What's it Gonna Be?

If you are familiar with my previous posts you may remember me saying that I do my best writing, or most of my writing after 2 a.m., well this is no different. As I am writing this it is 3:27 a.m. and I felt like it was time for another post. So without any further ado I will just jump right in.

            Have you ever felt like you are just living? Like you are just here on this planet fulfilling no purpose at all? Maybe you feel like you have a purpose but what you are doing and what you want to do are 2 very different things. If any of these caught your attention this post is for you.

            I was driving home from where one of my friends was working the night shift, and for lack of better words, I was feeling like crap. Here I am, going to a Christian college studying to become a minister and I feel like I am so far away from God. You want me to tell you why I feel this way? Its because I am far away from God; my sin has driven me from him. Everyday I try so hard not to sin and I do it anyway. It is my own selfish desires. If you think about it, that is what sin is, our own selfishness. It has been said that when we sin we are saying that we want immediate gratification that sin offers rather than wait on God. My selfishness has slowly pushed me away from God yet again. Every night I pray for God to help me, sometimes I have been so far away that I even tell God that I don’t know if I am sorry. You may think that statement is a bit far fetched, but in reality, is it? Saying that we are sorry for our sins and actually being truthful about it are 2 completely different things. If we are truly sorry then we will turn from our sins. Take a relationship for example. If you do something that upsets your significant other then you apologize to them and you do not do it again, or at least you try your absolute hardest not to. If you turn around the next day and do it again were you really sorry in the first place? My guess would be no. So with that said, I pray that God helps me overcome the sin in my life. But will he help us if we don’t do our part? Doubt it, seriously.

            Some days I just feel like I am here, just living and not doing what I am meant to do. To be honest I do not know exactly what I am meant to do or just how I am going to do it. What I do know is that I should be representing Jesus Christ with everything that I do. Every breath should be about him. You want to know the truth? I don’t do it. I fail miserably every single day. I get very down on myself about it and I almost feel like I am depressed. I want to do the right thing but every time I want to, this little voice comes in and says “go ahead, cheat, it’ll be ok just this once.” It is driving me crazy. My life is so hectic right now, I have school and friends and work and anything else you can pile on to make my head spin. I feel bad about not pleasing God with my lifestyle. And I try to so hard, I just fail so much. I feel God’s conviction very heavily on me and I want it to stop. I am at a breaking point where I have to choose. (before I forget, please pray for me about this)

            So anyways, back to my ride home where I was “feeling like crap.” I was listening to a christian radio station and honestly just wanting some kind of sign to come on the radio to show me that everything would be ok. At first there was nothing, but then, a song I had never heard came on. The song was about someone going through the same situation. The felt like they were just living and wanted God to come make everything better like they knew he could. I cannot remember the words for the life of me but it was exactly what I needed to hear. Some may say this was a coincidence but I believe with everything inside of me that God put that song on just for me. There is a song by Casting Crowns that I do know the words to. The song is Stained Glass Masquerade. The words say “are we happy plastic people, under shiny plastic steeples, with walls around our weakness, and smiles that hide our pain?” I have been that person for a while now and put on a front in front of people so that they wouldn’t know I was messed up inside. What I forgot is that the church is here to help; not the building- the people. But that’s another story in itself. 

            For too much of my life I have been just a bystander, someone who knew the right thing but did his own thing, someone who casually walked around like life was no big deal. I spoke about a few weeks ago and I spilled my heart to the kids in my youth group. When I was in high school I knew of God but never could anyone tell. The thing that burdens me the most is that I feel like I strayed my buddy from God. I told him about God but never lived up the lifestyle that I preached on. I believe the expression is “practice what you preach.” And I didn’t practice it at all. After I spoke about how I don’t have a quiet time every day with God like I should, a girl in the group came up to me and challenged me to sit down everyday and have one and after a month she would message me and ask if I had done it. I wish I had kept up with it. My own selfish desires got in the way again. I have only missed a few but at the same time everyday I miss one it would be easier for me to tell myself I could miss the next day. And everyday I missed I grew more apart from God which is where I needed to be.

            I thank that girl for challenging me to do one everyday. I have grown spiritually through the days I did spend time with God. ( the stupid thing here is that I still would miss a day despite my spiritual groth) The second day of my month-long challenge I read something that stuck out to me very much. John 3:30- “he must become greater; I must become less.” This was John talking to his disciples about Jesus. He was saying that he must let go of everything in himself and his selfishness in order for Jesus to become who he is suppose to be in John’s life.  Here is an illustration for what he was saying. There are 2 jars sitting on a table, both halfway filled up with water. On one jar there is your name. on the other jar the label reads “Jesus.” With this illustration we must assume that there is no other water in the whole planet to fill either jar with. The only water is in the 2 jars. One of the jars has to be filled, there is not in-between. We can either take the Jesus jar and fill our own jar or we can take our jar and give it all to him.   Incase you don’t see where I am going with this, we must become nothing so that Jesus can become everything. We have to give him everything of ours. We have to give him our past, our present, and our future. In that jar lies all of our past mistakes, everything that we have done for good, and anything else you can possibly think of. We give our sins to him because he has already died for them. He already endured the pain and suffering for everything we have ever done and will ever do. We have to pour our jar into his. We cannot hold onto anything because if we do we will always be selfish and will never get where he wants us to be… Maybe this illustration was a bit childish but hopefully you get the picture. I can honest say by writing this I have come to a few realizations of my own about how I should live.

            Like I have said before, these posts are more for me than anything, but in the mean time if you get something out of it then praise be to God! Let this be your prayer today, “God, I am sorry for everything. I want to be your servant. Strip me of everything and leave only you. I know I cannot do it on my own. Help me through everything and give me the strength to say no to my selfish desires. Help me to remember that you are there and you have something planned for me. Amen”

Please continue to pray for me, I would appreciate it very much. I know I have to be strong and only rely on God to help me through, however he chooses to help. If you have any questions the same rules apply here- message me, I have a facebook, or any way you would like to contact me. I hope you have gotten as much out of this as I have. Thank you for reading and God bless you!

Soup or Salad?

As some of you may know my life is a constant thought. Some times I go days thinking of one thing and other times I don’t think of that at all. Lately I have been struggling with different things and have not been as close to God as I would like to be. When I write most of my posts normally I am in one of 2 places; either as close to God as ever, or far away. Either way he lays things on my heart to think about and blog posts are born. Some people think they are the complete reason for some posts, but in reality all but maybe one have just been the thing that gets me thinking. With all of that being said I will go ahead with my post and just ask you to please pray for me. Lots of things are going on right now and some decisions have to be made.

            Have you ever been in a restaurant ordering your food and the waiter/waitress asks you whether you want soup or salad? For many, this decision may be simple. If you are a salad person then you can almost never go wrong with a salad because they are pretty basic and the same at every restaurant. Some are soup people though and often are fans of change and trying new things. I have been thinking about the simple question that we may not put very much thought into and overanalyze it in my head. The main point that sticks out to me is that if I chose salad, I will never ever know how that soup was. I will have missed out on that soup forever. Sure you can get it the next time you go to that restaurant but what are the chances of it being exactly the same? On the other hand if I choose the soup what if there is something wrong with the soup and I get sick and die? Or what if the salad would have been the best salad I ever tasted? My point here is that every decision we make ultimately affects the future. We can never go back in time and try it out, until we master the space/time continuum, that is- like that will ever happen.

            How many life decisions do we over think or not think enough of? How often do we just coast through life doing as we please and also how often do we go out on a limb to do something that we never thought we would? Every decision we make has some kind of positive or negative effect. Lets say I choose soup one day because I am feeling lucky, knowing that I am completely missing out on the salad, and also assuming we cannot order a separate salad. I am taking the risk that the soup can possibly not taste good at all/make me sick. When I make that choice there is no turning back and I am aware of the consequences. No matter what happens I am stuck with my decision and must live with it. Life decisions are much like ordering dinner. Lets take following God for example. When we choose to follow and obey him things are going to change. We have chosen God and not ourselves/the world. We are aware that we may lose friends, jobs, family, etc and we are also aware that it is not going to be easy, but in our hearts we know that the reward will be much greater than anything we can ever imagine.

            In life we have to make decisions. My main point of this entire post is to get others to realize that their decisions should not be taken lightly. But regardless of the decisions we make things are going to change. We must follow our hearts to do what we feel is best for us and most importantly follow God because if God is in our hearts He will make the decisions that will better our lives.

One last note. Please pray that I will let God have his was in my life so that I will not worry with the future and for him to give me peace about things that trouble me the most. Thank you for your time and I appreciate your prayers. Until next time, God bless you. 

What Do You Expect from God?

How many times have we sat in a church service or in front of a television/computer screen and heard a preacher talking about everything that God is going to protect us from? Too many times preachers and evangelists talk about all the good God will bring us here on Earth. We all hear about everything good God is going to do for us, but what does it actually mean that He is going to protect us? Does it mean that he is going to keep us safe, keep our job, (I know no one really wants to hear this but...) keep our family safe? Preachers who are trying to convert the lost into Christianity often paint a picture of a perfect life with Christ; a life where everything that you ever wanted becomes yours. I don’t want to name any pastors specifically but one televangelist in particular preaches that if you accept God into your life all of your worries will be over. He also says that anything you ask for will be given to you. Have we ever asked for something from God and we haven’t received it? I have. I know right now in this post it seems like I am trying to say that God isn’t who you think He is or that He simply is not going to help us out. I guess in a way you could say that I may be telling you God can possibly be different from what you know and expect of him. I have been burdened to get this message out and I hope to actually give this message to the next place God allows me to speak. This is a message that I think everyone, especially teenagers who are facing tough decisions right now and are facing a hard time, should hear (or in this particular case, read). Too often we get discouraged because we think that God is not here for us because bad things keep happening to us. Maybe this post is for you!

            First I am going to start off by saying that we need to be fully satisfied with God. And you may be thinking, “I am totally satisfied with Him.” For us to be fully satisfied with God we have to understand that He is in control. He is sovereign; He rules the entire universe including the heavens! To be fully satisfied with Him we also have to realize that bad things are going to happen to us! He never promised us that everything was going to be great all of the time. Too many times we think since we are children of God’s we think we are not subject to hurt and pain. Evangelists have fooled us and now we expect to live a perfect painless life. I think one reason many people “lose their faith” and “fall away from God” is because of the deceit that we have been fed by the ones that teach us. One thing evangelists have right is that God wants us to be happy, and I only agree with this statement partially. I believe He wants us to be happy but not the happy that worldly pleasures bring. We should be happy because of the joy of knowing that nothing here on earth matters besides our relationship with Him and furthering His kingdom.

            Why do you think that God wouldn’t want us to be happy because of the things here on Earth? I believe that is because we know that we cannot take anything from this world when we die. Think about it for a second. You have died and are laying in your casket in a church somewhere with a preacher standing over you speaking to your loved ones. What is in your casket? You! You and maybe some nice clothes your family wanted to be buried with and so that they can remember you that way, and even the clothes don’t matter at all! When you leave this world it is going to be just your soul. Your soul does not carry bags; you don’t leave with a moving truck. Once your life here is done that is it. So what really matters? “Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.” That verse is Matthew 6:20. The verse is pretty self explanatory. Store your treasures in heaven because things here on earth come and go. The Lord gives and He takes away. It is all His anyway. Think of the story of Job. It is simply too long to explain the whole thing but to make it short it is a story of Job and his faithfulness to God. God allows Satan to tempt Job to sin and curse God by taking away everything that he had, from his family to his livestock to his health. Job never sinned by cursing God for taking the things away from him because Job knew that it was all God’s to begin with; actually, he praised God still! He knew that those things didn’t matter. Only his faithfulness to God did. If we could all be like Job we could see things in a completely different perspective.

            So why shouldn’t we worry about tomorrow? Why should we not care about what we have here on earth? Its because God gives us the joy of knowing He has us in his hand. If He has us in His hand then why do we still hurt, why do we still lose things that we hold dear to us? Because God saved us. He saved us from the fear of a spiritual death. This means that because we have faith in Him we are not subject to destruction, not worldly destruction, unworldly destruction. He is keeping us from going to a very real place called Hell. God sent His only perfect son to die a brutal death so that our sins could be paid for all so that we could have eternal life by just believing in his death and ressurection. What more should we have to worry about? People who are of this world hold their possessions very close to their heart. They worship their possessions. Everything they do has to do with money and making themselves happy. It is sad really that people have to hold things like this so dear, but that is literally all they have. The seek happiness in worldly pleasures and items because they don’t have anything else. We, as followers of God, should not be like this. I am not saying it is wrong to own nice things and to do things that make us happy because it is not. What is wrong is letting those things control our lives and if that happens we lose our sight of God and when we lose our happiness and our possessions we turn to God and ask, “why?” “Why would you do this to me God?” Sometimes if we lose things dear to us it is simply a test of our faith; god can be asking you, “what is more important, Me or your junk?” God will be around a whole lot longer than anything we can buy.

            Many times our lives become filled with hurt and sadness. We lose our boyfriend/girlfriend, job, house, car, friends, parents, children, etc. When things such as these happen we get angry at God or either we lose our faith all together because we feel He is not with us anymore. We just simply have to remember: He gives us things and He takes them away all for a reason. This reason may or may not be known to us, but nonetheless they were not really ours to begin with. Everything we have has been given to us through His gracious hands. If you are reading this I am willing to bet that you are far more fortunate than others on this planet. We have to realize that our possessions should not be our number one love in life. Until we understand that God is keeping us from unworldly destruction rather than worldly destruction we will continually be mad at God for taking the things he has given us away. I thank God for every minute I get to spend with the things He has given me because if He decides it is time for them to go they will go and I just have to be happy for the time He allowed me to spend with it. As hard as it is dealing with losing something that you love you have to remember that God truly is in control and He knows that He is doing, even when it looks like He doesn’t. Until next time, remember that our God reigns!

Take My Life

It has been way too long since my last post and for those of you who follow me semi regularly I am sorry. I have been busy doing a whole lot of nothing since I have been home for Christmas break. I have had plenty of good ideas for posts but in the moment haven’t felt as strongly as I do about this one coming up. Like always I will give you a little bit of background to where this post is actually coming from. I just got back from hanging out with my friend at work. He works the night shift at a hotel so we watch tv shows and movies for most of the night until its time for me to go home to bed. Tonight when I got home I lie down in my bed and prayed. Right now in my life I have lots going on mainly inside my head so the average person would not even know it. Pretty much decisions. Many, many decisions I need to make and as I prayed tonight I asked God to take care of them for me. As I was praying a song popped into my head. “take my life and let it be, all for You and for Your glory. Take my life and let it be Yours.” The song actually became my prayer. As I literally sang to God my prayer in bed I began thinking about the song.  Have we ever really thought about the words to this song? I know you are probably sitting there thinking, “well duhhh, its pretty self explanatory!” Oh is it? Many of the times I have sang this song has been at a camp towards the end of the worship section of the service and the song has been carefully placed to get the most affect. We have all sang the song at the top of our lungs, eyes closed, arms held high, possibly even tearing up a bit because of the magnitude of the words we are singing. As I think about all of the times I have sang those words I thought, “why have I always had to come back and make this my prayer over and over again?” Making this a daily prayer can never be a bad thing, if we truly mean it. This post is my break down of this simple yet powerful chorus.

            Lets start with the first word, take. Do we actually know what take means? If not, I Googled it for you. Many definitions came up for the word take. The first definition is to carry out, as in take action. Since the pronoun in the chorus is capitalized, we can assume God will be doing the taking. Another definition is lead. God will be doing the leading. “To get into ones hands” is the next definition. God will be putting us in His hands. In the sense the word “take” is used here is the same as to “take a cookie.” If you take a cookie you are taking the cookie from where it was to wherever you are now. Incase this doesn’t make sense yet please stay with me.

            The next words in the chorus are “my life.” Unlike “take” this can only mean one thing. Your life is your life. Not your parents, neighbor, friends, relatives, teacher, etc. you are the one who is in control of your life. No one else controls it (not saying that you shouldn’t respect/obey your parents, elders and so on). Lets put “take” and “my life” together. Take my life = carry out my life, lead my life, pick up my life. Just in this first part of the chorus you are already telling God to do something very, very big. To TAKE YOUR LIFE. Taking of lives can mean many different things and for most people it usually just means to kill/end a life. If you think about it like I do, it actually makes more sense than any other way I could explain it. “God take my life, end the life I have now” is what you are saying so far. Hope you are still with me because it will become clearer very soon.

            “And let it be” is the next part of this chorus. I don’t want to insult your intelligence but just to be clear we are going to go over what each of these words mean. “let” means to allow something to happen. “it” is referring to YOUR life. “be” is one of those words you know what it meand but you probably couild not give a straight definition for if you had to so I googled it as well. “Be”, by definition, means: to have the quality of being, to be identical to. Can I say WOW!?! Lets put all of this together. “and let it be”- allow my life to have the quality of being…/allow my life to be identical to.... . if we put everything we have learned together we get. God put my life in your hand, allow it to be…/God carry out my life so it can be identical to… . Still following?

            Next we come to “all for You and for Your glory.” Do we all know what “all” means? Google says “all” means: completely given to or absorbed by. So completely given to or absorbed by what? That brings us around to the “for You and for Your glory” part. Completely given to or absorbed by God, for His glory; not our glory but His. What does glory mean? My trusty google says glory means: a state of high honor. So: completely given to God for Him and for His high honor. Lets put it all together yet again. God allow MY life to be for YOU. Let My life bring YOU glory. Take my life and let it be Yours.

            For many of you scholars out there this has probably been the most redundant thing you have ever read. You are thinking, “ yes, yes I knew exactly what that meant, I didn’t need to waste my time reading this!”  Well I am not quite done. In order for God to take our lives we have to surrender it to Him. In other words, in order for him to pick us up like a cookie and take us somewhere else we have to let him end the one we are living in right now. This is a chorus of salvation that we as Christians or non Christians can sing to Him anytime we feel we are not in the right place. To live our lives we have got to lose the one we are living in now. We can sing this chorus everyday for the rest of our lives but until we truly mean it we won’t get anywhere. We have to lose/end our life-it has to be taken from us (by God), we have to allow God to have His way with our lives so that we can actually live for His glory and to bring great honor to His name. So many times we have stood in a crowded worship room, hands held high, tears running down our faces, screaming at the top of our lungs for God to come take our lives and let them be His.

            For so long I sang this song. I always wanted Him to take control of my life and to make my life about Him and less about me. Until tonight I didn’t put 2 and 2 together; that I had to actually tell Him to take it but I also had to ALLOW Him to take it. He can do it alone, but He is not going to. We have to put forth the effort to change our lives and to make Him first before he will give us a hand with it. Think of it like this. Your teacher at school isn’t just going to give you the answer to that hard math problem before you try to figure it out. The only difference is that we have God to help us. And if we try hard enough he is going to help us through to where He wants us to be in our lives. We have to remember one thing: as we sing this prayer it will mean that He can and will take our life, it will no longer be our life but His, and it will be about His glory and not our own. Once we understand this we can finally allow Him to have our lives and actually surrender to His will for our lives. It is such a deep thing when you think about it that when we mean it we are actually telling God that we have full confidence in Him to take our lives and to mold them into what He wants and that whatever we want does not matter.

            Like always I hope I didn’t lose anyone along the way and if I did drop me a line on here or facebook or wherever and we can discuss this further. I also hope I was not too redundant because a certain someone told me I repeat myself a lot in these, so if I did I apologize. Until next time, God bless you