:9) has nothing at all to do with my views on worldliness! This is where we stop, most times. But God is after so much more.
If God’s deepest goal, one the other hand, is to exalt the glory of his name—to trumpet a symphony across the heavens and put on display the mind-blowing beauty of his image, attested to, in unison, by a sea of saints and angels singing “worthy is the lamb”—and for us to deeply enjoy participating in this worship experience, then the “regular old” things of this world can actually run opposed to this goal in that they turn our gaze from the God’s whose driving purpose is to capture our gaze! If the Mona Lisa exists purely for us to memorize rote facts about its painter and say a few words regarding him, then a few tiny splotches of rogue paint in the corner would be inconsequential. But if the Mona Lisa exists to be put on display—marveled at, adored, and enjoyed, in the finest art gallery by people from all over the world, then those splotches of paint—harmless in and of themselves—would be opposed to the very core of that painting’s purpose!
Let it not be that way with us. I pray that the things of this world—despite the fact that most all of them are neither sinful nor bad in and of themselves—would slowly become like garbage to us—lazily tossed on the side of the road. It is at this point that we can gaze upon Christ in his fullness. I’ve had tastes of this—Christ in his fullness—here and there, and it kills me--it's tantalizing--that I can’t describe it to you. But, then again, if I could, he wouldn’t be Christ.
