Our culture prizes comfort and perpetuates consumerism. It locks us into a lifestyle where we expect the soft, the savory and the entertaining on a daily basis. And this expectation corrodes the will to fight in us. We become OK with the status quo. We become dumbed-down, like domesticated farm animals rather than the wild thoroughbreds we were made to be.

The good news is that waking up to this circumstance, we Jesus-followers have the power to rediscover our true identity as world changers. Recognizing our comfort addiction, we need to do what any addict on the road to sanity does and throw off the chains that encumber us.

With this in mind, last year, we developed the World Race as a rehab for comfort-addicted American young people. It requires that lifestyle be cut to the bone, stuffed in a 50-pound pack, and the menu of toxic temptations in their lives left behind. They trade the noise and narcissism that muffles their God-thoughts and causes them to dream pedestrian dreams for the wide open possibilities of adventure on the ragged edge of a mobile life in a multi-cultural setting.