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.