You can only blame jet lag for so long.
At the end of January, I had the privilege of going to Gap D Squad’s second Debrief in Port Elizabeth, South Africa! It was an incredible week of deep conversations, celebration, and reflection for the Squad.
The highlight of my week was the opportunity to speak to the entire Squad at one of their evening sessions. It was the halfway point of the Race which can be a tough place to navigate for a World Racer. Knowing that, the Lord gave me words of encouragement for them as well as words to challenge them into a deeper relationship with Him over the second half of their Race. Afterwards, I was able to catch up with a few of them and see how the Lord spoke to them as individuals through the words He spoke through me. I left that Debrief very satisfied with what the Lord had accomplished in those five days.
After Debrief, I took a few extra days to go to Cape Town to explore! One of the highlights of my time there was hiking Lion’s Head. Below is a picture from the summit!
Once I got back home, I noticed I was way more tired than I had been when I came home from other Debriefs. I blamed it on jet lag. A few days of jet lag turned into a week, a week turned into two weeks, and pretty soon it was almost a month. Okay. Obviously, jet lag isn’t to blame anymore. There was a deeper issue.
Just this past Monday, I was reading Hebrews 4. It talks about how the people of God were not entering into His rest because of their disobedience. It’s as if the Lord tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to my Bible, and said, “This is for you, home skillet”.
He revealed to me that morning that I went into a season of disobedience after I got home from South Africa. When I say “disobedience”, I don’t mean I was doing sinful things. It just means that I was not doing things He asked of me or I was doing things that He didn’t want me to do. Operating outside of the will of God is a very tiring thing. Believe me. The last few weeks off my life can attest.
He’d ask me to stay home and rest, but I’d go to a friend’s house to watch a movie instead. He’d prompt me to send a text message to one of my Gap Year Racers from when I Squad Lead last year. I wouldn’t do it. He told me to put some money in someone else’s support account. I was like, “Nuh, uh”. They weren’t major things, but they added up over time. I soon felt the weight of my obedience which led me to exhaustion.
This revelation just came to me on Monday, but I’m already feeling the positive effects of what it means to live in obedience. On top of that, being able to identity what the issue was has given me so much freedom. I’m so grateful that the Lord doesn’t give up on us when we act like we’re two years old. He calls us out, tells us to put on our big boy pants, and pushes us to keep moving forward.
“Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” – Hebrews 4:11
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