Hello Out There!
This past weekend I just went to an awesome
conference this past weekend and arrived back home earlier today. The
conference I attended was called Campus Harvest and it was my second time
attending since being in college. It’s a wonderful conference full of college
students who love the Lord and amazing Pastors filled with awe-inspiring
worship. If you haven’t guessed by now I am a Christian, a follower of Christ, a
lover of Jesus – whatever you want to call it. For some reason I was sitting
here in my bed and I felt the need to talk about what God’s been doing in my
life. This is a tricky thing for me. It’s not that I don’t like talking about
God or the amazing things He’s done in my life but I generally only let people
know what I want them to know. I’ve always considered myself a very open person
but I’ve recently come to realize I’m a pretty selective sharer. So here it is
a nutshell: I’m far more broken and desperate than I ever thought I was. I put
things over God, I care more about what happened on facebook that day than
spending time with Jesus, I’d rather watch a movie than read my bible and so
many other things. I have the tendency to get caught up in my “goodness” as I
like to call it. I generally think that I’m a good person and that should qualify
God to bless me with things. Oh, how wrong I have been. God has been working in
my life the past few months exposing the areas in which I truly need Him and
wasn’t allowing myself to let Him control. In those moments where my “goodness”
has tried to sneak in and tell me I deserve attention or appreciation or
recognition God has really shown me that I am not worthy of that glory and He
is. You see I really experience God in the little things. Its been awhile since
I had a tangible, shocking, passionate, real, intense moment with God. For a
few months He has just been there in those little things. For example: my
parking luck. Now, my whole life its been a running joke in my family that I
have parking luck. Basically, if you’re in the car with me I have this ability
to rub off on you and you always find a close parking spot (I know it’s silly
but bear with me here). Well this past year God has extended that luck to a
daily occurrence. I have a parking permit for a specific lot on campus but it’s
much further away than convenient. In laziness I was determined to find a
loophole and that I did. There’s free parking on the blocks that parallel where
I live literally not even a full block away. The downside to this is that there
is about 16 spots and everyone else who has this same permit wants these spots
too. Yet every time I’m driving back to park there’s always a spot for me to
park in. To most people this is small and most likely insignificant or taken
for granted, but for me it means so much. Parking close is great but that’s not
what the message that I get out of it. It’s that nothing is small and
insignificant in God’s eyes. Including me. Including you. My love for Him seems
so small compared to His love for me but when He sees my love for Him he sees
no sign of insignificance, no sign of unworthiness. That’s the key. That’s what
I was looking for all weekend long when I kept asking God why He hadn’t met me
in the way I wanted Him to. The key is His love and adoration for us by sending
His son Jesus to take the place of all of my insignificance and all of my
unworthiness so that all He sees when he looks at me is love. God lowered
Himself to the point of men, the very flesh who chose to permanently separate us
from Him for our selfish gain, so that we could be set free. Set free from all
of our flaws, all of our sins, and all of our past. I’m attempting to journey
on this new path with God, one that I don’t recognize and to be honest
absolutely terrifies me. I’m seeking to be open and vulnerable and to speak
freely of where God has been leading me. I want to be real with God and to
pursue Him with all I have. I want to give Him everything because He gave more
than everything to be on this Earth and save me. I want to love Him because He
chose me. He saved me. He redeemed me. Not because I am good, not because I
strive to be the best Christian I can be but because when He sees me He sees
Jesus. For the others out there who think that being “good” is all it takes I
hope this helped you realize that you can’t earn God’s love. I didn’t do
anything to earn a parking spot but each time He’s been there offering me one,
just like Jesus offered His life for me. All it takes is the little things to
see that God has been and always will be there for you. Don’t let your desire
to find those big moments overshadow your ability to see Him in every small, detailed
aspect of your life. Look around you - I promise you He’s right there.
xx
