I close my eyes at night
Wondering where would I be without you in my life
God’s love is sweet.
I was talking to my mom the other day… about loving the Lord and being a Christian. I’ve been a Christian practically my entire life. I was brought up in the Church, have loving Christian parents and though I’ve sometimes questioned a few of the Christian beliefs, I’ve never really really fell from my faith in God. Every question I answered came from the presumption or basis that God exists and that God is the one who wrote the Bible.
As most kids who grew up in the Christian family, sometimes I wonder, hmmm… I wonder what it would be like to not be a Christian. When people ask how your life would be different without Christ, well I can only think that I would not be me. Christ is my life… or at least Christianity is my life (though I’d much rather have Christ be my whole life… I don’t think that is physically possible for me until Christ appears in glory). If I wasn’t a Christian… what would I be doing with all my time? I spend at least 13 hours a week on AACF things, 8 hours a week at church, at least 4 hours a week reading my Bible on my own time, etc. and this still isn’t counting stuff like meet ups, other small groups, etc. Whewwww… and what would I do for fun? Would I go partying? Would I illegally drink? Would I cuss?
Sometimes I want to try to see what it would be like to not be a Christian… but I can’t because the truth seems so clear to me… though sometimes I wonder if I haven’t just been brainwashed (even though I’ve done research, I’ve gone to apologetics conferences, etc.) because I’ve never really known another life.
But my mom made a good point. If I hadn’t grown up in a Christian family, if I had come to Christ at a later time… how much time would I have wasted? So many years not being with Him, not knowing Him, not serving Him. When I think of that I am glad.
I’ve come to realize that if I wasn’t a Christian, I wouldn’t be happy.
The Bible tells us that God gave us happiness. He gave us joy. Without Him we are absolutely nothing. If everyone in the world really gave in to all their own human desires… oh man, I think I’d kill myself. I don’t know if I could handle that.
The times when I’m the happiest are when I’m serving the Lord. I love leading small group, I love being in small group, I love worshiping, I love praying. Spending all those hours doing something I love, no wonder I’m so happy all the time!
I’m so glad that God loves me. His love is truly sweet.
Talking about love, I just recently read this awesome post by a friend of mine from AACF. I like that.
On another note…
After reading Daniel’s post, I thought of many things. Here are two of them:
First I thought… do I really love people as much as I think I do? It’s been my prayer request many times to love people more. Usually when I share this, the immediate response is wide eyed wonderment saying blah blah blah, “if you’re not loving then I’m epic fail” (true quote). This is not the reaction I was looking for – therefore I’ve stopped sharing that as a prayer request. (Side note – at core we went around sharing something we wanted to improve on this year and I really wanted to say love, but for some reason I didn’t say it and just blurted out something else… I wish I could take it back. Not that I think anyone remembered what I said, but I wish I could have been more honest. Just a side note). But truly, I don’t think I’m a loving person D: especially after reading that post. Christ has immeasurably much more love than me. Until I can love like Christ, I can’t tell myself that I’m a loving person (Then people are all like… blah blah blah, don’t feel bad, blah blah blah, don’t compare yourself to other people. Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but that’s also not the reaction I was looking for. It doesn’t make me feel better, but it does make me think that you’re ignorant).
Then I thought WOW. I want to be able to cry every time I hear the gospel. In 7th grade when I read about Christ’s crucifixion for the first time with my own eyes, I balled. I can think of only one other time that I cried so hard. God I want to give you everything. No exceptions.
Somewhere in this post I forgot what I was talking about… maybe it’s because I haven’t written anything in so long that thoughts just kind of barf up.
I think this is what I’ve learned:
I need to learn more about what it means to love God
I need to learn more about what it means to love people
I just need to love more
And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
I can’t even imagine God’s love for me. God’s love is so sweet.
...for you are who you are 