My Life

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I live a small life, well, valuable, but small, and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I do reminds me of something I read in a book once, when, shouldn't it be the other way around?" -You've Got Mail

God has literally flooded me with revelations this year and I'm not sure how to take hold of them all, or how to express them. I want to know how to apply them.

The loss of Grant and Michael made me pause and look hard at my life. Youth is no excuse to ignore mortality. We don't know the measure of time granted us. Am I living in God's purpose? Am I walking, every moment, after Jesus? Does my life make sense in light of the gospel? C.S. Lewis said "you never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you." In a way, God's bringing me to that place, revealing the authenticity of my faith. "God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down" (another great illustration from Jack). Does my life make sense in light of the gospel? No. Not often. But this is my heart cry- "I want to know Christ- yes, to know the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and become like him in his death, that I might attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this, or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining towards what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus... Only let us hold true to what we have obtained." ~Phil 3:10-16 This is my mantra.

Aside from this, God has also been speaking something very new to me. My whole life, in one sense, consisted of "saying no," of resisting and refraining and waiting. But now, it's as if God wants me to say yes- and the word is almost foreign to me!

"To be perfectly frank, I'm getting exasperated with your infantile thinking. How long before you grow up and use your head- your adult head? It's all right to have a childlike unfamiliarity with evil; a simple no is all that's needed there. But there's far more to saying yes to something." ~I Cor. 14:20-22.

I know I'm kind of taking this verse out of context, but that "there's far more to saying yes to something" really struck me. Saying yes comes with a whole lot more than saying no.

I have become comfortable, and He's pulling me out of that. He's teaching me to walk.