The Straight and Narrow

“You don’t have to be strong,” she said, hugging me.

I blinked at her and smiled. “I know!”

She tilted her head and looked at me gently, patted my shoulder, and I smiled back and walked away. 

As I turned, I could feel her staring right through me. Her soft eyes were penetrating my soul and there was no way hiding anything from her would successfully work. I had never met this woman, but something told me she’d have more impact than I was initially hoping for.

I walked through the doors to meet my crew thawing outside in the sunshine. There, in the nippy October weather, stood my World Race Squad. There were nineteen of us, addressed as “N Squad” collectively, and each of us walked onto AIM’s campus for our training camp, completely unsuspecting of what this week would take us through.

We found out pretty soon, though. As one of our key speakers said, “God himself is predictable. But the ways in which he works… that is unpredictable.”

God was making every unpredictable move possible. Through me, through my people, through the leaders and trainers and O Squad and mountain tops and food and pavilions and porta potties– it got us all thinking.

Over the course of the week, I had three realizations:

1. When God says it’s the narrow path that we take to get to his kingdom… he’s not exaggerating.

2. I’d never been in love, and was way more resistant to it than I had thought.

3. Christianity is bigger than me. Faith is bigger than Christianity. God is bigger than faith.

Let’s break it down, shall we?

 [Realization #1: “When God says it’s the narrow path that we take to get to his kingdom… he’s not exaggerating.”]

I was walking back to my campsite the first day, eager to set up my hammock and allow my social battery to recharge. Personal time wasn’t too long, but it was long enough to grab a Cliff Bar, set up my Eno, and crack open Seth Barnes’ Kingdom Journeys. 

Kingdom Journeys, if you haven’t read, is Seth’s philosophy about the Gift of Restlessness,  and how the act of leaving what you know can truly transform a person. As I read, I found myself in the middle of the book where Seth describes the act of abandonment. I read examples of people in the midst of their journeys, faced with trials we only read about in books. One kid had his laptop, clothes and other personal belongings stolen, as well as their car breaking down in a foreign city. A girl was held at gunpoint and was told that if she didn’t hand over her cell phone, she would get shot. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a phone to give him, but made the choice to abandon everything, even her own life. Thankfully, the man was bluffing and didn’t fire, but after reading that, I paused, looked up from my book, and took a breath.

Maybe it was the way he worded it. But it hit me.

This trip had nothing to do with me. This girl abandoned herself because she understood that what she was doing, who she was representing, had nothing to do with her. I wasn’t going on this trip to gain clarity over my life. I wasn’t going on this trip to meet friends and serve people in the ways that I wanted. I wasn’t going on this trip for anything that had to do with me. I was a vessel.

This was all for God.

Maybe it’s silly to say that I just now realized that I was going on a mission trip to serve the Lord, but in that moment, sitting in my hammock under the tall trees surrounded by tents of strangers, I understood that I would have to give up everything in order to serve Him.

And yes, that was terrifying. 

‘I don’t want my laptop to get stolen’ ‘I still want to know what I’m supposed to do when I get back,’ ‘If I actually had a gun to my head, what would I do?’ ‘All of me will be stripped away from me.’ ‘I’ll have nothing to hide behind… Dang, I have a lot more pride than I thought.’ ‘All of these strangers are going to see the rawest version of myself that no one will have ever seen before.’ 

‘Crap. People are gonna see me break.’

Let’s be real. Some of us like sharing about ourselves more than others, but no one likes having themselves laid on a table dissected for strangers to see. All the mucky stuff we keep inside would spill out. They would see the things that we wouldn’t even show ourselves. Our secrets, our unforgiveness, shame, pride, addictions, sins, guilty pleasures, tears, anger, fears, trauma, illnesses… our Pandora’s Box would be wide open. 

Did I really know what I was getting myself into? If I wanted to go on this trip, I would have to learn how to die in the worst ways I could imagine: allowing N Squad and Company to get close and discover the in’s and out’s of Sarah.

‘Dude, we need to leave. We gotta get out of here!’ Something in me screamed, ‘if we stay any longer they’re going to get to us.’

Clearly, I stayed.

But that thought haunted me the first couple days of camp. I knew Jesus and these people around me were banging on the door of my heart to let themselves in, but I’m a very stubborn person. There was going to be no access to anything unless I allowed it. This could go on for the whole week, months, or the entire year if I really wanted it to. But I understood that guarding myself would become exhausting and selfish, especially with people like this around me constantly, who had so much to give. There was no hiding, try as I might. 

All of this being said, I recognized that God was at the center of this mission. Not my desires or questions. I was to surrender myself completely and do what God called me to do. The act of giving myself up was going to be something I would constantly fight against. I don’t want to be an emotional cadaver. I want to be whole and help those in need, singing my praises and reading about God’s good works, not experiencing them. But here I am.

Does this mean that with every call the Lord tells me to complete I’ll pursue it openly and completely surrender? HA! No. I can already tell you that. The amount of times I could feel the Holy Spirit tugging me like a dog on a leash, eager to go frolic in a field with me, and I simply yanked back on the lead, ignoring its passion, was quite a lot. The man-made concrete would feel safer on my feet than the potentially thistly ground I might tread across.

All of this to say, when God said we must walk a straight and narrow path, he seriously meant it. All of us were born into luxury. All of us in the States are richer than some people could ever fathom. Lots of us have friends that love us, family that cares for us and homes that protect us. That means for us, that eye of the needle is harder to jump through.

God’s narrow path doesn’t include shelter. It doesn’t include families. It doesn’t include friends or significant others or pets or coworkers we love or places we enjoy attending. God’s narrow path doesn’t accept food cravings or hugs from that one particular person or lake days or holidays or Spring Break. All it requires is an action of going. Taking that first step out onto the water with Jesus in sight. 

 I continued my week with that mindset. Did it change my actions immediately? Nope. But when I looked at the people around me, it gave me peace. Because rather than having to acquaint myself with strangers, I knew they were already family. We were all on campus for the same purpose, whether we had realized it already or not.

And that was just one realization. I’ll leave you with that one for now. (Second one is in the drafts.) So while my squad and I already said yes to experiencing a glimpse of this straight and narrow path, I encourage you to look and see how your daily comforts are making your path wider and easier. Study the Scriptures, and see what you need to sacrifice in your daily lives in order to make the way a little smaller. Soon we’ll be tip-toeing down the way, but God’s got a slackline. If we fumble, he’ll pull us right up.