As I walk out my life with others and in front of many, the
Lord has been teaching me a lot about what it means to be a leader. It has been a slow and painstaking process as
I have many rough edges that the Lord has had to chisel off through
circumstances or people. I have learned
many lessons most of which have come through failure or pain. However, there has been just as many, if not
more opportunities for joy. Through all
of this, the Lord has plagued me with the question that I can never seem to
escape, what are you willing to give up for me?
It seems that every time I step out and follow the Lord to lead a new
team, he asks me to give something up. I
struggle through it and I fight it at times, but the end result is always the
same, another piece of me dies.
In the past I have given up comfort, money, my truck,
security, and a since of entitlement.
All of these things I have given up to follow the Lord to wherever it is
that we are going. This season of my
life has been very different for me because I have been learning that the
students, more often than not, just need to see someone walk out their faiths
and be “ordinary radicals.” They want
something that is real, that they can taste, touch, and see. The students that I work with are sick and
tired of people pretending that things are okay, when clearly they are not. They are not dumb; they’ve seen their
parents, friends, and churches put on this mask that says everything is fine,
when clearly it isn’t. So how do you
reach students like this? How do you
even begin to connect with them? Well,
one thing is for sure, you have to be transparent, and vulnerable with them,
otherwise they will know right away that you are putting on a front. They will then lose respect for you and write
you off. When taking all of this into
consideration I now have changed my approach to these students. I am upfront with them. I put all of my baggage on the table, all of
my struggles, fears, and anxieties, and I say, “here, does this help anyone?” Then I give them an invitation to walk out
their life with me as we try to figure out how to walk with the Lord.
Back to my original question, what are you willing to give up
for me? This last team that I led to the
Amazon had a lot of broken and hurting students, with some deep hurts. Because of the hurt that they were carrying
around, the Lord challenged me to go deeper in order to reach them. The Lord was challenging me to go to a place
that was previously off limits. He
wanted me to share about personal insecurities that I have never shared
before. I wrestled with it and
eventually was obedient. When I shared
about all of the insecurities that I had about my self- image and how that has affected
me; I had no idea how they would respond.
The Lord used those painful embarrassing insecurities to break through
and bring healing to these students. For
once in their lives, they were seeing someone walk out brokenness in front of
them and they followed suit. They
realized that they were not alone, and that it is okay to be a mess and to be
broken; that they could come to Jesus, just as they are. Immediately they became open to sharing with
us leaders so that we can help them sort through things. We prayed with several students and saw the
Lord do a powerful amount of healing and restoration.
I am willing to give up whatever I need to in order to be
close to the Lord and follow after him.
If that means that I need to share things about my life that are not
easy or are embarrassing in order to help someone else along then I will do
it. Even now, I am sacrificing things
that are not easy for me. I had to give
up my apartment before I left for the Amazon, so I have been staying with
friends and will continue to move from house to house from week to week until I
leave for Kenya the first week of September.
So to summarize this long update I will leave you with two points.
1) I
am called to be his!
2) I
am called to give up everything to follow him!
