by Max Andrew Dubinsky
“Why do you think we are reluctant to fear God?” Dave asked two weeks before I was scheduled to leave. I sat back in my chair, a room full of young faces engaged in a Bible study looking back and forth at each other for the answer.
I responded. “I’m reluctant to fear God because I do not know God.” This was not so much a statement as it was a world-wrecking fact. Suddenly it was all so clear. Oh shit. Maybe I’m no going to Heaven after all…I grew up in the church. I’ve been saved three times. I serve at my local church. I give money to the homeless when I have a spare dollar. I attend Bible studies. I lift my hands in the air during worship. How do I not know God?
142 days ago the only God I knew resided inside the four walls of the sanctuary. The God I knew was safe, kind, and only present on Sundays.
“Do you realize what you are doing here?” Mel asked. I was on my way out. Church was over. I needed to catch the bus. But Mel had heard what I was doing. That I was going in search of faith in America. Believing God was calling me across the country on March 1st even though I had no computer, no money, and no car. “You’re being the very faith that you’re going in search of.” She reached out, touched my arm, and smiled.
“I don’t think God is going to give you a car until March 1st,” Christina said. I was sweating this whole thing because I was leaving in less than a week, and I’ve never been great at distinguishing between God’s voice and my own raging inner monologue. I still had no wheels. “God doesn’t give us anything before we actually need it. If He said you were supposed to leave March 1st, then who is to say someone won’t slam on their brakes when you step outside that morning, get out of their car, and hand you the keys?”
I got the car the night before I left. I failed my smog test, couldn’t get it registered, and two hours later the battery died. The next day on the road, my car broke down in the middle of the desert four hours into the trip.
Without missing a beat, I got out and started walking.
It wasn’t until later that night when I finally arrived at my campsite at the Grand Canyon, and saw it was buried 9 feet deep in snow that I realized God was letting these attacks happen not because I wasn’t supposed to go, but because He just wanted to see how far I was willing to take this thing with Him.
Over the last 142 days I have traveled 12,560 miles.
That’s 426 cups of coffee.
279 fast food meals.
36 tanks of gas.
35 different cities.
24 different beds.
8 different couches.
6 motel rooms.
4 air mattresses.
3 breakdowns: 1 car, 2 mental.
2 life-changing God encounters.
And 1 love story.
I spent my first few weeks on the road aimless and without purpose. I desperately wanted to work for God. What exactly was I searching for again? Was I supposed to give a dollar to every homeless man? Preach the Gospel to everyone I meet? Or just look good in my boots and new jacket?
I looked in the mirror. I began to hate what I saw.
Until a woman named Amanda in Florida told me, “I speak to myself the way God would speak to me. When I look in the mirror and don’t like what I see, would God tell me that I’m ugly or fat? No, he’d tell me that I’m beautiful. Because I am. I am beautiful.”
Until Nick in Spokane said to me, “Max, maybe this trip isn’t about you. What if God sent you across the country to change the life of one man? One individual who might never know God if you didn’t cross paths with him. Or to simply bring someone back to Him? I like to think the God we serve is just big enough to orchestrate that.”
It was time to stop working for God, and to start working with Him.
A few weeks later I paced out front of Barnes and Noble, and called a close friend and mentor of mine back in LA. I’d met someone. And I’d fallen in love. This might slow the trip down. She was beautiful. Smart. Hilarious. She spoke to my potential, and was crazy in love with Jesus. I wanted her to come with me. “Lauren is coming with me on the road,” I said to Steven. “We are getting a lot of heat for being two single Christians traveling together. What am I supposed to do?”
“What are you trying to do?” Steven asked. “Are you trying to gain readers and please everyone? Or are you trying to lead a charge?”
Are you leading a charge today? Or trying to make everyone around you feel comfortable?
This world needs shaken. It’s time to turn this place upside down.
In Tampa, sitting outside in the thick, Florida air, Amanda took a final drag on her cigarette. She had finished telling me stories of addiction and sacrifice. Stories about a woman who has died twice and is still here to talk about it. “I finally fear God,” she said. “So now I am finally getting to know Him.”
142 days later.
I’m 7 days away from my return to LA.
“It’s time to give the people the ending they deserve.”
I’ve driven though the ghettos of Chicago. The canyons in Utah. The mountains of Denver. I’ve hung out with the homeless in Savannah. I’ve seen tornado damage, and spoken to cancer victims and survivors.
And I’ve been questioned about the God I serve. I’ve been asked if there is a Hell and if Heaven is a real place. And how can a God who loves us let such tragedies befall us.
God never promised to reveal why there is so much suffering in the world. He never promised to reveal why things happen. So stop looking for answers and satisfaction. The world is so eager to say, “See! You’re wrong! God doesn’t care. Otherwise He would have prevented this!”
Yet by saying there is evil in the world, we claim there is a moral giver.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked. “Spirits? Demons?”
“We’ve had to perform exorcisms before,” Alexa said sitting on the steps of the State Capital building in South Carolina. “Cast out demons. Whatever”
“If there’s evil in this world, that means there’s got to be some good lurking around here somewhere, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of evil?”
And there is also life. There is so much life out here.
But we get so consumed with ourselves that the moment we believe God has failed us individually, we believe he has failed us all.
If God doesn’t exist for me, He doesn’t exist for you either.
You lose your faith because you are only looking for it in your life.
Today I can tell you this: Even when I feel as though God has failed me, I know He has not failed the world.
We would never lose our faith again if we took the time to see it in everyone else’s life.
Alexa looked at me and smiled. “It’s time to go home, Max. I saw it the moment you walked in that you were done and tired. You could have gone home the first week you were on the road. What you said changed my life all the way over here on the edge of the east coast. Go be with Lauren. She’s been patient enough. Go home. Get some rest. It’s time for the next adventure.”
I pulled the car over on the side of the road. I opened the passenger door and got down on my knee. I kissed Lauren and told her, “3/4 of our relationship has been in this car. We’ve laughed and cried in here. We’ve fought in here, and rejoiced in here. We’ve shared secrets and retold stories. We’ve fallen in love in here.” I pulled out a ring. “So it seems only appropriate that I ask you to marry me in here too.”
The next adventure…
It’s hard sometimes. Living on the road. Some days feel more like running than living. It’s hard to wake up and it’s hard to go to sleep. I desperately want my own four walls. To sleep in a bed that belongs to me. I want to step into a familiar shower. Some days I feel so lost because I don’t have a home.
“But look around you,” the father of the family I was having dinner with in Texas said. “You say that you’re homeless. Look at how you have spent the last 6 months. You have created a home everywhere you have been. You now live in a community that stretches all across America. You have so many people who are for you. And a God who has never left you.”
The father looked at us from his end of the table and smiled. “No. You’re not an orphan. Not anymore.”
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