A short note on humility.

As a recent college graduate, I have been learning a lot about humility. Most of the way through college, I felt like I could basically provide for myself. I didn't really turn to God so much with finances because I always had enough money (granted, that money was loan money that I now have the pleasure of repaying).

Now, though, I am having trouble finding a job. Realizing that I have rent to pay. And interest payments on some of my loans. And I have to do things like buy food and shampoo and toilet paper. The realities of adult life are setting in. 

God has certainly been providing for me lately. But I have issues being humble enough to accept the ways that he's providing for me. In my mind, it makes the most sense for God to just allow me to find a job and have money that way. That's not really how it's happening though. What's happening is that people keep wanting to give me money or just help me out in other ways. Which you would think would sound nice...not working and still having what I need? Awesome, right? But not really. I am extremely EXTREMELY grateful for how generous people are being, because there are people in my life that are really there for me right now. It's just hard to get over my pride. It's hard to just allow God to provide for me without me DOING anything. I'd rather believe I can take care of myself. Self-sufficiency feels good because it feeds the pride that wants to take over my life. It's kind of a rude awakening to be made to realize that it's not about me. 

...but still. Praise God for providing for me and constantly revealing to me the things I haven't surrendered to him yet. 

The Summer of my Discontent

The past month or two, I've been extremely discontent with the way my life is going. I've just been having trouble seeing what purpose I have this summer. I haven't been able to find a summer job, and on top of that most of my room mates have things to do and people to see; I usually don't.  I don't want to turn this into a pity party for myself. It's just that it gets a little bit discouraging and depressing watching everyone around me have purposeful things to do while I have pretty much all day, seven days a week with nothing to do. Sure, there's the occasional night where I hang out with someone. It's not that I'm always alone or anything. But I've just been feeling really purposeless. I thought I knew what I was doing (as I explained in my last blog, I really don't know what I'm doing).  

The entry yesterday in My Utmost for His Highest was about dealing with drudgery (you can read it here if you want to). Drudgery is the perfect word to describe my summer. I'm not super happy. I'm not particularly unhappy, either. I'm just kind of bored. Drifting through life. Oswald Chambers wrote about developing godly character. About how what you do when life is unextraordinary and unexciting is a good test of your character. How we look for big things to do, but fail to honor God in our everyday lives. I know I've been failing on that front. I've just been allowing myself to wallow in self-pity. And let me tell you, that has been a foothold for Satan's lies this summer. Somehow, late at night when I'm sitting in my room alone, Satan twists the fact that other people have stuff to do and I don't into proof that no one loves me. That I'm alone in the world and I might as well accept that fact that I'm going to be abandoned by everyone I care about. That I should just pull away from my relationships because clearly I care more about other people than they do about me. Obviously I realize intellectually that these thoughts are dramatic and exaggerated and false. But being alone and abandoned are huge fears for me, and Satan knows that and uses it against me. The truth is, other people just happen to be busier than me. I'm not the center of the universe, and the fact that people have stuff going on does not mean that they don't care about me. Me pulling away from people is not going to help anything, either. I need to keep reminding myself of that. 

I was reminded today that instead of feeling bad for myself and dwelling on the things that I don't like and can't change, I should be seeking to honor God even in the smallest of ways. I look for big things to do and get upset when I don't find any, but God wants to see me doing everything for his glory, and that includes little stuff. It's hard to actually put this into practice. It's much easier to wallow in the lies Satan tells me. Satan's lies don't call me to action. They don't carry the hope of life getting better or more purposeful. All they do is tell me to give up. 

Well, I'm here to say that I'm NOT giving up. With God's help, I will not let Satan win this battle. 

Faith for the Future

Well, I did it. After five years, I did it. I graduated from college. It's been about a month since graduation, and I still have this ridiculous, tumultuous mix of emotions. One minute I'm excited about the future and the next I become a puddle of sadness over the fact that a season of my life is over. And I kind of expected at least this summer to be relatively "normal," whatever that means. I'm finding out very quickly, however, that my life is already very different. Everything is changing, and I don't know how to deal with it. Especially the idea of figuring out what the next step in my life is going to be. My dream is to move to Taiwan for a while. I'm usually not very passionate about very many things, but this is a dream I care a lot about. And I've lived the past couple of months feeling fairly certain that going there is part of God's plan for me. I've put a lot of work into applying for jobs in Taiwan and trying to find ways to make it work. I think the total is somewhere around twenty five job applications right now. I've even gotten some pretty favorable responses from English schools in Taiwan. 


The problem, though, is that things just aren't falling into place the way I thought they would. And I've spent so much time depending on my own efforts to get me where I want to be. When I started realizing that things weren't going as planned, I started down this slippery thought slope that goes something like this: "Man, I really thought this is what God wanted from me. And it's what I want too. I've never wanted something so much in my life. Surely God put this passion in me for a reason. So why aren't things working out? Maybe it's not what God wants me to do. How do I know what God wants me to do? Is it even possible for me to be sure? How hard should I try, and when should I stop striving and leave it up to God? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL?" ...and it just devolves further and further until I am left feeling confused and hopeless and scared. But today while I was reading My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers just smacked me in the face with a truth I really needed to hear: 


‎‎"It does not matter what my circumstances are. I can be as much assured of abiding in Jesus in any one of them as I am in any prayer meeting. It is unnecessary to change and arrange my circumstances myself. Our Lord’s inner abiding was pure and unblemished. He was at home with God wherever His body was. He never chose His own circumstances, but was meek, submitting to His Father’s plans and directions for Him."

Here's what I realized: I need to stop fretting so much. I need to stop trying to orchestrate my own circumstances so that they'll be what I think they should be. I don't think I'm supposed to. See, there's this miraculous freedom that comes with trusting God with your life. There's no freedom in living in fear of the future. The fact is, I'm human. I can't make the right decision every time and I can't perfectly discern God's will for me. God is the author of my life, and it's time I realized that and allowed God to pry the pen out of my hands so he can write the story without me constantly trying to cross out His ideas and write in my own. The freedom comes when I stop striving to do certain things or conform to an image in my head of what I should be. God puts me in certain circumstances for reasons I may not understand right now, and though they may not be what I would choose I have to look for ways that I should be serving and abiding in Him regardless of the circumstances. What I do and where I go and who I think I am isn't so important. What really matters in life is God and knowing Him. Everything else is just a subplot in a much greater story. 

Don't get me wrong...this is much much much easier said than done. There are things I want that I'll have a hard time giving up, if that's what it comes to. My dreams of going to Taiwan, for instance. Of course it would be hard to give up the dream that is most precious to me. I just have to have peace in knowing that God knows my needs and my potential before I do, and he's got plans to fulfill them. And I have to be okay with not knowing right now. God may still have plans for me to go to Taiwan. Maybe He has different timing for it. Maybe He has other ways of providing the means that I just haven't found yet. I don't know what will happen. And that's ok.

It's time for me to give up my fretting and replace it with faith.  

Taiwan Journal 8.26.2011

I was reading some of my journals that I wrote when I was in Taiwan over the summer, and I just wanted to share some of the stuff I said. It just makes my heart happy to read what I thought about Taiwan while I was there :) So here's what I wrote on August 26, 2011:

Jeremiah 10:6-7 "No one is like you, oh Lord. You are great, and your name is mighty in power. Who should not revere you, oh King of the nations? This is your due. Among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like you."

We only have tomorrow left in Taiwan. I honestly feel like we just got here. I have seriously loved almost every minute of my time here. I think God has really confirmed for me how much I love the Taiwanese people, and how desperately they need Him. My heart is so heavy at having to leave these people. I have serious intentions of coming back as soon as I can. I just have a feeling I can't go back to how I was before I came here. I really feel like a different person now in some ways. Experiencing other cultures has opened my eyes. Having personal relationships with people here has really opened my heart to them. These people are so loving and kind and hospitable, and I can feel God's love for them.

I can't say that I'm 100% sure about my decision to pursue moving to Taiwan, but reading this journal entry and others like it has just made me realize the love God has placed in my heart for the friends I have in Taiwan. I was only there for a month but even now, almost a year later, I still miss those friends so much every time I think about them or look at pictures from my time with them. It's definitely not a love I could conjure up on my own. It's awesome how the love God puts in my heart is so wonderfully illogical <3

So here's to taking a step of faith and trusting that God will be ahead of me and behind me and beside me every step of the way!

Every Good Thing

In Philemon, Paul says: "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ."

Every year for the past four years, I have spent spring break in Panama City Beach, Florida talking to people on the beaches about spiritual things. Every year, God shows up in powerful ways in my life and in the lives of people out on the beaches. This year was no exception. 

To be completely honest, though, I was feeling more than a little discouraged when I got there last Sunday. My frustration was definitely for ridiculous reasons...I'm a pretty emotional person, which is something I have to struggle with, and Satan definitely knows what to tell me to make me feel as insecure as possible. And in the spirit of complete honesty, I would have to say even now that all is said and done that this year was not, socially speaking, the most fun week I've had there. I had certain expectations of how things should be, and God totally disregarded them. (How dare he disregard my plans, right?)

In the moments where I felt the most frustrated and the most insecure, however, I could feel God reminding me that the important thing was Him and reaching people with His love and His gospel. I realized that I needed to refocus on the real mission I was on. And you know what? I still had an amazing time, because it is so good to be doing God's will, regardless of other circumstances that aren't exactly what I want them to be. I still struggled with some emotional ups and downs throughout the week, but I realized how true it is that by sharing my faith I have a fuller understanding of every good thing I have in Christ. Unless I come face to face with what life is like without God, it's hard to really understand how much better life is with God. It's easy for me to get stuck in a little Christian bubble where we sit around and discuss how God is working in our lives, forgetting to remember and failing to care about those who don't yet have what we have. Only when I step back and look at what's happening outside of the little pseudo-Eden that I've created by surrounding myself with only Christian friends do I realize the power of God for transforming lives and the incredible gift that I am hording by not being active in sharing my faith.

So God has put the same prayer on my heart as he put on Paul's heart so long ago...I, too, pray that you (and I) would be active in sharing our faith, because it brings a new level of understanding of all the incredible things we have in Christ and because there is no greater joy than to bring those same gifts to  other people who, like us, are in desperate need of our Savior.  

1 Corinthians 13:1-7

Here's a thought: God is love. Actually, it's more than a thought. It's truth. Read 1 John 4:8 if you don't believe me.

I read 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 recently. Probably for the millionth time. And really, who hasn't at least heard this stuff at weddings? But guess what? Turns out the Bible is the living and active word of God (Hebrews 4:12). Even though I've heard it over and over and over, it can still speak to me in new ways. One of my favorite experiences is when I think I've learned everything there is to learn about a part of scripture, and then God shows me how wrong I am.

So anyways, as I was reading it, I had a thought: if God IS love, and love is all of the things listed in 1 Corinthians 13, then this gives us another little picture of part of God's character.

According to this passage, love is patient, kind, rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things...and as if that weren't enough, it never fails. True love does not commit the sins of envy, boastfulness, arrogance, rudeness, selfishness, irritableness, rudeness, or rejoicing in wrongdoing. So since God is love, then it follows that God has all of these qualities. How awesome is it that even though we fail so often at exhibiting these characteristics of God, He never has and never will?

I decided that it's my goal to memorize this chapter. It's important to know what it means to truly love others. After all...faith, hope, and love remain. "But the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Someone once told me that to find out how well you're loving others, you can take 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 and replace "love" with your name and then evaluate how true those statements are of yourself. You're not done growing in your ability to love until you never fail to be all of these things.

The Cost of Following

"...immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him." (Matthew 4:22)

When Jesus called James and John, they dropped everything they had going on in their lives and followed him. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the future and what God may have in store for me. After being in Taiwan, I really feel like that's a possible place that God may call me. While I don't know for sure if that's where I'll end up and I don't want to focus too much on the future, I feel like I need to consider what the cost would be for me to follow that calling (if that is, in fact, where God wants me).

I love Taiwan. A lot. I love how hospitable the people are, how bustling the city is, and how beautiful and breathtaking the mountains are. I would absolutely love to live there someday. I even have a fair number of friends there that I miss so much and would love love love to see again as soon as possible.

But then I think about how many things I wouldn't be around for at home. I'm sure I'd miss weddings, births of babies, funerals, etc. Aside from those big things, Facebook would no doubt remind me that all of my friends here are together, doing things without me. Life would still go on for everyone here, minus me.

I guess the possible costs of following Christ have never been as real to me as they feel right now. The fact that I'm considering moving overseas in just under a year is really exciting and scary. I know that we, as believers, will have to make sacrifices in order to follow Christ, but that doesn't mean it's easy to make them.

The question I'm still dealing with is this: When Jesus calls will I, like James and John, be willing to leave behind everything familiar and comfortable to follow?