How to Become a World Race Host

 

I bet you came to this blog because you liked the title.  Or I guess you could just want to keep up with my life haha but let’s talk to the racers that googled “How to….World Race” and came across this blog. 

Now…I bet you came to this blog because you liked the title (;

Maybe you’re looking for a list like this….

1. Do the World Race
2. Build a Team of Radical believers to go with
3. Go through Long Term Missions Training in Georgia
4. Raise enough money to make minimum wage while on the field
5. Fly to your country, and begin taking in World Racers! Yay!

 

We live in the world that’s fixated on seeing results, and seeing them fast….the “I want it but I want it now or I don’t want it at all” mentality.  One thing God has been teaching me the last few years is that sometimes good things take time and patience and hard work. 

                         

So, lets take a look at that first list…that’s a nice list….and pretty practical.  As a practical person, I appreciate the clarity and simplicity of that list but unfortunately (for me at least) my “list” to becoming a WR host was a tad bit more of a mess and looked a little more like this…

 

1. Go on the World Race….say yes to a bunch of things I didn’t want to say yes to but did because I knew God wanted me to.
2. Get wrecked on the World Race
3. Realize that you’ve have been living a life for yourself and not really for Jesus even though you tried really hard to make it look like you were all for Jesus on the outside
4. Cry a lot
5. Start your second month on the race….repeat steps 2-4 regularly
6. “Lead” a bunch of people that are older and wiser than you. Mess up, make mistakes, mess up again. 
7. Get wrecked on the World Race…again.
8. Make really cool memories visiting with teams on your squad and participate in ministry alongside them…realize that they are really cool people, and you love them a whole heck of a lot.
9. Read and reread the squad C&C’s (now they’re called Journey Markers?) all the time.  Fill out more receipts than you ever thought was possible for any one human to fill out. Learn how to use excel so you can pretend to know how to budget your life.
10. Phone calls with the US AIM office. Phone calls with ministries.  Phone calls with TLs. Phone calls with the Uber drivers.  Phone calls with the random cruise ship telemarketer that called almost every day for the whole year.
11. Get stolen from in Africa.  Break your phone in Africa. Have a knife pulled on you in Africa. #thanksAfrica
12. Finish your race as someone completely different than when you started….but also much more whole than you began because in the bargaining and the logistics and the ministry and the phone calls and the late nights and the overnight bus rides and the travel days and the boiled eggs for dinner and the one on ones and the team debriefs and the blogging and the waiting it was never really about you.   It was always about learning how to accept how much you’re already love by God and how there’s nothing you could ever do to mess THAT up.
13. Simply say “yes Lord” to coming back to country God gave you immense love for . Watch God work.
14. End up hosting World Racers.  Have the time of your life and thank Jesus for being your constant through it all.

 

That list is quite different than the first one.  That list has a story, it’s got life.  

 

In about 20 minutes, I will be headed to the airport to pick up World Race 4th generation S-Squad.    S-Squad will be the 3rd squad that I will have hosted for a full month and the first month 1 squad that I will have ever hosted.  To say I’m excited would be an understatement haha….I absolutely can not wait to see them and train them and watch them go out and build kingdom in their first month on the World Race.  

 

But it’s been a journey for sure in becoming a World Race host.  One full of lots of pain, laughter, tears (the ugly kind), patience, and growth.

 

I remember in 2012, before I even went on the World Race, I was reading a blog written by a WR host about the things you can do to love your host well.  In the middle of the blog, I heard God say “You’re going to get to do this too, you’ll get to be a WR host one day”.    I was hopeful that this would happen as he said but kept my hands open because at that point I had not even been a racer yet. 

 

In 2014, I became a World Racer. 

 

                          

                                 (my first travel day on the World Race)

 

It was the most beautiful and most difficult year of my life.  Every wall that I had built up for myself founded on pride was struck down that year in order for God to reveal to me that I had a serious sin problem of holding people’s thoughts above the Lord’s.   It honestly didn’t matter to me that God loved me if the people around me thought I was lame.  So I claimed to work for God, but inwardly worked for man.

 

At my lowest point, in March 2015, I laid on a mattress in the bush of Botswana completely void of feeling because for the first time in my life, I had no person or group of people to turn to for instant affirmation or encouragement.   My squad had gone through an awful ordeal and as I sat there wallowing in self pity, I lingered on the thought that no one would ever understand.  Even if I ever got back to America, how could I ever explain to another person what happened?  Who else would ever go through this?  Who else could I ever talk to about this experience as an SQL, this year of my life that was seemingly ending so horribly? There seemed to be no hope….I felt as if I’d always feel this way.  Not being able to find safety in the things I once relied on to sustain me, on that rickety bed, I truly cried out to God.  I didn’t feel like I had the strength to get out of my bed much less do anything productive with my day, but God met me there and in that still small voice simply whispered “I’m here and I p-r-o-m-i-s-e you Drea, that it is all going to be ok”.  He helped me get up, shake off the self-pity and doubt, the fear of never having anyone understand what I was going through and gave me (in the words of Kris Vallotton) the ability to”will” to do the things that I didn’t really “want” to do.  I finished my race out and drew closer to God in those last 3 months than I had the previous 3 years.  From there, he answered my prayers for healing over my own heart post race and walked me through the many lessons which have served in rebuilding my life on a much more solid foundation in Christ.

 

                           

                      (Hugging my brother in the airport after finishing the race)

 

Those lessons, that were learned only by allowing God into the deepest and most broken parts of my soul, were what have led me to this beautiful season of getting to be a World Race Host.

 

There is a clear distinction made in the bible between living for the acceptance of Man or God…and Paul says it pretty clearly in Galations 1:10 “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

 

“…If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ”  Did you catch that? Paul knew.  He said “still”.  He lived for man once too.  I think a lot of us fall into that trap.  He is also clear that if he were still there, he would not be a servant of Christ.  Why?  Because you cant do both.  In order to be a servant of Christ, in order to really follow him you can’t both love man more than God and God more than man. 

 

The first commandment is to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and the second, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself “. They are in that order for a reason….flipped, and you get damaged people living in sin. I played that game, es no bueno.

                       

 

 If you are there, if this is in some way convicting to you…my encouragement for you is this:   

Don’t settle for that life.  Approval from Man can seem so so great, and honestly it’s pretty rewarding in the short term but finding TRUE acceptance as a child of God is So. Much. Sweeter.  It really is. The acceptance of man has no stability, no consistency and will not hold you up when you find yourself in a pit…. Finding freedom in who Christ has made you to be as a son or daughter however, will always be something you can stand firm on and trust in God to bring you back to as a launching pad in the tough times.

 

Two years ago, I was not in a place to be “hosting” anyone.  No matter who it would have been, they would have held too much power over my happiness because I was living to please man and not God.  Today, I sit here on my bed in Hyderabad India, free. So free…and so excited to go pick up this group of World Racers who I’m sure are about the embark on an incredible year of intimacy with the Lord themselves.    Welcome to India, S-Squad! P.S I bought you a banana tree….YO WELCOME.