Robin Brooks searched for Jesus for years in the comfort of small town America. It wasn't until she stepped into his world, amongst the hurting, dirty, and dying, that she could see him with clear eyes. It was there that Robin, in the weakness of her own heart, finally found him.
I spent six years looking for God.
I looked for him in my high school. I searched for him on my college campus. I poured all my free time into ministries.
I hopped on a plane and prayed that he would be in one of the 11 countries I’d visit during the World Race. I thought maybe if I served enough people I would see him.
Three weeks into the journey, I found myself in a Guatemalan city dump. I thought I’d find God here, but he felt further away than ever.
We were in a shanty-town at the edge of the dump. We met children cast aside by their culture, scavenging a living reclaiming and recycling other people’s garbage, trying to help hold their families together and still have some fun.
And here I was, trying to love these little kids but coming up empty. I couldn’t get enough distance between me and the beautiful, wild-haired children dancing around me.
I knew these kids would spend their childhood making memories in this place. I desperately wanted to join in, but the mess and brokenness of the garbage was seriously attacking my first-world boundaries. I just couldn’t see beyond myself.
That’s when I saw him. A little boy, standing on a pile of used diapers and moldy cardboard, with flies swarming around him. In that moment, I came face to face with the God I had been looking for. With dirty hair and torn rags for a shirt, he stood looking straight at me.
But still completely wrapped up in my own mess, I didn’t recognize him.
Over a year later, Abby Power was looking for God in the same barrio, the same dump, with the same beautiful, wild-haired children.
With her little friend Enner on piggyback, and the company of her team, she joined a memory that no one wanted to make. She set Enner down and stood beside the mother of a little girl who recently drowned in the river. Staring at Kimberly’s photo, framed with flowers, Abby felt Enner tug at her pant leg.
She looked down at him, his eyes wide and his hair filthy. In her heart, she smiled. She had found what she was looking for.
In the dirt and muck of this garbage dump and in the mess of her life, she let a little boy climb onto her back and into her heart. And through that boy, she recognized the love of God.
Abby found God a lot quicker than I did. It took me few more weeks to understand that when you become [comfortable in the uncomfortable], when you sit in the mess with the hurting, dirty, and dying, there you will meet him.
We want so desperately to find God on our own terms. We hope that giving him an hour on Sundays, saying we surrender, and volunteering as a youth leader will convince him to show his face. But what he truly wants is for us to set aside all the things we’ve put ahead of him, and see with his eyes.
Like me, Abby, and so many others, Nikki Ziegler left her life so she could find it, too. At the end of her trip, she recalls her greatest discoveries.
“…through all this the Lord has taught me so much about his faithfulness. He has opened my eyes to a new world. A world with so much more meaning and purpose. An adventurous world, a dangerous world, a world filled with passion.”
God is faithful, and he says that when you seek you will surely find. Are you ready to leave it all behind to find God for yourself?
It doesn’t always take leaving your life for an extended time — sometimes all it takes is a week to seek and find Jesus. Spots are still open on our summer Encounter trips to Kenya, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ireland, India, Swaziland and even more countries around the globe. Sign up for a trip today!
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