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!
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