When Life (for me) Began.

I've been debating on whether to post this or not. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I should. Those who read this may not know me as well as others, but the point is not really to get to know me on a more personal level, but it's more to show God's absolutely amazing work and how capable He is. If you read my very first blog post, you'll see that this blog purposed to bring those who read it closer to Him. Another attempt of mine at witnessing to others using my thoughts, convictions and experiences.

For God's glory only...this is how He made His way into my life.

Finding My Dependence

Being dependent in the wrong people is how I spent the first 18 years of my life. Growing up in church I heard the stories every Sunday, but that's all they were to me...just stories. It wasn't until I was 12 that I heard and understood the gospel for the first time. Jesus died for me, to take away my sins so that I can spend eternity with Him in Heaven. That night I prayed to God asking Him to be a part of my life. Accepting Christ into my life changed how I viewed myself and later explained the conviction I felt throughout high school, but I went through a long process of living in sin and conviction before I understood what it truly meant to live a life for Christ, let alone what it looked like.

High school is when the dependence in God shifted and focused on family and friends. Sports were always an interest of mine, and around this time softball began to consume my life. It became a way for me to achieve admiration from my parents as well as a way for me to boast my talents. I became so dependent on pleasing my parents that softball became my idol. Not only was softball sculpting my identity, but fitting in with the popular crowd became a desire as well. Dating the popular guys, and partying with the "in" crowd is what I thought it took. My dependence on what others thought about me had made me into someone I didn't even recognize. By this point in my life, God is no where to be seen, in or through me. I was what people call a "Sunday Morning Christian," attending church again, as a way to please my parents. My junior year, God put someone in my life who help me realize how a Christian life should be lived. This person helped me recognize that I was depending on temporary satisfactions and ending up more lost than I started.

Coming to college, I knew 2 things could happen. 1) I could keep living in a lie and making myself believe that this comfortable lifestyle was satisfying, or 2) I could admit to myself and to God that I was living in filth and sin and have the desire to change. The summer before college, I made reading God's Word and praying a daily occurrence. And because of this, God quickly made the decision obvious. I felt God calling me to leave this comfortable "popular" bubble and learn to depend solely on Him to satisfy me.

God has grown me in some absolutely amazing ways over the last year and a half, ways that are obviously only possible by the work of His hands. He's blessed me, He's taken things away, and He has sent me numerous trials. But all of this was to dispose of any hindrances that are/were getting in the way of my knowledge and love for Him as well as to strengthen my faith in His control of my life. I see now why God allowed my past to happen -- to be able to relate to others, to realize that experience evolves knowledge into wisdom, and ultimately to see how powerful God's love and grace is to be able to transform a lost, helpless girl who was searching for satisfaction in state titles and relationships to a God-fearing college student who continues to fall more in love with Him every day.

Jesus died for us. He covered our sin with His blood. He's offering us a free ticket into eternal salvation with Him. A ticket that can be gained by asking Him to forgive us of our sin, wanting Him to be the forefront of our lives, and to believe that what He's done for us is true. So why waste such a valuable ticket on such a worthless world?

1 John 2:17 is one of the best representations of what God has shown me through His work in my life so far. "The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever."

I spent so much of my time and effort trying to please the people and things of this world, and it resulted in complete unfulfillment. Giving my life over to God for Him to control has brought me so much more satisfaction in the last 2 years that I have ever experienced.

So I ask, why love and invest in something temporary when we have the option of loving and investing in something eternal?