Strangers

What does it mean to be a stranger on earth ( Psalms 119:19) ?
 
I got a message from one of my old squad leaders from the race, who had gotten a psalm and word for me in month 10 on the race but just got around to giving it to me. Which go figure was in fact the absolutely perfect timing for me to receive it.
 
She gave me Psalm 119, and a list of the things that the Lord had highlighted for me when she had read it, and they were all spot on. I then read it for myself and as I was reading I came across verse 19 and stopped. The words struck something in me that left me mesmerized in that moment. The verse said “I am a stranger on earth”.
 
I have read this verse many times before but at the particular point I am at in my life it just hit me in a completely new way. I saw it with new eyes. In fact I wouldn’t doubt that God had just unveiled it’s meaning to me at the perfect time that I needed to hear it. When I was ready to accept it. It hit me, and gave words to the thing I have been feeling in my spirit for months now. I am a stranger on earth. We are made for a different kingdom. I’m not meant to fit in, or conform or to be comfortable. I am a stranger here.
 
God has taken hold of my heart and shaken every part of who I am. To the point of him asking me, “Are you willing to give up your life, in order to grasp the dreams I am placing inside of you?”. To give up my life for his dreams. Everything in every part of who I am screams yes.
 
As I continued to read Psalm 119, I got to verse 32. Which says, “I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.” I choose God and his path and life not because I have to, not because I am some how obligated to, but instead because he has set my heart free. He has set my heart free and allowed me to be consumed in the love that he has for me. To me, there is no other option.
 
I am a stranger on earth, meaning the world won’t understand why I choose to leave comfort and the “American dream” to chase after the Lord. There will be times people don’t get it and franky don’t agree with my choice, and that is totally ok they don’t have to. The Lord has called me to chase after him no matter what the cost, and right now the cost is me continually dropping all the plans I have for my life and leaving to go over seas.
 
 After coming off of the race there were a good majority of people who expected me to come home get a job, and settle down. Which there is nothing wrong with as long as it’s where God was leading me, but it wasn’t. He was calling me to leave again, and so a month and a half later I was once again leaving the country for Kenya.
 
This time around there was hesitancy in people wanting to be supportive or just understanding why I was doing it. What they didn’t realize is that God had grabbed hold of my life and changed it’s direction. Following after him and his will for me wasn’t a “phase”, it is my life. What a beautiful, messy, chaotic, sporadic life it is.
 
As our team has been in Kenya the Lord has been pressing it on my heart to lead the team into a place of knowing they are strangers on earth. To view their lives from a kingdom mindset and that no matter where God leads them, to let their lives be fully in surrender to him. To live set apart and different, and to let the love the Lord has showered on them rub off on everyone they come across. The Lord could lead them back to school, to a job, back to America, or he could radically uproot them and take them to another foreign land or city, but the location of where they are and what they are called to doesn’t matter. What matters is that in everything they do, they seek to put the Lord first and seek his perfect will.
 
God didn’t take hold of all of these students and place them in Kenya, so they could have a cool experience for four months in Africa and look back on it for the rest of their lives as a time where God really showed up. No, he took them to Africa to begin the process of showing them that they are strangers on this earth, so they could begin the process of figuring out what the Lords will for their lives is so they can be saturated in his presence ALL the days of their lives.
 
The journey is just beginning, and I fully expect God to take hold of every single one of us during these next three months and set their hearts free and shower them in his love. To the point where they are willing to give up anything to seek his presence. I have already seen so much beauty come from this process and life to spring up in places where there was none before, and all I can do is thank God for giving us the opportunity to live a life set apart. It really is more beautiful then anything we can imagine, or plan by ourselves.