Unworthy Son

“Therefore I say to you, Take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”  Matthew 6:25

God is so good.

“Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted. 

But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”

Thank you Lord, I needed these verses tonight.

At first I wasn’t going to write about the new year, because honestly I am not normally a very big new years kind of person. This year though, things just fit. It just feels like the turning of the years is lining up perfectly with the turning of chapters in my life. This past year was full of major changes for me. I loved it. I honestly feel like I have lived three completely different stories over the past 365 days. I was going to write an overall comprehensive post at first, but they are all so distinct I have decided to separate them.

The first part of my year I call Growth. These would be my Maranatha days.  I miss that place so much, and I am so grateful for the time God allowed me to spend there. I wish all the time that I could be back in Judson just hanging out with all the guys. I have never been in another place where I saw so much love for God and experienced such a desire for growth. I constantly felt uplifted by those around me, and that is so rare in our society today. I can only hope to take what I have experienced there and try to reflect it towards others. Also, the chances I had to serve out there were just amazing. Singing with Tonal was one of the scariest and best things I have ever been through. Not being much of a singer, I was pretty shocked when Coach asked me to join the group, and also a little nervous. Once we all got together though my inhibitions completely disappeared. I realized that we weren’t a group of professional singers that hit every note, (although I think we sounded pretty good haha) we were simply a group of guys that loved being together and wanted to bring God glory through singing and music. It was one of the most genuine and real groups of people I have ever been with, and I learned so much every time we got together. Then there was Deforest. I was pretty skeptical of going to a church where my truck of college students made up half of the congregation, but God used that place to teach me in ways I never imagined. It may sound lame teaching a Sunday School class to only three kids, but I learned more by teaching those kids than I learned in any one of my classes. They were a little crazy, but there was just such a purity in their minds that was amazing. They were restless and sometimes obnoxious like most 12 and 13 year olds are, but behind that they were so willing to learn and to be taught. They had so much faith and so little doubt. It may sound cliché, but I really did learn more from them than they did from me.  

Life number two: Challenge. The summer started off pretty rough for me. After being surrounded by a constant stream of friends, being home felt so lonely to me. I got so used to spending 24 hours a day with friends that I didn’t know what to do when I had days where I barely saw anyone. It was a serious challenge for me to get used to it. On top of this, I was faced with the reality that some of my own plans may not turn out the way I thought. There was a time when I didn’t know what would happen in one of my relationships and that really scared me. Being faced with both of these issues at once, I spent the beginning of my summer really hurting. Normally I don’t get too affected by my surroundings, but I struggled a lot to look past these circumstances. It wasn’t until I surrendered myself to God that things really began to turn around. It took me a while to get there, but eventually God brought me to a place where I realized that He is in control, and because of that, I was exactly where I needed to be. That realization has deeply affected me. I tend to be a worrier, but learning this lesson taught me to be so much more confident in my life. I still struggle, but in the back of my mind I always know things are perfectly alright. He is in control, and though I don’t always comprehend it, He wants and knows what is best for, even me more than I do.

 The last phase has been the most meaningful to me, and although it has been complex, I think one word still does a good job of capturing the majority of it. That word is Love. Yes, for a large part of that I am referring to the fact that I have fallen in love with an amazing girl, but that is just the beginning for me. Kind of the catalyst in a way. The love I have experienced in my relationship with Kelsea has affected more than I ever thought it would. It has caused me to love my family more, to realize that a loving family is something I should never take for granted, and that it is something worth working for. It has caused me to love building new relationships more than I ever have before. I no longer see meeting new people as a chore, but an opportunity. I now realize the value and blessing that building relationships with others can have. It has caused me to grow in my love for serving. I have seen how fulfilling giving yourself for another person can be. I have learned to really see the beauty in a person’s smile when you are the cause of it. Most importantly I have learned to grow in my love for God. Seeing the work He is doing in mine and Kelsea’s lives has given me such a better picture of who God is, and anytime you broaden your understanding of Christ, you just can’t help but fall in love with Him. Although I consider myself to still be here in this phase, I hope to shift it a little bit. Not that I want to leave this one, I just hope to deepen it. I can’t name the next chapter of my life just yet, but I can say what I hope to call it, and that would be Build. I hope to take what I have learned this year and move to the next level. I want to take the relationships I have formed and shape them into something even more wonderful. I want to take my relationship with God to a new level of trust. Mainly, I want to put myself in a position where I am even more dependent upon Him. I don’t want to count on myself to live this life. I want to give it to God and say “show me what you can do with it”. I want Christ to build my life into something that can only be explained as the handiwork of God. So that being said I have decided to only make one new years resolution, and that is to work on becoming the man God wants me to be. I really feel like that is the only thing I need to focus on. If I become who God wants me to be then I feel like all the other things I want to accomplish will just begin to happen. I know I need a lot of work to get to that place, but it is worth working for.  And so to wrap up this post I just have one more thing to say, or ask rather, and that is for prayer. I need it… a lot, and I appreciate every one I get.

Anyways, if you managed to read this far without getting bored and leaving, then to you I say thank you and I love you. I hope you all have a wonderful 2012!!! :)

Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? 

All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be,declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: 
he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.