Life Is What You Make It

             A lot of times when I’m confused, or when I’m going through a trial, or even when I just need to in a sense “meditate” on the things of God, I will put on one of my favorite worship albums, sprawl out in the middle of the floor, and just stare at the ceiling…well, at least I used to.  It was comforting to lie there and to “be still” and listen for God’s voice, and up until recently I lost that.  And it wasn’t because I turned my back on God, but because quite frankly I was so sick I didn’t want to do anything but lie in bed and perhaps try to sleep, because (when I could sleep) that was the only escape from the immense pain I felt 24/7 for over a year.

          For anyone who doesn’t know, I was diagnosed with UC back in the beginning of 2015, and it really began to take it’s toll on me last year.  Thanks to this lovely chronic illness, I spent last Christmas in the hospital, and pretty much all other major holidays this year so far in bed curled over in unbelievable pain.  I actually remember when a couple friends came to visit me, they first texted me and asked if there was anything they could bring me, and I responded: “A coffin would be nice.”  Even though I was joking, it honestly wasn’t far from the truth.  I lost over 50 lbs, was fatigued, and was in so much pain that I literally could not even walk up a set of stairs.  I was stuck in this endless circle of not wanting to eat but having to, because well, you need to eat to stay alive.  As my friends and family who saw me at the time will agree, it wasn’t a pretty sight.  I weighed in at 79 lbs. when I went in for surgery. Yikes!

         The reason I share this is because God was the only thing I had to hang on to during those times.  And I will admit, there would be sometimes weeks that went by where I didn’t read my Bible because I felt like doing nothing except lying in bed and praying for it all to go away, but it didn’t.  I wanted to be mad at God, I wanted someone to blame, but in reality I knew it wasn’t His fault.  Life is unfair, we live in a fallen world, and people just get what they get.  But even when I wasn’t reading my Bible, even when I was in so much pain I’d rather die, God was there.  Even in the midst of all that, God is still God, and He is still deserving of my worship.  I was reminded of this during that time when listening to a few of my favorite worship songs, such as “I Will Worship You” and “Earnestly I Seek Thee” by Aaron Gillespie, which say :

  “When I am losing
  When I am broken
  When I am sinking like a stone
  And it feels like I am alone
  I will worship You

  When I am so scared
  Life is unfair
  When I am tired to lose my way
  When I am feeling so ashamed
  I will worship You”

and:

  “In life’s troubles
  sorrows and pain 
  earnestly I seek Thee 
  Fill my soul with peace again,
  earnestly I seek Thee

  None but You and You alone 
  Take my life make it your own 
  In my offering build Your home
  Earnestly I seek Thee”

Or Bryan and Katie Torwalt’s  “I Breathe You In, God”, which say

“When I don’t understand

I will choose You

And when I don’t understand

I will choose to love You, God”

      See, when we go through trials we can either choose: A) To blame God, and suffer alone, or B) Realize God is still on the throne regardless of our state and deserves our worship, and we can choose to honor Him and trust Him with our trials.  As these songs stated, I did feel broken, I did feel scared,  I did feel alone at times, and I sure as hell didn’t understand, but choosing to seek Him was the only thing that made it worth getting up in the morning.  

      Fast forward 3 months, I am now recovered from surgery, I am no longer ill, I’ve gained 35  of the 50 lbs I lost back and counting, and I feel better than I have in two years.  Even though this last year was the worst year of my life, I’m grateful for what it taught me, as it strengthened my faith in God.  And when you’re pretty much under house arrest for an entire year, you have a lot of time to evaluate your life, as this caused me to make some life decisions, such as (finally!) picking a career as I am now studying web development.

My point of all this is, life is what you make it.  No matter what trials you are going through, know that it is because we live in a sinful, fallen world, and our only hope and escape from these temporary trials is in God.  My faith in God is not dependent on how well things are going, if it was, my faith would have been shattered long ago.  It’s okay to admit things suck… but that’s what makes worshiping and choosing God all the more beautiful, because if we only worshipped Him when things were going well, we wouldn’t be worshipping God, we’d be worshipping god, with a lowercase ‘g’.  Choose God, my friends…not a god.

Blessings.

 

Be Blameless

I’ve been reading through Philippians lately and coming across v. 14-15 of chapter 2 had me in contrition.

“Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world…”

Now if anyone has known me long enough, or been around me lately, I’ve been kind of a sour puss. It’s stupid I know. But I have. I’ve found that I’ve (again) been discontent and have been grumbling and complaining about pretty much anything. If I haven’t with my words, my actions have most definitely spoken volumes, and for the example I’ve been setting I can’t apologize enough.

In this passage, for being blameless and without blemish, Paul uses the Greek word amōmētos, which is named after the greeek deity Momus, who was a god known for being very judgmental, finding fault in everyone and everything… So as if to say, “we should conduct ourselves in such a way that even Momus can’t find fault in you. ”

Well I didn’t need a greek god to point out my flaws. I’ve had friends ever so kindly point it out to me (not sarcasm). But me being the sinful idiot I am, have brushed it off. Typical.

Here I am complaining about stupid petty things that in the grand scale and eternal aspect of it all mean absolutely nothing. Then there’s Paul… Who’s already been through a lot, sitting in prison writing these words. I mean if anyone had room to complain just a teensy bit, it would have been Paul. Nope. He doesn’t.

So to anyone who bothered to read this, consider the example it sets when we gripe and complain. It makes the Christian life not look so hot. It sets the example that Christ isn’t enough. How do you think God feels? After all He’s given us, we complain.

I’m reminded of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (I know you’ve all seen it), and that spoiled brat Veruca whose parents had given her everything she’s asked. And you know what her reaction was!? “Daddy, I want a pony!” Oh no she didn’t! Well yeah she did, and so do I. All. The. Time.

So if you’re in the same boat as me and have found yourself being discontent lately, well, stop it. God’s not going to give you a pony with that attitude. God didn’t even have to wake you up with morning, yet He did. But overall this is all more for me than anyone else. God bless.

God Laughs

It’s been a while since my last post, but tomorrow is my birthday.  I’ve been reflecting on this last year and I must admit, I am not where I thought I’d be at 27 years old.  Looking back over this last year, I’ve realized that I’ve made almost no momentum in anything towards my future.  That’s not to say this last year wasn’t good; in fact this last year was probably one of the best years of my life!  I went to New York for two months, studied acting, made amazing friends–even saw one come to Christ, it was great!  Apart from that, this last year was really just a great experience.  An experience that may or may not have any lasting value in building towards my future goals.  But isn’t that what life is? Just a collection of experiences?

The reason I bring all this up is well, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the old yiddish proverb “man makes plans, God laughs.”

I’ve had numerous plans over the last 6 years since moving to Washington only to see them fall to pieces, leaving me asking myself “what the hell am I doing with my life?”

That being said, I am not exactly discontent where I am at. I have a great job that I worked three years to get promoted to, I have great friends, a great living situation, so I’m not exactly lost without a paddle.  But what I’m asking myself is, where am I going?

I seem to meet people who know exactly what they want in life; they have a career they’re working towards, they’re making progress.  But me? I don’t know where I am going. I feel like a vagabond wondering around aimlessly looking for his destination.

I’m also reminded of the Proverb “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” (16:9) I firmly believe in this as well. I’m not one who gives to the way of thinking that I have to run every decision through God as if I’m walking a thin line having to get permission for every step I take.  God really does want us to make decisions for ourselves, He gives us boundaries not orders.

I do have goals and plans, but as those famous Rolling Stone’s lyrics states “you can’t always get what you want.” And I’m also not one who  buys into the whole “God has a wonderful plan for your life!” scenario either. And don’t even quote me Jeremiah 29:11, that verse was a promise for a certain people and a certain time, namely Israel.  I believe God does have a plan, but who am I to say it’s going to be wonderful?  What of our Christian brothers and sisters across the globe getting beaten and beheaded… what of their wonderful plan?  What if I die tomorrow?  What if I find out I have cancer?  What if I get in a car accident and am crippled the rest of my life?  These things happen to people every day, (yes Christians too!).

I’m not trying to be negative, I’m just trying to get back to reality and pull my head out of the clouds, where I feel so many Christians are right now, especially in America.  The church in America today has it easier than any other time in history, yet we complain so much (myself included), and we get offended at the stupidest things.

So all that being said, instead I should really be asking myself “what you got to complain about?”            Nothing. Literally nothing….

Well this blog really didn’t go the way I thought it was going to go when I started it.  Turns out we all just need to be content wherever we’re at.  This is probably the messiest blog I’ve written, my thoughts aren’t exactly organized… sorry about that.

Well, here’s to another year!  Let’s see what happens.

 

Shake The Dust From Your Feet

 

How long are we to pursue someone for the Gospel? When do we, in a sense, give up and move on?

In Acts, Paul and Barnabas go to Antioch and are rejected by the Jews and chief men of the city. They responded by shaking the dust off their feet when they left before moving on to Iconium. Why is this so significant?

In Matthew 10:14 it states “And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.” To “shake the dust off your feet” was a symbolic gesture that you were to have no more to do with them and would take nothing that was theirs. Let them keep their dust. Their beliefs.

So again, I ask: When do we move on from trying to save someone? Is it after we’ve shared the Gospel once, twice? After a month, a year, a decade? How long must a person reject the Gospel before we conclude that they will never believe and we shake the dust off our feet and move on? I ask because in a sense I don’t know. At the same time I would like to say the Holy Spirit would speak to our hearts when it’s time to move on, but at the same time that can be so difficult.

Now that’s not to say we then ignore the person or remove them from our lives, that’s not what I mean by “move on”. But Jesus also said “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.” That is to say, as Matthew Henry puts it “Talk not of the deep things of God to those whom you know to be wallowing in sin.” In other words, stop talking about God and the Gospel to those whom have no interest. We shouldn’t dwell on one person forever. We must utilize our time and move on and share the Gospel with someone who will actually accept it. Maybe our involvement with them should be reduced to simply praying for them. Because literally that is the most we can do. As the old saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” I guess you could translate that to “you can lead a soul to living water, but you can’t make him drink.” When a heart is hardened against God, sometimes God decides it’s best to leave it that way. As it was with Pharaoh, or when Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews “Where I am going you cannot come!” (John 8). Jesus literally gave them a death sentence to hell. Not because He didn’t offer them a chance of salvation, but because He saw the hardness of their hearts and knew they would never believe. He wasn’t speaking authoritatively, but prophetically.

As always, most my blogs are very much relevant to me. That is why I write. There are family members who we have tried getting into the family of God for years. I have friends who I have shared the Gospel with numerous times, a few quite recently, but haven’t accepted. Perhaps my involvement with them now should be to just pray, as I have been. To bring up the topic again would be to bring it upon deaf ears. It hurts to say that, but it’s true. I wish I could bring up the topic everyday, or think of some new way to word it so as to persuade them. But nothing we do can ever persuade someone to believe. Only God’s Word can do that.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

After all, it is not our job to save souls. It is our job to reveal the Name by which they must be saved. We plant the seed and the Spirit does the rest. From there it is up to them to either accept or reject.

Go out and plant seeds brothers and sisters, but waste not your water on the dust of those who will never accept.

God Bless.

 

 

If You Lack Wisdom

I have definitely been lacking in the wisdom department as of late. It doesn’t help when I look within myself to handle situations or to even sometimes, make seemingly irrelevant decisions. Decisions have consequences, and one needs wisdom to handle those consequences; although all consequences could be avoided if wisdom was there to begin with.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” -James 1:5

Why do I find wisdom so hard to obtain when God clearly states here that He will freely and generously give it to all who ask? Am I asking wrong, am I not using the right words? Or do I not recognize wisdom when I see it.

Perhaps it’s how I ask. One would assume it’s as simple as “Yo God, give me wisdom?”, maybe it is. Not to go all Greek on you, but “let him ask” in this passage is written in the present active imperative tense, which means to “keep on asking”, or quite literally, “to beg.”

It’s not just asking once, but asking over and over and over. Because here’s the thing, I suck. I know I suck. I know I make sucky decisions constantly when left to my own devices and I need God’s wisdom. I may ask God for wisdom and He may give it to me in that present situation, but it’s not like He gives me an unlimited supply to where I will never screw up again. We are still sinful creatures redeemed by grace, and if we don’t constantly keep turning towards Christ asking for wisdom each and every day, we will continue make sucky decisions. That’s not to say that we’d be perfect if we had infinite wisdom, that’s preposterous. But having God’s wisdom flowing through our veins helps us see clearly the will of God in any given situation, and we still have the free will to choose.

That being said, I have circumstances, perhaps life changing circumstances unraveling in my life right now and in the not too distant future. I want to make sure I am using wisdom when passing through said circumstances. God has me here for a short while longer and I want to be sure I finish His work here before I move on towards other things. How do I finish His work here? With wisdom.

“God, Give Me Converts or I Die!”

I had the chance of hanging out with a good friend today, and found myself saying this as I was driving home. This is a snippet from the sermon “Conversions Desired” preached by Charles Spurgeon in 1876. The paragraph in which it is contained states:

“The Holy Spirit will move them by first moving you. If you can rest without their being saved, they will rest too. But if you are filled with an agony for them, if you cannot bear that they should be lost, you will soon find that they are uneasy too. I hope you will get into such a state that you will dream about your child or your hearer perishing for lack of Christ, and start up at once and begin to cry, ‘God, give me converts or I die.’ Then you will have converts.”

How many of us are actually in agony over those who are going to hell? For the first time in a long time (I’m ashamed to admit) I feel exactly what this passage is describing. As I was hanging out with my friend today, the Holy Spirit was really pressing upon my heart to share the Gospel with this person. Now I had already shared it once before, but I thought I’d give it another go. Needless to say it fell upon deaf ears, and the silence that followed had me screaming inside “God, open their eyes!”. We then went our separate ways, my friend went home still dead in sin and heading for hell, and I left, literally weeping as I drove home. And that is when the quote “God, give me converts or I die!” came to mind. Because that is exactly how I felt, and do feel now.

If it were to cost me my life for this person to believe, I would do it. And I don’t mean that as a cliché. Driving home tonight I thought to myself “Do I really mean it when I say ‘God give me converts, or I die’?.. If I were to get into a car accident right now and die, but my friend would somehow believe because of it, am I ready?” Yes! Gladly. It was this that prompted me to actually look up Spurgeon’s sermon when I got home, as all I knew was the quote from it. When I actually read the entire passage above it showed what was on my heart perfectly. Even as I am writing this I am still heartbroken, my soul is shaken, and I am filled with agony for them. It made me come to the realization; How can we as believers actually sleep in contentment knowing the world is going to hell? I don’t know.

I came home today feeling as if I had failed. I kept wondering “What makes it so hard to believe? It’s either hell, or free eternal life?” One would think the decision would be easy. Another quote from Spurgeon’s sermon states “It is shocking to reflect that a change in weather has more effect on some men’s lives than the dread alternative of heaven or hell.” This is so true! The only response I could get out of my friend was “I don’t know, I don’t think about it [the state of their soul] much.” How could they be more concerned about making it to a store on the way home before it closes than their own soul!? But the enemy of their soul has blinded their eyes. And I pray to God one day they see the light.

I know it isn’t our job to save people. Christ already did that on the cross. All we must do is present it, which I did. I always feel weird asking for prayer when it comes to someone’s salvation, because we can’t pray people into heaven. I guess all we can do is pray that the Holy Spirit will somehow open their eyes, and that is what I ask from all of you. But even then the choice is up to them. I will rest uneasy tonight. God bless.

Be Humble, Not Timid

 

We know that it is the “Christian” thing to be humble. Some can take it as far as to not think highly of themselves at all, as if taking any pride in what they do is a sin. Let me tell you something…it’s not. I’ve experienced many instances where I’ve complimented a Pastor, guest speaker or worship team on their good work or message they brought. Instead of receiving the compliment with a simple “thank you”, they say “Oh, don’t thank me, thank God”, or “Praise the Lord” or something along those lines. I will admit it, I’ve done it too. There is something uncomfortable about saying “thank you” to someone who just complimented you on a message you brought or something you shared that came from God.

To change perspectives here, it can actually be insulting to the person giving the compliment when you don’t receive it.. or even worse, it can make you appear more arrogant, which is the one thing you are trying to avoid! How so? Well, simply put… It can come off as a parade of humility, that you’re being humble on purpose for others to see just how truly humble you are…which is the complete antithesis of true humility. Do we do this on purpose? Well I bet most of us don’t. It is not our intention to come off that way. Now I can’t speak for others who have done this, but when I’ve neglected compliments in the past out of not wanting to appear prideful, the exact opposite happens after. What do I mean? Well, almost a year ago I shared a message at Calvary Campus Church. After the service, many people came and complimented me on what I shared. Instead of saying “thank you” I in turn just said, “Oh praise the Lord”.

Body language is 60-90% of communication, so other than people telling me “wow, jerk” through body language, I had a small voice inside that said “Hey hey, you didn’t take any of the glory. That’s pretty humble of you. You’re looking pretty righteous right now, not accepting those compliments…go you”. Yep. I succeeded in “appearing” humble, but failed in truly being humble. And I think that is the problem. Too many of us focus on “appearing” humble to the rest of the world, when God simply tells us to just, well, be humble. How do we do this? We look to Christ as our example.

In Philippians 2 Paul gives us an example of Christ’s humility.

“³Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves. ⁴Do not let each man look upon his own things, but each man also on the things of others. ⁵For let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, ⁷but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. ⁸And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. ”

You see, some have this mindset that we can’t have any pride or self-esteem at all. As if to say “thank you” is a sin when sharing something God gave to us, or when we even do anything good at all. It’s almost as if we think we need to have low self-esteem to be humble, to think lowly of ourselves and give all praise to God because we are worthless pieces of you know what. Guess what. That’s not what we are. We were that before we came to Christ, but God bought us and made us His bride, and no good bridegroom would call his bride worthless.

If you look at Christ’s example, here in verse six it states “(He) thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” Does that sound like low self-esteem or worthless to you? No. Jesus was God, He knew He was God, He accepted He was God, but He became humble by being a servant. By putting others before Himself. By being obedient to the Father. That is true humility. Not your neglect of compliments, not your low-self esteem you purposely think you must have, not your pride that you try to shrug off when you accomplish something. There is a quote that is often attributed to C.S. Lewis, which states “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

God didn’t call us to be timid, to lack confidence, to be shy or fearful of appearing prideful. Because that’s what we truly are when we think we must “be humble” so others don’t think we’re prideful. Be humble by simply thinking of yourself less, because you are thinking of yourself when you “try” to be humble. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with giving glory to God, we must! But when we do it to “be humble”, it’s not. Stop it and just put others above yourself. Serve others before you serve yourself. And for heaven’s sake, just accept a dang compliment every once and a while. I assure you, you won’t come off as an arrogant prideful jerk. But you will if you reject it.

He shall remember our sins NO more

In our recent series at Calvary Campus we’ve been going through the topic of grace. Grace is an amazing thing. It catches us when we fall, it lifts us up when we fall short, it restores us to Christ. But one thing that I am always amazed by is that grace not only forgives us our sins, but it forgets it completely. Now this is something I’ve always known, that God forgives and forgets, but it was never really something that I emphasized in my mind, because God is omniscient. How could a God who knows the number of breaths I’ve taken, the number of seconds I’ve lived (or will live), and every thought that’s passed through my mind, not remember my sins?

As I was reading through Hebrews, I came across this:

“For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” (8:12)

Now the English language is lame and the only way we really know how to provide emphasis is to change the font or size of a word. But one thing I’ve never noticed was the emphasis he puts here on the words “no more”. When looking at the original Greek there is literally two words put here for the word “no”, a double negative to provide emphasis, as if to say:

“He will remember our sins no, not at all, no more, by no means shall He never ever in any way, remember our sins.”

God doesn’t just want us to know that He forgives us our sins, but He really wants to drive it home that He also forgets our sins (<—– see my emphasis there?) It is another beautiful paradox. That an all loving and all knowing just God can have, if you will, divine amnesia, when it comes to our faults and failures. And it’s all because of what? GRACE!

This was extremely encouraging for me. Especially since my walk with the Lord has been a little stagnant lately. But guess what? God doesn’t remember! God always reminds me of His Grace. Because even as I was writing this I heard the church bells down the road playing “Amazing Grace”! God even chooses to remind me in song of His Grace as I am writing about His Grace. Wow! In closing, I just want anyone who reads this to remember that God doesn’t remember your sins when you fall before His throne of Grace. Grace be to you all who read this. I pray His Grace blesses you today as it has me. God bless.

Ponder Your Hearts

“Be angry, and do not sin; ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah” (Psalms 4:4)

Reading through the Psalms I found this verse to be very descriptive of my state lately. Not a night goes by where I don’t ponder my own heart as I go to sleep. I lie there dwelling on all the mistakes I’ve made throughout the week, throughout the day, throughout life. I think about what might be in my life that I need to give up before God. I also dwell on things that life has handed to me, things I can’t change, and these things indeed do make me angry, which is fine. It’s okay to be angry. Paul also translated this verse later in Ephesians, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26) But what I’ve failed is the latter part…”do not sin”. Or “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

There are indeed things about me that I cannot change, things that I dwell on every single day, not just before I go to bed. These things cause me to sin, because in my anger I let it rule over my love for God. But I am missing the most important part of this verse… to ponder my own heart before God. The verse after that states “Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.” But what exactly are the right sacrifices? Is it giving up my material possessions? Forsaking all my time for God? These things may be beneficial, but any man can give up material possessions. It may bring him closer to God for a while, but no matter how many things we give up, new distractions will always arise. There can always be something distracting us from God, and there can always be something new to be sacrificed.

I believe the true sacrifice God is seeking from us is our hearts, broken before Him. Which is why we are to ponder our hearts before God. Later in Psalms, David wrote this after sinning with Bathsheba, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (51:17). David could have given up all his riches, all he had to make things right with God. To show God he was serious about turning his life around again. I have found myself doing this many times in the past. I get super convicted, I repent over my sins, and to show God “I have changed this time”, I will give up something, whether it be throwing away all my R rated movies, throwing out all my secular music, throwing away this or that, getting rid of this or that, and these things are good for a while, but were my heart and spirit really broken before God? I was convicted, yes, but were my heart and spirit broken? That’s a different question. Without a broken heart and spirit, all the things I gave up was frivolous. They are meaningless without brokenness. I think this is what happens a lot of times with believers. It would explain why so many young people are convicted at youth crusades, they go home and are on fire for a couple weeks, they give up all the stuff in their life that is distracting them from God, but before they know it they are on the same path they were before they went to that crusade. The thing is, their hearts weren’t really broken.

I realized that the reason I am not seeing much of a change in my life lately is because I am not broken. That is the sacrifice God truly wants from me. He wants me to ponder my heart before Him, and to be broken over it, because our hearts are deceitfully wicked above all else (Jeremiah 17:9). The point of this? You can give up all you want for the sake of following Christ, but if your spirit and heart is not broken, you’ve given up nothing. You’ve sacrificed nothing. God wants your heart, your spirit. Not your R rated movies necessarily, not your secular music, but your heart. Brokenness will weed things out on it’s own by the leading of the Holy Spirit, but to give up things for the sake of getting closer to the Spirit without first being broken is only going to lead to 1) self righteousness, 2) dissatisfaction in giving those things up or 3) Regret for giving up those things only to take them up again.

God help me accept the things I cannot change. But what I can change is my heart and spirit. I need brokenness, as do us all. This is for me more than anybody, but no matter where you are at in your relationship with God, there is always something to be broken over. There is always sin that needs to be taken out. God break us all.

The Good Ol’ Days

Sometimes I look back at my past and think of “the good ol’ days”. We all like to think of those days. But where we can find fault is being lost in that nostalgia and not being focused on the present. We may count losses that we have suffered, but God always is leading us to something better (Romans 8:28). Ecclesiastes also states, “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning…” and “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (7:8,10). Of course my “good ol’ days” were in elementary school when I didn’t have a care in the world, and I am still rather young. But for someone who perhaps is older, they might look on their past and being discontent with their present. We may think those days were better, but God tells us that He is leading us to so much more, and has been our entire lives. I know when I look back, just within the past four years that I’ve lived here, or even just this last year alone, on how much God’s grace has changed me. I was an immature, selfish punk (probably still am), and have made many mistakes, but that’s in the past. And what’s in the past stays there, especially from God’s perspective. God has led me through so much in these short 25 years of my life, and I want to be happy with where I am and where I am going. I don’t want to look back 10 years from now and think “I had it better back then”. I know I have it good now, I love my life, I love my friends. But I want my life to be better 10 years from now, but I don’t want it to be better circumstantially, I want it to be better because I have grown more content in Christ, and that is the lens from which we must view our past. That is the only way we can look back at our life and know we have it better now then we did then. Our sanctification throughout our life is the most important thing in our relationship with Christ. So I pray that God will continue to grow me, as well as whoever reads this, in sanctification, knowing that the future and who holds it has amazing things in store.