Austin Carty

Watchman Nee once wrote of a man who, while at church, asked for the Lord to take over every aspect of his life; then, as the meeting concluded, just before he was about to walk out the door, the same man said to a friend, "See you here next week, as long as it doesn't rain."

This is a parable I can relate to. I'm the king of surrendering my life to God … when it's on my own terms.

Case in point: I didn't want to make this trip.

Because of my participation on CBS's Survivor: Panama-Exile Island, along with my being a noted Christian speaker, I was booked to be the guest speaker/discipleship mentor for a South Korean International School's Survivor-themed retreat on the beaches of Indonesia.

But, like I said, I didn't want to make the trip.

Turns out I needed to. My life in the preceding months had been quietly losing its intimacy with God. I can't exactly explain why. I can only say that this is something that happens to us all.

Faith is a journey, I have found. It is always being refined—always being held over the flames and then brought out to cool against a base human proclivity that seeks only to please one's self.

On Common Ground
A vast majority of the students I spent time with on the trip are full-blooded Korean, but have only actually lived in Korea a small portion of their lives. Almost all of these students are the offspring of fathers whose business ventures require their families to move at a moment's notice. Therefore, many of them don't know what it's like to experience stability in a particular culture. This became very apparent to me as we ventured into various villages in Indonesia to do service projects.

As we worked building fences and volleyball courts, digging ditches, painting fences, and playing with destitute children, I found that these affluent middle-school students didn't view themselves as being any better than the Indonesian citizens whom they were serving.

Their behavior reminded me of how Jesus operated in his 33 years on earth. He spent time with the poor, the deprived, the marginalized. And He did this not because He was humbling Himself but, rather, because it was the right thing to do. To suggest that Jesus viewed the underprivileged as friends in consequence of humility would be to suggest that God views one of His creations as better than another. It would imply an intrinsic bias.

No.

Rather, Jesus associated with the underprivileged because He was the embodiment of truth. The idea that all human beings are equal in God's eyes is the foundation of truth, and our world would be better off if we committed this idea to practice.

Jesus Is Better
Spending a couple of days in this Indonesian environment was quite rewarding for me. The country is 99 percent Muslim, and just this past March Time magazine deemed the small nation "the crossroads of the Muslim faith." Therefore, we were prohibited to talk about Jesus in the Indonesian villages. (Back at our camp, however, we could discuss God freely.)

But not being able to speak about Jesus in the villages didn't mean He wasn't there.

I remember watching a young Korean boy fall ill from dehydration. He and I were by ourselves as this happened, sitting outside in the schoolyard (which was really just a small dirt field). An Indonesian man who happened to be watching walked over and began probing his fingers into the boy's back, practicing a medicinal art that, to me, seemed more antiquated than the Pony Express.

But as I watched him work, I knew Jesus was present in the moment.

Though I know this man is a practicing Muslim, I, as a Christian, am convinced that any act of love such as this one—any act of truth—is a reflection of God's love. The beginning of John's Gospel explains that Jesus was the creator of everything, including love and charity, and it goes on to say that experiencing these things is impossible outside of Him.

I think that forgetting bedrock truths such as this was the primary factor that led to my losing intimacy with God: I forgot that Jesus was the author of everything beautiful and true in this crazy world. I began thinking of Him only as a conceptual deity, only as an all-powerful inventory checker, an impersonal Someone for whom I was supposed to mind my manners and be a good boy. But Jesus is better than that.

Songs on the Beach
On the final night of our stay in Indonesia we met on the beach. A bonfire had been lit, and as it stood tall as a man, violently ripping with flames, it spoke of the refining process God had been doing on all of our hearts that week.

That night I, along with one of the young boys from the school, played guitar and led a chorus of praise songs that lasted for nearly an hour.

One of my favorite movie moments from recent years takes place in Leonardo DiCaprio's The Beach. Several friends of DiCaprio's character are gathered in a circle on the beach, strumming an acoustic guitar, and singing Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." This night in Indonesia was just like that, only I was singing Chris Tomlin's "How Great is Our God," another beautiful redemption song.

Austin leading worship on the beach.

And that's when a remarkable thing happened: a kid fell to his knees to give his life to Christ. And then another followed … and then a third. Ultimately, seven children dedicated their lives to Jesus that night.

I would learn the next morning that the seven kids who gave their lives to Christ were, in fact, the seven very kids for whose salvation the staff had been praying for nearly a year.

I realized then that God had designed this trip for me before the foundation of the world, and I had been prepared to cheat him. God had known that at that designated time, I was meant to deliver a very specific message that those seven students needed to hear. I was meant to learn from those culturally diverse children what it means to serve with humility and to not think of myself as better than anyone else. Because of the trip, I reestablished my intimacy with God.

Today, I'm back in the United States.

As I write this, I am sitting in a Starbucks, a paragon of American commerce. But my thoughts are with those poverty-stricken children in Indonesia, and with those international students who spent an evening with me singing love songs to God around a roaring bonfire.

Their songs are suddenly filling my heart and rising free from my spirit, suffusing the room around me with the love and peace only available through experiencing the touch of God's Son. Their songs are my songs … they are our songs.

And with these memories in tow, with my heart still singing, I will now shut down this computer, leave this coffee shop, and head for church.

Even if it's raining outside.

Austin Carty, who competed on CBS's popular reality show Survivor in 2006, is a Christian speaker and writer from High Point, North Carolina. He has spoken at many events, including Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry Conference. His MySpace page has become a popular hangout for young Christians, and he field loads of questions weekly from young people curious about the Christian faith—and, of course, Survivor. Check out Austin's blog at www.rockitoldschool.blogspot.com.

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