It's been quite a while since I've been on here writing anything. I've always enjoyed and benefited from writing out my thoughts. So I'd like to get back into the habit of blogging.
I just finished my first day back to real life after a week-long vacation with friends from camp helping prepare for a wedding and spending wonderful time together. During my time there I was able to have many deep conversations about life, God, issues of the day and stuff like that. I also had a lot of time for reading. I was able to finish reading my Christmas present, a book called "So You Don't Want to go to Church Anymore?". It was all about learning to live your life out of a trusting relationship with God. Through reading about this relationship, talking with friends and seeing that relationship being lived out by those friends made me really hunger for that kind of relationship, one that I've never had.
Coming back to real life I do not want to go back to my "real life" schedule of working during the day and just sitting around during the after work hours. So last night and tonight I went to the pool with my Bible.
I've always had trouble understanding what I read, and that's really made me question my salvation at times. Last week I took some time to meditate on scripture. I didn't really come up with a conclusion to what I was thinking about, but I felt like I grew a little just from doing it and wrestling with an issue.
Tonight I was looking through Ephesians and 1 Corinthians thinking about marriage and how two become one flesh and relating that to honoring your bodies as a temple of the Holy Spirit, and then I ran across something I had underlined. 1 Corinthians 1: 26-29 "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things-and the things that are not- to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him."
The boasting part caught my attention and started me thinking. Honestly I have a lot of pride in my life. I've been told a lot that I'm a great kid, and now I think I believe it. All my life I've been in the above-average range. I got good grades all through school, I memorized every verse my AWANA book gave me and earned my Timothy award, I played sports and wasn't unathletic (I always thought I was pretty good, but I know now that I'm not the best athlete). I've always been able to be good at whatever I did. But never in my spiritual life did I experience that some success. Sure, I knew all the church answers, and I even tried living out the principles I read in the Bible. But I never really felt growth, I always just felt stuck. So now looking back at that and seeing how God is changing my heart and helping me understand things I'm seeing how he is doing his work to me instead of letting me succeed on my own efforts. I don't know if I'd ever recover from the pride of cultivating a relationship with Jesus on my own, but since it is being given to me I can't take credit for it or boast about myself, just about the God who is working his plan in me, and I'm grateful for it!
There's a lot more than just that running through my head about this evening, but I can't put them all into a coherent thought and then put that thought into words, so I'll just say, "That's all for now, and also thank you to Brad, Dee, Ali, and Josh Roth, David and Lauren Glett, Lindsey Bartels, Aunica Buseman, Grace Stephenson and all the other wonderful people who don't hide their relationships with God and who share His love!"
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