Today I’m just hanging out at our contacts house taking care of my friend/teammate, kendra, who has been sick. Like everyday the Lord gives, it has been a blessing. I knew the place God wanted me today was here with her, but as usual i questioned if i was doing enough. i definitely wanted to stay here because i wasn’t feeling too great either but part of me felt a little guilty that i wasnt going to the school with everyone else. but God has been working on me here. I’ve been cleaning up my teams room and forcing kendra to stay hydrated and in the times between I’ve been reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan. If you haven’t read it, you should. I have no idea how many times I’ve read it because i had it on audio book and would listen to the chapters over and over throughout the past year. Today I decided to reread chapter 8-profile of the obsessed. Its one of my favorite chapters because I feel thats where I long to be.
I want to be obsessed with Jesus.
I feel like last fall I was as close to that as I have ever been and i constantly ask God to bring me back to that obsessed love for Him.
As I was reading, it reminded me of where I was when I signed up for the world race. It is making me long even moe for that and confirming that being obsessed with God is not too much or crazy. Being obsessed with God is where we all should be.
The first couple of months before the race were really hard for me in the fact that I was so obsessed with God when I signed up that I thought this was the normal reaction. Your eyes are opened to how much God loves you, you fall madly in love with Him, and then your life completely changes to revolve around Him. I thought everyone who had been teaching me to live like this my whole life were already living it and I was just jumping on the bandwagon. Wrong. I found out that in reality most people who preach it have yet to become “radical” and live it. That broke my heart, then made me angry, then made a little bitter.( You might think I’m being too honest but I’m striving to be honest and let others see my heart. If they don’t see Jesus in my heart I’m hoping they will see my heart become Jesus throughout my blogs) Then God humbled me by leading me to this verse,
“Accept other believers who are weak in faith, and don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong…..They are responsible to the Lord, so let him judge whether they are right or wrong. And with the Lord’s help, they will do what is right and receive his approval.”
[Romans14:1,4b]
even though this passage is talking about eating certain things, I beleive it to be true in circumstances of living life radically or not. Some people have weaker faith. Its our job to accept them and love them no matter what their faith in action looks like. Its not my job to judge someone for not leaving their comfort, just like I shouldn’t be judge for leaving my comfort. We have to have faith that that person and what ever level of faith they are working with is in God’s hands.
to jump back to where I was, It was VERY hard for me to see I was going after a lifestyle most only talk about. It was extremely scary, but looking back its less scary that I was doing it and more scary that others aren’t. It freaks me out how many “Christians” we have out in the world but how little of them try to live like Christ. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying my every action is instep with Jesus. I strive for that, but I am definitely not there. Its a daily desicion that I have to make. and to be honest even though I’m on this mission trip, I don’t make it everyday. Some days I wake up so selfishly thinking of what I have to do to have alone time with God and how I’m going to put up with the insane heat and so on..
But it is very scary that when we see someone tryinig to live like Jesus lived- we freak out. Its scary that we (myself included) tend to think being a Christian as a decision we make but live a life that looks similar to those who say they aren’t. All this came to my attention when people started saying how proud they were of me for going on this trip. Sometimes people would say it and I would get soo mad. I prayed a lot and asked God to reveal why I’d be getting so angry when people told me they were proud and then God opened my eyes to why. I was getting mad because so many people were proud of me and shocked. They had told me all along to live like Jesus but they were shocked I’d actually do it because they themselves had yet to really go all in. And to top it off some even acted like I was heroic for taking all these risks and going to help others. In reality it’d be way riskier for me to stay in my cofort zone and try to live like Jesus. That would be a real risk to me. All my life I thought people above me were making there life decisions based on how God was wanting them to live but I realized I was wrong. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying in order to follow Jesus and be like him it has to look like what I’m doing. It doesnt at all have to look like this, but it does however have to look like you laying your plans, future, ect. in his hands and have faith He is going to deal you a better hand than you could ever get yourself. We can’t keep praying to be more like Jesus and working daily to have the American Dream. Those are 2 totally different goals. If you don’t believe me or think I’m too radical, please go read through Jesus’s life story. The American dream is about us. Jesus’s life was about God and then others. It was never about Him. So as we pray to be more like Jesus, we have to stop living our life like its about us.
My prayer is that more people will trust Him. The times our lives have meaning are the times our lives are laid in His hands. He is a loving God and an amazing Father. He wants to give us great things but we often have to let go of what we think that looks like, and the idea that we can succeed on our on, in order for him to show us what good really looks like.
If we are obsessed with God, if He is truely consuming all our focus, don’t you think He’ll take care of the rest of things we focus on? I fully believe that all I can hope for and all I could ever want is to be closer to Him because I’ve seen my life and the good that comes of it when He is my only focus.
