LIFE

So this is actually something God kinda showed me before we went on break but it really spoke to me so I’ll share it with you guys. It’s nothing profound or deep, sometimes I feel like half the things I have to say aren’t deep at all but like Obinna told me a few weeks ago, we worship God in Spirit and in truth. And in order to worship Him, to truly worship Him, we must worship in truth and that means coming to God and coming before people exactly as we are, not as affectedly religious people but as broken believers with real struggles and challenges. And to me that’s so awesome! For so long I felt like I had to clean myself up before coming to God, even during a worship service I’d try to put on my best Christian attitude and tell God all I need is Him when in actuality I can’t help thinking and worrying about grades, or family, or whatever else. How great it is to know that true worship is when we come to God in truth, in truth about who we are, what we’re thinking, what we’re struggling with, even when we think our Father would be ashamed of us. I’ve spent way too long trying to come before God as someone He would approve of, with all my thoughts in the right place, and my heart always in the right place when in reality, they’re not. I’m just human, yet so are we all. And still the amazing thing is, not only is that okay, but when we come before God exactly as we are, it’s what He calls true worship.Well, that wasn’t actually what I had planned on saying. What God really showed me last week comes from Psalms. For the past semester I’d been hearing about life, “There’s so much life on him…is there life in your life group…when I speak, I speak life(yes Nick Boyer, God has blessed so many people through you)…we want people to see the life on us.”etc. And so life became something that I strove after, I wanted life to be on me, when I spoke to people, when people saw me, when they were around me. And really, it’s been something that’s bothered me because I didn’t know if I truly had life on me. And I guess I hadn’t even realized this was a source of insecurity. God showed me that I had been trying to synthetically create life in myself by evaluating people who had it and trying to answer like them, or respond how they would respond. And yes, I do think God has surrounded us with a cloud of witnesses but God also showed me that life doesn’t come from us trying to imitate it in others or even trying to cultivate it in ourselves because it’s impossible. God really spoke to me through Psalms 119, which is all about the transforming power of His Word. 119:25 says “My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word!” or in verse 37 …”give me life in your ways” and verse 40 “Behold, I long for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life!” And so what God showed me is that we don’t have to try or even worry about producing life in our actions or speech or anything. If we are in God’s word, his Holy Spirit will give us life and that life is going to be so compelling and powerful that it will show. We don’t have to worry if our life looks exactly like his life, or her life, we just have to be ourselves, (or like they say at Harvest Institute “be who you is”) and that life will come off of us because God made us just how He wants us. Anyway, sorry that was really long and wordy, I just want to encourage you guys to trust God, trust that when you get into His word He will do the transforming. Love you guys