Welcome to the Real World.
Reading back on these blogs, I realize that I started this a few years ago. Obvious statement? Sure. But it’s scary to think that I started this going into my sophomore year of high school, and now I have moved on into young adulthood as an entering college student.
With that, I add more cliché to this blog. You really don’t know what you have until it’s gone.. or until it doesn’t surround you anymore. Also, you don’t realize how much you need to live until you’re living in a dorm room 1000+ miles away from home. And even worse still, you never truly discover who you are until you are in a completely unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people.
Now, I don’t mean to depress anyone. I’m not sad that I’m here, despite the fact that I do miss home quite a bit. But the fact is that growing up is about learning who you are, and I think that I’m a step ahead just because my identity has become so wrapped up in Jesus. I can’t imagine living apart from Him. I don’t know who I am apart from Him. With that, though, there is a daily struggle. A surrender to Him and letting go and emptying of me that must happen each and every day. I know you’ve heard that before. That we must “deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow Him”. But until you have realized that your life is purposeless without Him, until you have realized that your sin is what made Him suffer, bleed and die, and His love and grace is the only reason that you’re currently intaking oxygen, then you don’t know what that daily struggle is about.
I’ve heard it said that in our Christian walk, if we are not progressing, we are regressing. May we never think that we can stand still as passive Christians and still reap the full and abundant life that God has promised us. May we never love in just word and deed, but in action. May we never step back and think that God can’t use us.
May we die to ourselves daily, knowing that any goodness that comes out of us is a result of Jesus Christ dwelling in our lives.
