Earthly = Empty

First, here's a quote and verse that I think basically explain what I'm about to try to say...just in way fewer words :p            "To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God."                     -Meister Eckheart

"Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth."     

                    -Colossians 3:2

        I've been thinking a lot about my future lately. If you're a senior, or even a junior, chances are, it's probably crossed your mind at least a few times too. The struggle of deciding which colleges are right for you, the fact that people expect us to know what we want to do for our careers, when most of us aren't even 18 yet...we all experience this at one point...and it just so happens I'm currently coming face to face with the realities of making these decisions. Just for some background as to where this topic is coming from...I've been struggling lately...the majority of my family doesn't believe a Christian college is the right choice for me because (and these are their ideas) 1. They aren't well known enough which will make it impossible for me to be chosen for a job later on 2. "Oh but you've worked so hard to just throw it all away and go to that type of school and 3. (oh this is just my favorite thing to hear) "What kind of degree do you plan to get? One involving religion? Ha, that'll get you far."

(I promise there is a point to me telling you all this...just wait for it)

They aren't believers (except for my mom), which is why I feel as though I can't explain to them, what I'm about to say here. Their 3 "reasons" for why Christian colleges aren't the "right choice" made me realize something huge that impacts and changes everything I once was so sure of in regards to my future. I realized...

Nothing I do for personal gain in this life matters at all. Nothing I do to ensure MY success, will be significant for more than 100 years tops. And lastly, NOTHING I do that is for myself, will make me feel truly satisfied and filled with joy.

Everything that I do to try to ensure my personal success on earth...

will leave me empty.

In fact, I just watched a movie, Grace Unplugged, (I highly recommend it), about a girl who leaves her life of leading worship at her church with her dad, to become a Hollywood star, and makes it big, but is told in order to reach fame, she'd have to compromise her morals. She ends up gaining huge success, but instead of being happy and feeling complete after reaching what she thought was her dream, she notices something is missing, and she feels so empty and doesn't know why. Long story short, she realizes her success, was all for her. Nothing she was doing was in any way to glorify God or live for Him . She was making her life about herself instead.

This movie and facing this reality caused my to realize that my future isn't about me and if I try to make it about me, I'm just going to be left completely unfulfilled.
It's about making God known to other people and glorifying Him along the way. That's why we're here isn't it? That is our purpose: to make Him known.

In every situation that we ever encounter, make Him known to people who haven't yet experienced how great He is.

I realized that we shouldn't pick a college because of how it'll look to companies when they are looking to hire, but we should pick the one we feel we can grow the most in our walk with the Lord at, the one where we think God will use us the most to serve our purpose.

 We shouldn't pick a job based upon the income levels because God promises he'll provide what we need  to survive if we keep our hearts purely focused on Him. And I find comfort in the fact that even if I end up at a job, where I make close to nothing, that I'll always be filled up with his love and joy. Like Eckheart says, we can be completely empty of things, and still be full.

Our earth deceives us more than I can even comprehend. We have this idea that our happiness depends on the materials we have, high incomes, and lastly, that our happiness depends on other people... when is clearly states in Colossians that our minds NEED to be completely set on building up treasures in Heaven, not giving in to the temptations of this Earth. Not giving in to doing things for our personal gain, or our own success.  Because although I'm only 17, and have no clue what living on my own is like, or supporting myself financially, I am 100 billion % confident that if we don't live to serve ourselves, and we don't shape our future based upon solely personal gain, the amount of joy that we will be overwhelmed with, no matter what hardships we face, will provide a life more fulfilling than any billionaire, who lacks a life with Jesus, could ever even dream of.

 

Thank you for reading :)

Thankful for The Little Things

  "The things you take for granted... 

    ...someone else is praying for."

-anonymous 

     I take so much for granted. I take my home for granted. My cellphone, my bed. The fact that I get to come home to dinner every night, and never go hungry or thirsty. The simple fact that I have clean drinking water at all times of the day, when there are kids who go parched because their only water source is either a far walk or could cause sickness. I take my education for granted, even complain that I have too much homework, when there're kids all over the world who would give anything to go to my school. I take my siblings for granted, and the fact that my mom and dad are both alive and healthy. This entire life. This is how our generation is. We always want more, and try to obtain "better" than what we have, meanwhile forgetting how fortunate we are to just wake up healthy every day. 
      There are so many people in this world who can't function without aid, and who struggle to do something as simple as breathing. There are kids who spend their childhoods in hospital beds, and kids who don't even know what its like to wake up to family and presents on Christmas morning. There are people who will never leave the places they grow up in, yet most of us have gone on vacations, probably even more than one. I take my freedom for granted. The fact that God placed me in a place where I can freely worship him and not fear death because of it. Why do we feel the need to spend time complaining about things  in our lives, and little things as that, when our time should be spent thanking God for what he's doing in our lives currently? When I pray, I always thank Him for so much in my life. But, I always forget to thank Him for my health. How often do we thank Him for giving us eyes and ears that work? Or for giving us the ability to walk, and run, and play sports? Why do we even begin to think we have the right to put ourselves down because of our looks, when we have so much  more than so many people? There are so many people who manage to live without legs and arms, and still be grateful. We have a mouth to speak kind words to people, yet we often forget to. Each day, from the time we wake up, we have the ability to reach out and make at least one person's entire day better, yet we hold back.  
      We have been given everything necessary to experience life fully, a life that we don't even deserve, yet we still take so much for granted everyday and forget how blessed we are just to wake up healthy.

~Thanks for taking the time to read my rambling~

"This is the day the Lord has made;

We will rejoice and be glad in it."

Psalm 118:24

Living by God's Timetable...Not Our Own

 

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6

 

 

 

     It says in the Bible multiple times that God knows what's best for us, and that He has our whole lives planned out. It says to give up, and trust him whole heartedly with our lives and our futures. Yet, if you're anything like me, you often fail at this. I know I do. All the time. I always find myself questioning why things happen in my life. I mean, God says he knows the desires of your heart, and if you live for Him, he fullfills those desires, right??? So, why don't things that I often want to happen, happen? I mean, at the time, I truly think they're the "desires" of my heart. But then...I realize, what am I thinking. I often make the common mistake of thinking God's plan will always unfold the way I think it should. The truth is, God works according to His own predetermined timetable, not the one we think He should work by. And the truth is, God's intended pathway for us often involves a companion named suffering.

     As a teenager, life gets hard. I'm going to be really honest because I guess there's really no reason to sugar coat it, but I was really hurt by a relationship coming to an end. And honestly, at the time, I did not understand at all why God was putting me through that pain. It straight up was terrible. And I questioned God so much because I felt like being in that relationship was what my heart most desired, and didn't understand why, when I was living out what I felt like was a good, christian life, I had to feel so low. It took me quite some time, but I finally realized,  yes I had no idea why God was allowing me to be in this situation, but I couldn't rely on my own understanding of the situation, and I knew I had to trust that He was going to use this painful situation in some way. And now, 5 months later, I look back and am amazed how God has changed my life for the better, in a way, that would have never happened had I not experienced that. Honestly, before it, I thought I was a strong Christian. But, I wasn't. I didn't understand the true love  of God and didn't trust in Him like I needed to. But he led me back to church, where I found community. He brought me to meet someone who I consider my mentor now. But what I'm attempting to say, is that I reflect upon the last 5 months, and I finally see the amazing, amazing ways God used that painful situation to bring me closer to Him., and bring me closer to so many others.  I wanted to share my story to show you that God is bigger and wiser than our situations. But... we're often too dull to see it. It's crazy to me that he promises us so frequently that he has amazing plans for us, yet we often get so wrapped up in our difficult situations, that we forget to have that trust.

The Lord declares in Ecclesiastes 3:1-22 "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing..."

For everything...there is a season. God's going to take us through so many seasons in our life. Seasons of singleness...seasons of breakups...seasons of stressful school...seasons of lonliness... but we will also experience seasons of joy, and love, and peace. But to me, its crazy, that even when we go through those seasons (yes I've said that alot :p) of hard times, we can always find that joy, love, and peace in Him.

God is bigger than our situations. He will get us through them. He knows the true desires of our heart. He is going to use every single event in our lives to make us stronger. With him, we can withstand anything. I want to end this with my absolute favorite verse. God is our light, our protector.  His grace is enough. He promises us that if we walk uprightly with Him, making Him always our priority,and living every second for Him, then he will withhold no good thing from us.

That alone, should be enough to make us want to surrender every second of our life to Him.

 

Thank you for reading :)


P.S.  I drew a lot of inspiration for this post from Pastor Dennis's sermon last Sunday at EFCC.

 

Calm Chaos

"Peace I leave with you;my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." John 14:27



First off, this is a portion of the lyrics from the song Whatever You're Doing by the band Sanctus Real (I blended the lyrics with a "chaotic" picture of a sunset and pier :p) and there's just something about these lyrics that is so relatable.

Throughout my day, and I'm sure yours too, it seems like there's not enough time in the day to get everything that you need to get done, done. For me, it's often school work. Feeling like I'm going to be crushed under the stress of school and the pressure to get all of my homework done, or get a good grade on the exam the next day, (when there's still like 5 more left that week), or to raise my grade because my current one "isn't going to get me into those good colleges". Whatever it may be, my weeks feel absolutetly chaotic. Staying up late to study, but not being able to catch up on sleep the next night because yet again, I'm staying up late to study, so I just get more tired. I feel like this happens to all of us. Then on top of school, we all have lives, where we go through times that quite frankly, suck and are hard. Maybe it's that you can't quite forget about the boy you used to be with, and he keeps popping up in your life, and you're tired of hurting, and don't quite understand why you have all of this on your plate, or how you're going to push through it all and not break. Or you're dealing with issues at home on top of the stress of school. Whatever it may be, it simply comes down to the fact that as a teenager in high school, life is hard, and we sometimes feel like no one understands the pressures or why He allowed us to be hurt or stressed like this.

However...

I've recently realized that through all of this, when I look to Him for my center, and completetly trust in him... I'm overcome with this crazy sense of peace...even admist the chaos. With school, I've realized, doing our best is all we can do, and it's all God expects us to do. He has a plan for us, and if we fully understand that, then we can find so much comfort in it. Heck, if we don't get into that "perfect" college, that just means it wasn't perfect for us. I think...when we understand the simple fact that God promises to provide us with what we need...not what we want...but what we need...there really isn't a reason to stress. And with that guy you can't forget about...there's a reason he's not in your life anymore, God is working inside of you, you may feel hurt and like your insides are just gonna burst out because you can't take it anymore, but I guarentee, if you fully trust that He does everything for a reason, that chaos, will turn to peace. It's scary to "surrender to what you can't see", I struggle with this way to much, but I guess all we can do is fully trust, and with trust, comes the ability to free yourself of worrying, stress, and lastly...chaos.