Hello from Vietnam!
If you are having trouble reading my blogs it is because there is a password since vietnam is a closed country.
password: wonderchurch
This month, my team and I are working at an English Cafe, and our job is to lead English club, and build relationships with the local university students. The city we are in is very much of a late night city, so our mornings a full of free time.
I have had lots of free time during these past few months, which in some cases has been really good because I have been able to spend time diving deeper into my relationship with the Lord and teammates. In other cases, it has been a time for me to spend soaking up wifi and wasting my time on social media. I find more joy in spending time with the Lord than I do spending time on social media, but I also enjoy seeing what my friends are doing in America. However, I want to grow deeper in my relationship with the Lord more than anything, but sometimes I get lazy and just go through the motions of reading my devotionals. Jennie Allen said it best, “We want to do things for God without spending time with God.” We always have the thought behind it, but we also have to put in the effort and devotion. The Lord stretches us and grows us when we are uncomfortable.
Time is such a precious thing that we will never get back. Cliche, I know. But it is so true that these moments that we just let pass us by could be used to glorify God in big and small ways. Thankfully, God is not phased by time and He is timeless and never changing. But while we are here on earth it is necessary to spend our time wisely instead of on mind numbing activities such a social media or Netflix or technology in general.
1 Peter 1:13 Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.
The book “Nothing to Prove” by Jennie Allen is being passed around and right now I’m reading it. It talks about how we often have this performance mentality where we think that we have to prove things to the people around us or even to God. We often do things for God instead of with Him. We seek His approval, which isn’t necessary because he already loves us so much more than we could ever understand and he just wants to do life with us. All He wants is for us to spread his love around and in order to do that we need to be able to attempt to grasp how great his love is for us. The best way to do this is to spend time with Him talking to him, listening to him, or reading his word. We don’t have to earn anything from the Lord, but our society says otherwise. We have to let the Lord into the nitty gritty and allow him to completely work in our lives in a deeper way than we are comfortable with.
One of my friends here in Vietnam told me that people here spend so much time on facebook (some people 10 hours). In “Nothing to Prove” the author writes about time and that where we spend our time is what we get our joy from. “Our joy, or lack of it is a direct result of where we most spend our time and thoughts and energy.” I don’t want my joy to come from social media because that isn’t genuine joy. I want my joy to come straight from the Lord in such a way that people can see it on my face and by the way I do life.
No one ever said that life as a Christian would be effortless or easy, therefore, you have to work hard to look past the distractions and seek ways that you can spend time with the Lord. Look at your life and see where you spend most of your time and is it something that glorifies the Lord or does it glorify the world.
