Oh dear. Where did time go? 'Last I knew, it was barely May. Cliché though this may sound, time seems to be flying faster than ever. Anyway, things will hopefully slow down and I'll be blogging more consistently. But for now, I'm taking an opportunity to put down what's been going on.
A few weeks ago, I decided that the thing I'm struggling the most with as a Christian is spending time with God every day. I have such a hard time making it a priority. Oh, I always have the best intentions, but somehow I always put something else first and forget all about praying or reading. I always regret it, because I feel empty and distant from God when I've skipped a few days. At Girls' Camp last week, the counselors put on a skit about the difference between a girl who did make her quiet time a priority and those who did not. I admit, I bawled. It was speaking directly to me and it was absolutely what I needed to wake me up on that particular part of my walk. Not surprisingly, the theme of Girls' Camp this year was "Wake Up."
That was the first revelation for me. The next came while I was reading my Bible last week. Now before I go any further, a little backstory is necessary. The past oh, 6 months my prayer has been that God would give me an opportunity to share my testimony with someone or for God to place someone in my path who I'm supposed to talk to about Him. There were a variety of reasons that inspired this prayer, but today we're going with the abridged version. Anyway, I had been praying this prayer for a while and nothing was really happening. I was reading my Bible though, last week, and God revealed to me why He hadn't given me the opportunity I was asking for. I had been reading a lot about love. While I was sitting there thinking about it, something occurred to me. God had just taught me a poignant lesson about spending time with Him. Now He hit me with some verses about love. I concluded that He was working on preparing me. Maybe I wasn't ready to share my faith with someone.
I read a book this past year in school called "Experiencing God." In it the author mainly talked about knowing God's will and doing it. That's how he described experiencing God. A certain thing in the book that struck me then came back to me last week. "Some people want God to give them an assignment to do for Him. They vow that they will do whatever He asks. But when God observes their lives, He notices that they have not been obedient in the things He already has told them to do." Bam! It hit the nail on the head. I had asked for an assignment, but when God looked at my life, He noticed that I hadn't been prioritizing my time with Him, He realized I hadn't been loving those around me like Corinthians illustrates, and who knows what else He'll reveal to me. If He had given me an assignment 2 months ago, would I really have been as willing as I thought I was to do whatever He had asked?
God's ways are so different than ours and even though this is such a minute circumstance, I have an opportunity to trust Him in this area. I'm excited to see where He'll take me this year. May 8th marked a year since I gave my life to God. My prayer then and still is that He'll do great things through me this year. I prayed that He'll work in my heart that I can touch others for Him. I prayed that His will would be fulfilled in a small part through me. That's an exciting, if not slightly scary, prayer. I don't know where He'll want to use me or what He'll do through me, but I'm excited to be serving a God whose plans are beyond the limits of our imagination. May 8th wasn't even that long ago, and look what He's already taught me! When May 8th comes around next year, I wonder where I'll be. I hope I will look back and see that I had let God work through me.
So, that's my thought dump for today. Hopefully I'll finally have some time this week to work on my next post on meekness. xo, Ella
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