Posted in Pre-Race: Goin' places by Danny Weiss on 4/8/2012
I’m in love with Easter. I’m convinced; it’s the greatest day of the year. It’s the greatest day of the year as unequivocally as Titanic is the greatest movie ever made.
We all forgot about Titanic. And we all wrote it off as cliché and corny and over the top. But then we experienced it again in theaters this weekend, and we were all left afterwards with our shirts drenched from hours of crying, and our whole bodies racked and shivering from the overwhelming flood of raw emotion and epic beauty. Easter’s kind of like that. It comes around 1 year later, just like Titanic comes around 1 dimension later, and it smacks you in the face with how Powerful it is.
Sometimes wake up calls are pretty tough to get through. Two weeks before I became a Christian I spent the last week of the semester on a couch, recovering from both mono and hepatitis. In retrospect, the amount of mercy God had, in giving me that week to process blows my mind every time I think about it. But I don’t think that would stop me from calling it the worst week of my life. My roommate had come home early, merely by chance, and found me on the couch, barely conscious and bleeding profusely from my left wrist. My body virtually shut down after that, from all the drinking I had been doing and all the blood I had lost. And in that week I was left with every miserable thought, every doubt, every insecurity, every failed answer and misguided step finally blowing up in my face. That question ringing in my ears, How did I end up like this? Each second of that week felt more hopeless than the last, each breath sinking me deeper into despondency. Like I said, wake up calls can be tough. But sometimes they’re beautiful.
I saw a lot of Baptisms this weekend. And I can’t tell you how hard it was to keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks, a huge grin from lighting up my face. I think I saw nearly 30 people publically confess their faith, take the dip, and answer ‘yes’ in new, emboldened voices, to the two questions posed before them; recognition of Jesus as King, and an obligation and passion to follow Him. And to me that was a beautiful wake up call: a reminder of how far God’s brought me, of how blessed we are to be His adopted sons and daughters, of how faithful He is, of how good He is, of how worthwhile it is to follow Him.
The day I accepted Christ, right before New Years last year, was the day the scab fell off my wrist. And the new skin, shiny and white, stood out in a jagged z, no longer a painful reminder but an emblem of hope, of wholeness, and renewal.
Today I saw hundreds of faithful followers lift their hands in reverence and in praise, in gratitude and in worship of a King. Amazing Grace! You could hear it in the fervency of the worship. Christ is risen from the dead! You could see it straight through their eyes, their gaze turned heavenwards. Oh Father we love to sing out your praise! You could feel it, emanating from those whose heads were lifted in passionate salute to a God who saves, a God who mends broken lives, a God who redeems the lowest and the most undeserving, and a God who does it out of love, before we even realize we needed it.
Today I couldn’t help but notice, that scar on my wrist shines out even clearer than the day my journey first began.
Oh praise the One who paid my debt, and raised this life up from the dead!
Exactly one year ago was my first Easter with any sort of true understanding of the Gospel. And I will never forget how passionate that day was, how much the thought of a Savior engaged our hearts completely, as three of my best friends in Denmark and I spent the afternoon sharing what the Gospel meant to each of us out in one of the public parks, before pooling together to cook a family dinner and crying together through the Passion of the Christ. I’ll never forget how God brought the four of us, from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Denmark, and Chicago to celebrate new life as brothers and sisters through His death and resurrection. I’ll never forget that feeling of purpose, of belonging, spinning in circles as we blasted Phil Wickham’s Eden, truly celebrating being truly alive!
And this year I know that feeling of true joy wasn’t a fluke. I see it in almost every face that walks out of those church doors, I read it all day long on my facebook news feed – the world is on fire for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we can’t help but shout it out, to whoever has yet to come into this glorious freedom, into this marvelous light.
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death, come awake! Come awake! Come and rise up from the grave!
I cannot tell you how much I’m in love with this day - I guess I'm just happy to be here.
Love,
Danny
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Posted in Pre-Race: Goin' places by Danny Weiss on 3/29/2012
God loves to show off. In BIG ways.
Faith is the greatest thing in the world because it always holds the promise that no matter how difficult or dry the season, more and more each time God’s gonna jump out from behind a nasty situation or a problem or a person and shout SEEEEEE I TOLD YOU I WOULD COME THROUGH, LOOK HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU!!! And the more I walk with Him the more He shows me what little else I need besides that promise.
I’ve been getting really frustrated lately. Really restless where I am, feeling kind of stuck and disconnected, struggling to stay passionate and engaged. I’ve been getting frustrated at the lack of fruit, and the day-in-day-out seeking the Lord has become exhausting.
But God is so faithful!
Last week I was in LA with a group of students on a civic engagement trip, exploring the issue of LGBT homeless youth. We met with a huge range of organizations and partnered with a couple in community outreach. And turns out, God had a lot to teach me. The whole LGBT community has really been placed on my heart the last few years. I feel like in a lot of ways this community has just been dealt a much harder hand, and instead of reaching out with love and support, the church has done all it can to drive them away in condemnation, spitting at them as they went. To be honest it was really hard to see my friends who do identify as LGBT recoil at the news of me becoming a Christian. But if you’re reading this I just hope you know, that the Jesus I know, the Jesus I follow… it’s because of Him that I’ve really learned how to love you guys.
Half of our group at Venice beach, after our first day of outreach
What I’ll take away most from this trip was something I never expected to find there in the streets of Hollywood, among the homeless and the discarded, those on the run or those turned away, those forced into survival sex and drug addiction, those society has branded as utterly worthless.
Gratitude.
GRATITUDE! Walking around handing out sandwiches and water and snacks and condoms and socks at 11 at night and just talking to those stuck in a system that hasn’t been as kind to them, pimps and transwomen, the chronically homeless and those who for the first time didn’t have a place to stay for the night… I expected bitterness, disdain, offense, pride, and even aggression, but nothing could have prepared me for the gratitude.
12 students and 3 adults, completely out of place, doing nothing but giving up a couple hours of their time to walk around and hand out bags, to people who had fallen through the cracks of society and been forgotten about. Who were we to deserve their gratitude?? The more we walked, the more I felt my heart drop in shame, embarrassment, inadequacy, and pity. But in those moments, when my body was screaming what are you doing here, the homeless became real people to me, real hearts with real lives and real stories and real hopes and hurts and dreams and desires. And as the pity I had felt stewing in my gut began to turn into empathy, the strangest thing started happening. Voice after voice spoke up as we left each person, their arms full of goodies, calling “God bless!” as we made our way down the street.
And I think that’s when it hit for me, how backwards we can get it as Christians. We put God in a church and shine up the windows and blast the organ and take it on ourselves to get people in. And even when we don't, we sit around and wonder where he went, wishing we had more of Him. But Jesus has left that stone edifice long ago, and frankly I’m not sure He was ever there. He’s in the streets with the poor and the oppressed, the orphans and the widows and the sex workers and the gays, the broken, the ignored, the destitute; the beautiful. How do I know? Cuz I saw Him there, and I heard Him there, and He said He’d be there, and everybody on the streets already seemed to know, and told me so, as if I was the one who needed reminding. “God Bless!” And I guess I did need reminding. The kingdom of God is inside us, each of us, and the Holy Spirit was BLAZING that night.
One of these days I’m going to stop being surprised where I find Jesus, where the Gospel comes alive. We met a ton of incredible people this trip, people who gave up everything to serve alongside the homeless, who worked with passion and with love for the sake of something bigger than themselves. And whether Jesus was their motivation or not, I think Jesus would have cared an awful lot about the same people they were caring for. And if you don’t know Him but you’re here, boy I’d sure like to introduce you to Him.
This week the World Race stopped being something I wanted to do, and became something I needed to do. This is life to the full, and I need it, and I need to be living it with people as enraptured with the Lord as I am, and at the work the Lord is doing. Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t go on without it. I don’t want this religion or this traditional church to get in the way: give me Jesus, and put me where He’s working. I’ve seen and I've felt it, and I won’t be living unless I’m living there, living to the Lord, with the lost and the broken and the forgotten and the oppressed. That's my religion.
Love,
Danny
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Posted in Pre-Race: Goin' places by Danny Weiss on 3/11/2012
The inconstancy. It kills me.
And all you can do is throw up your hands and throw off your mustache hat, offer up a quick prayer in the general direction of upwards, and call it a day as fast as you can, before anything else goes wrong.
You go through these dry patches, where all of the sudden any communion or intimacy with the Lord is sapped up, and you’re left with the question of whether what you so recently felt with God was all that you thought it was. God feels distant. Motivation to delve into the Word is fleeting, if it's there at all. Your heart feels somehow out of step with the world, and the absence of His voice is filled only by a vague ringing. It’s the same feeling that floods your lungs like an unexpected winter chill, when you step outside in the morning only to find that it’s 20 degrees colder than it was the day before. It steals your breath and sends you reeling in defense.
Sometimes walking with the Lord is the hardest thing in the world. There are these desert days, amidst all the perfect days of truly savoring His presence, where the only glory you can glimpse is hidden just out of sight, shimmering on the horizon. The warmth seeps out of the day so fast it catches you off guard. And all the songs of God’s love are just distant melodies caught up in the wind. The real world doesn’t disappear when you come to Christ, nor do its seductions. And though the war is over, the battle still needs to be waged, day by day, minute by minute.
The only way forward is through the flames. Christians were never meant to be sealed off from the trials of the world; there is no righteousness if there is no faith, there is no faith if there is no trust, and there is no trust if there is no test.
And sometimes the test is no more than a dropped connection, when everything just kind of fizzles out into a curiously distant dial tone.
But what’s even worse is the guilt and the fear that take up the prowl, when the sun sets and all the traces of your long months of steady walking fade into nightfall. Keep those beasts as far back as you're able!
Thank God that His faithfulness isn’t as temperamental as ours.
There’s hope here. You see, I’ve finally come to value these desert stretches, when things are dry and distant, the pieces seemingly impossible to connect. I'm finally getting used to this, that walking with the Lord doesn’t mean feeling good, doing good things, or having things go well. It means staying thirsty. And there is nothing that has made me thirstier for the presence, power, glory, mercy, justice, rest, and comfort of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ than these times where I can’t feel Him.
His love is His promise. His faithfulness is foolproof. They are built upon a perfect foundation. And even when my mind can’t seem to grasp anything more than a name, I’ll hold on to that name all the more tightly, even during the dry times. Especially during the dry times.
It’s been hard to get to a place where I feel like I’m prepared for the Race ahead. The wait is the worst. Every time you feel like you’re growing, the winds race through and you’re in a dry patch once again. And those dry times when you’re left alone, when you can’t even feel the closeness of those around you let alone the closeness of the Lord – it’s tough. And all these questions and doubts and uncertainties swirl around you in a roar of commotion. Incoming support has flattened out. Independent work has swept the campus like a plague. Temptations gnaw at you from all sides, and apathy settles in like a coat of dust. Things just pile up. It gets really stinkin’ tough to hear the Lord sometimes, through it all.
But the beautiful currency by which we base both our faith and the hope for which we live, is the unblemished accountability of the Lord to quench our thirst.
So I’ll stay thirsty.
Love
Danny
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Posted in Pre-Race: Goin' places by Danny Weiss on 2/9/2012
I read a book recently. It was an honest book. A beautiful book. And like one of my good friends said, there was so much truth in it. The pages were driiipping with truth. And the whole thing spun up silken strands of nature, mountain hikes, vitality cool as a river and the freshest zeal for life, and wove them all into words so poetic they floated off the pages like a song. It was so beautiful it rang with sadness.
Jack Kerouac wrote this little book, The Dharma Bums, detailing the poetic abandonment of a few guys, self-proclaimed Zen Buddhist lunatics, the Dharma Bums, in search of life, real life, and the meaning and value of everything, against the conviction that nothing is real and nothing truly matters because nothing truly exists.
Let me clear this up, I’m not a Zen Buddhist. My heart aches for these guys because they were missing it and they knew it. Life isn’t beautiful because it is devoid of ultimate meaning; it is beautiful because meaning is bursting at the seams because of and only because of the life, death, resurrection, and glory of Jesus Christ.
I wish he got that. I wish Kerouac got it so badly. And he might have eventually. He might have because he knew he didn’t have the full picture, just a piece of it. He was still hunting, still seeking for ultimate truth. But the characters he wrote about, gulping down life like a pitcher of water, rolling in it filthy and raw, leaping down mountains and shouting haikus back and forth over the wind, reading foreign philosophy books, living on nothing, hitch hiking across the country and believing with all their hearts in their prayers for all sentient beings, words that aren’t words but are necessary in his descriptions simply because no real words are good enough.
Japhy was his name, one of these characters. And these characters were real, and they’re still real. People fed up with the system, the everyday American, typical life 9-5 work day system that can’t be truth because it doesn’t mean anything in the long run. People running after dreams – characters running after dreams, running after truth, running after beauty and loving life with everything they have because otherwise it hardly seems worth it.
I’ma pray for those people every day of my life, because they’re sooooo close. They’re SO close. Just answer every one of their questions with Jesus, and put him at the end of every trail they’ve sprinted so hard down – that’s what I want for these people, for the ‘Japhys’ of the world.
And after I’ve prayed for them, that’s who I want to be. I want my life to bleed so much zeal and vitality and reckless abandonment and beauty and truth in the name of Jesus that I’m swimming in it, and my feet never touch the ground again. I want my life to be marked by so much honesty and humility that Jesus is written in every single thing I do and say. I want to taste the fullness of the reality of life every waking second and never taste anything else.
I want to go on this Race, and when I come back, I don’t want to be returning TO normal life but FROM it. I want my life to be so radically transformed by Jesus that Race mode becomes my ‘real life’. And when I come back, it won’t be coming back and settling down, it will be a restless interlude, so uncomfortable that I can’t do anything but dive back into the fullness of the truth of World Evangelism.
Though I could quote the whole book, here are two, one slightly altered and one straight up.
I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics Jesus Bums who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures with the glorious liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And for real…
Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked up to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or another."
Real life.
That’s what I want.
Love,
-Danny
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Posted in Pre-Race: Goin' places by Danny Weiss on 1/23/2012
I feel like my first three blog posts have maintained such a serious tone that I’m only half represented. And like, I’m a pretty goofy guy, so I don’t know what THAT’s about....
But seriously.
I stumbled across this picture yesterday :)
Just a baby I found...
And I just wanted to share this side of me, a side that’s less about overly dramatic writing (although I must say, I’m rather good at it, and everything I’ve said is all very very true) and more kind of like this picture.
This is what I do, I search for pictures like this day in and day out.
Actually wait that’s not entiiiiiirely true, I do a lot of things with my free time when I'm not eagerly slaving away at my studies dutifully getting ready to graduate (love you Mom), whether that’s watch old Gymnastics World Championships late into the evenings (my commentary gets louder and more sarcastic the later it gets, just ask Trent), watch repeat seasons of Survivor (gosh I’ve seen em all multiple times now... just ask Trent), or look up trip reports of amusement parks and roller coaster POVs (or write trip reports of amusement parks and edit coaster POVs).
But proooooobably what’s been consuming the majority of my attention these last months, has been the world. The whoooooole world. And gosh I don’t know what to say, I just love it so much! I mean look at that picture. Look how much beauty there is in that little girl’s smile, and how the horizon just goes on forever and ever. I can just hear the noise that camel is making, kind of like the noises I tend to make when I’m especially hungry or moderately goofy or both, like ET mixed with Chewbacca mixed with a constipated dinosaur, and I imagine that little girl making the exact same noise.
So I’ve had this phrase rattling around in my brain for a while now. I’ve said it a lot and I’ll say it again: “God put the whole world on my heart.” And for I while I don’t think I really understood what I was saying, and then for another while I was almost ashamed of it. I had this voice in my head saying “How many missionaries do you know who get to see all of it? How effective can you really be if you’re never staying in one place?” And to be honest, I don’t really know yet, but I’ve come more and more to realize that staying put somewhere just might not be something I’m designed to do. So to make like the only way to serve God is by rooting somewhere longterm, is imposing limits where they shouldn’t be any.
Plus look what Paul did.
I see a list of places, especially a list of how much these places are in need, and as I read every single one, my mind jumps to “Oooh I wanna go there – oh wait first I wanna go ther – Oh wait no – oooh there – ooooh I should go there.” I mean I’ve got lists of places I want to go, people groups I want to share the Gospel with, tribes I want to reach, languages I want to learn, paths I want to walk, so many lists I have a folder of lists of places God’s put on my heart. And that’s separate from the folder of folders of pictures I’ve collected over the years. I mean, this picture has a Mongolian child with a camel in it on a steppe, and they’re both laughing. I’ve got hundreds more like this. Ok well I mean, not exAAActly like this, but sharing similar… traits of exoticism and outlandishness.
And it just makes everything feel so right, thinking of a God big enough and good and loving enough to reconcile the WHOLE WORLD, every living breathing beautiful thing to himself, out of Glory to His Son and to Himself and for our own good and the good of all things. I mean, God made that.. He made ALLLLLL that. And I guess I just want to be a part of it. All of it. I want to serve that God.
So count me all in and send me packin’, there’s a lot to see, a lot of people to reach, a lot of God’s glory to be taken in and a whole lot more to bring about.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
-Bilbo Baggins
One Way
Love,
Danny
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Posted in Pre-Race: Goin' places by Danny Weiss on 1/2/2012
I find myself overwhelmed with things to share.... So overwhelmed that I thought it was the 1st of January again. And I was all ready to pump out a post heralding the Glory of Our God in making things new, but now I realize that God has done so much in the past couple weeks, especially the last couple of days, that I needed an entire day to recover from it, and my January 1st was passed with minimal amounts of conscious awareness.
Praise God!!!
I just got back from IndyCC, a Christian Christmas Conference through Campus Crusade, that last year brought me to Christ and this year once again radically changed my relationship with the Lord. It has just become so clear how intentional God is at putting us through things so that the magnitude of His glory can most perfectly be revealed. I just very quickly want to express my gratitude for His Sovereignty, His greatness, His timing, His comfort, His provision, and the family of believers He has adopted me into, as well as all the new brothers and sisters we got (literally 154 explicitly new believers!!!), and the ones I had the opportunity to meet.
I wish I could recount to you every word of the messages that were shared, every revelation God systematically led me through, every single way God touched every single person, every burden He lifted, all the guilt He ended, everything that was added as fuel to the flame for the passion of the Lord in every heart, and the conversations and relationships that God used to just build Himself into the 2200 Midwestern college students … because without all THAT, I’m afraid I’m not going to adequately convey how awesome our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is.
But ifffffff I had to condense all this into one single blog post [of which I’ve already rambled through half of, DANGIT I always do that!!!] I want to focus on the consummation of everything - that everything in my life and in my faith is being drawn forward, in one direction, by Him and through Him and towards Him. I find myself overwhelmed by the unidirectional nature of walking with the Lord, how everything only moves forward, whether we recognize it or not.
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When the Lord drew me entirely to Himself exactly a year ago, I saw firsthand the incredible power of sanctification, and it was wonderful. But over the course of 2011, I have been unable to ignore the fact that some things have not been as good as they were in that honeymoon period of new faith. Throughout all the wonderful work God has been doing, and the ways He’s been revealing Himself to me, I still find myself struggling with lust, with experiencing joy, and with slipping back into brief periods of depression. Things felt muddled and confused - and while I was still sure God was working, I just had no idea how. And I was finding myself plagued with questions and doubts - if God is truly at work sanctifying me, then why are these old problems and habits creeping back into my life??
And for those of you struggling with the inconsistency and imperfection of your own lives in the midst of the Life-giving promises of hope and joy and the present Kingdom, I soooo badly want to encourage you!!
The truth spoken to me this weekend was this - God allows sin and brokenness and struggles to frustrate our lives SO THAT we are lovingly driven back to Him OUT OF our own self-interest.
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!! Have you been struggling with the fact that life hasn’t lived up to what you hoped it would be? Have you been struggling with a Lord that would allow you to go through such painful circumstances? Have you been in any way disappointed that God hasn’t rained down perfect happiness and peace, despite your faith? IT’S BECAUSE YOU SHOULD BE!!
Because of sin, because of our brokenness, because we were made for perfection in righteous union with the Lord of the Universe, we have every right to be disappointed that things don’t live up to the way we think they should be. They won’t. Because God, in His own overwhelming love and faithfulness, MEETS US HERE IN THAT GAP, so that in simple acknowledgment that life is painful, confusing, and impossible on our own strength, there is Hope for a beautiful and glorious Kingdom.
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To be honest, there are times, especially in the last few months, where the joy of the Lord has not been my strength, and where I’ve had trouble seeing how my response was properly gratifying to God. But He works through my frustrations, so that in simple acknowledgment that I can’t work through those inconsistencies on my own, He has met me here and revealed to me so much more clearly the plan, direction, and focus of my life.
I am so excited to fight temptation and to combat the struggles and hardships of this earth, knowing that through faith the Glory of the Lord is manifested and made perfect in our weakness. And even when, no, ESPECIALLY when we can’t see it, Peter said it best when he responded “Lord, where else will we go, You have the words of eternal life.”
Where else can I go, what else can I do?
I will rejoice in my struggles because God’s glory is made known through them. There is one way my life can go from here, and it’s towards Jesus, by Jesus, for Jesus, and through Jesus. I will continue walking forward, by faith, because there is nowhere else I can go.
And though I struggle and stumble I will feel no guilt, because my debt has been paid.
And though the darkness of the world surrounds me I will fear no evil because my God has never left me and never will.
And though my feet are tired and the road is rough and the distance is long, I will continue walking in one direction and one direction only.
For by His strength and by His love I know there is no condemnation for what I leave behind, in living towards His Kingdom.
Love,
Danny
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Posted in Pre-Race: Goin' places by Danny Weiss on 12/12/2011
The word ‘beautiful’ gets thrown around a lot these days.... And sometimes it’s really annoying. Because when it’s said really pretentiously around eeeeeeverything, the word loses its meaning so fast. There are those people to whom absolutely anything is beautiful… anything. “Oh look at that wall, the way the stucco sticks out with all the graffiti and gum on it… it’s beautiful.” “Oh look at the way the light beams off that dumpster next to that one plant… so so beautiful.”
So I’mmmm….. ummm… definitely one of those people sometimes. I admit, get me in a certain kind of mood, and my standards of beauty plummet. Generally I’m most affected in developing countries or in places of extreme exoticism, you know? Like, “ohhhh look that camel just threw up on that Arab baby… it’s so beautiful.” “I just love all the violence and lawlessness in this dusty disease-ridden ghetto… so beautiful.” “That Indian gypsy prostitute beggar woman has no money, no dignity, no home, and no teeth. Look how beautiful it is the way her bones stick out of her decrepit body… so BEAUTIFUL.” And heaven forbid the sun is setting. “Look at that feral mangy emaciated baby cow taking a poop in the road with the sun setting behind it… it’s so beautiful.”
Maybe it’s a gift? To see beauty in places like that? Probably it’s just annoying.
But here’s the thing, there’s a lot of beauty out there, and I’ve seen probably more than my fair share of it. But one thing has stood out above all the others, and I wanted to share it here.
The most beautiful thing I ever saw:
I do this for a few reasons.
One, because it wasn’t what I expected it to be.
Two, because it’s probably not what you’re expecting it to be.
Three, because it rewrote my standards of what I see as beautiful.
Four, because I have no doubt in my mind that there’s nothing more beautiful.
It’s not a person. It’s not a landscape. And in most cases the sun isn’t even setting.
No contest, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen is the Gospel at work. Seeing what it does in peoples’ lives, hearing it shared, hearing the Holy Spirit take over with words you never knew you had, seeing someone so engrossed in sharing that the passion and purpose just echo around them... Sharing the Gospel is a not only work of art, it is the most perfect, intricate, and beautiful work there is.
I remember in Ecuador, sharing with University students in Spanish, my mind completely blank as words I’ve literally never put together before tumbled faster and faster out of my mouth. And I remember the earnestness and weight of what I was saying grow both in me and in the person I was sharing with, and it’s very clear to me that I wasn’t the one speaking. Stepping back completely, surrendering control to the power of the Holy Spirit, and seeing it actually work – there’s nothing more beautiful. And it didn’t even have to be me. Seeing Enrique or Kenya or Michelle take over, when my Spanish would falter, while the life of the Gospel immediately would flood back in to the conversation – the Holy Spirit is so evident, so real, and so darn beautiful.
- Practicing the Gospel in Spanish with my new brother and sister, Enrique and Kenya -
Guayaquil, Ecuador, Summer 2011
Seeing the Holy Spirit work like that, moving lips and moving hearts, stirring everything up in a whisper and proportioning supreme importance on that one particular moment, when the words of life are spoken and finally, finally at long last understood… that can only be described by one word. Beautiful
This is art. This is beauty. Hope and peace and power and true, true religion, spoken by someone brave enough to open their mouths but humble enough to not say a word, while the Holy Spirit wraps everything up in words so beautiful that lives are instantly and irrevocably changed. People sharing the Gospel in whatever capacity they are able – that is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And now whenever I hear anyone sharing, I just stop, and take it all in. Sometimes I’ll close my eyes and let the words of the Holy Spirit just wash over me. Sometimes I’ll be fascinated by the dawning comprehension of hope on the recipient’s face. And sometimes I’ll just think, and remember earnestly what that story means to me right then. My journey of brokenness and self-surrender, of the hope that Jesus died for me because He loves me, no matter what I’ve done or how far I run away. The news that God wants my heart, that He wants all of me, not because I deserve it but because He still thinks I’m the most beautiful thing He’s ever created. And the hope given by Jesus' sacrifice, the purpose for which I live.
And since then, because of the light of the Gospel that poured into my life by which I now see everything so clearly, everything has just been so beautiful all the time.
Love,
Danny
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Posted in Pre-Race: Goin' places by Danny Weiss on 12/4/2011
Every so often I have to stop and ask myself,
“Danny, what on earth are you doing?”
It’s what keeps me grounded, really. And for someone who makes as many noises and watches as much Survivor as I do, making sure I’m grounded every so often is ohhhh-so-very-very essential. But I used to ask this because I honestly didn’t have an answer.
There’s something absolutely horrifying about not knowing why you’re here. When the wheels come off, and all the hours of practice and studying and living a life for a job and a retirement and even a family seem to fade in light of the fact that none of this will matter in the end, there is a kind of horrible stagnant floating hopelessness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. And sure you can fight it for a while – “I’m here to live life to the fullest”, "I’m here to do nice things to others”, "I’m here to do what I love"… but in the end none of those can mask the despair you feel when you can’t find anything better, bigger, and more worthwhile than yourself to live for. And you ask yourself in disbelief "is this really it?"
I promise you it’s not
At the lowest point in my life, Jesus became my hope, my savior, my everything. The light of the Gospel flooded my life and literally saved it. And what had burned out into a stale message of a benevolent beardy Man whose life I couldn’t seem to relate to, turned into a relationship with the real living breathing saving God of the Universe. I found my identity in the Gospel that gives hope to everyone - the Gospel that fleshes out a reason for living and for loving - the Gospel that is the source of every ounce of strength and motivation.
And so that same question, “what on earth are you doing??” became something entirely different. It became, Danny, what are you doing with this whole God thing, are you crazy? Nobody follows this stuff, it isn’t real. Have you lost your mind??
“Danny, what on earth are you doing???”
There were those moments where I would just look at my life and what it had become, in complete awe of how I got there. It’s so weird to have your entire life be changed, and the world go on as if nothing happened.
But I think even if I had tried to go back, I wouldn’t have been able to. When God changes your life that completely, it’s all you can do to give Him everything. And so throughout this last year, as my faith has come to mean more to me than anything, the question has changed meanings yet again.
Now it comes when I lose sight of Him. When things get overwhelming, when my prayer life slips, and I begin to pile more and more stuff in between me and time with the Lord. When I make excuses and feel the gravity of the world pulling me back to how I used to be.
Danny, what on earth are you doing???
The truth is I don’t want to go back to the way I used to be. I won’t. I can’t. I have seen a glimpse of the face of the Lord, I have heard His voice, I have tasted His goodness and love and purpose, and I have felt the freedom of the Gospel course through every part of my body!! Freedom from sin, freedom from death, freedom to live, freedom to love - I Promise you there is nothing better!
I’m not doing the World Race to see the world, or because I don’t have to get a job. I’m going because every time I even entertain the idea of staying home, living with security and a salary and safety and comfort and people who speak English and won’t need me to serve them every second of the day, not having to worry about raising support and not seeing my friends for a loooong long time, I hear that same question over and over and I can’t get rid of it.
“Danny, what on EARTH ARE YOU DOING!?!?”
The reality is that I can’t stay. I can’t. I look at what Christ did on the cross, I look at how He served and how He loved, how He carried the entire sin of the world on His shoulders out of love, and that He did that for me… and it all just becomes so clear. This is it. Christ is my new reality. Christ is my only reality! This is His call on my life. I don’t pretend I’m fit for the job - but answering His call - that’s all I can see fit to do.
“If we live we live to the Lord” – Romans 14:8
God to Your Glory let me LIVE!
Love
-Danny
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