Are You a Convenient Christian?

In America today, we are way too focused on convenience. We pretty much won't do something if it's inconvenient, or if we just don't feel like it. This is starting to happen in church and in people's spiritual lives too.

On Saturday night, I was washing up some dishes after supper, and was thinking about devotions. Too often on Saturdays and Sundays I don't do my devotions. I make excuses like “oh they're just such busy days!” or “I slept in today so I don't really have time to do them. I'll do them later,” and I never end up doing them.

Why do I think this way? God is never too busy to extend His mercy and grace towards me! He never takes a day off from watching over me! I think this way because, it's inconvenient at the time.

I make time to do other stuff that I enjoy. Why can't I make time for God? I understand that life gets busy, we get tired, etc, but we always seem to find time to do things that we “couldn't go a day without!”

Some people don't get up and come to church on Sunday morning because they are either too tired, or they haven't had enough “family time” because of the busy week. Cut something out! God shouldn't be cut out of our lives. He gave us those lives. Sunday is just one day. One small thing that we should totally devote to God and not worry about it being convenient.

Sunday, our church had something called “Keeping Missions Alive”. It's a time where a few missionaries that our church supports will come and give the church an update. I enjoyed it so much! The Sunday night service completely encouraged and challenged my heart at the same time.

Too often I get discouraged when I look around and see the people of this world who just don't care about God. I find myself questioning where God really is, and if He is even working anymore. There are people around who are robotic Christians. They go through the motions, but don't feel anything. If you focus on this, it's very easy to get discouraged. Seeing what God was and is doing around the world completely set my heart on fire again! It encouraged me because I can still see God working.

It challenged me because I was always the one terrified of going to the mission field. I was the one who said, “I won't have to go because God can always use someone else. The food there is weird, it's dirty and dusty, and my friends and family aren't there.”

Last March, a group called “A Passion for Jesus” came to our church and did a girl's conference. One of the girls did a little talk on COMPLETELY surrendering your ALL, and yes I mean all, to Christ. She was in the same boat as I am. She was scared of the mission field. She said God could use her for anything, but He just couldn't send her to the mission field. God convicted her, and she told God that He could use her...anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Complete surrender. Sunday night, I was able to say truly from my heart, “Ok God. If you will use me, I will follow You anywhere.”

I was pretty much telling God He couldn't have that area of my life. Do you know how hard it is to resist God when He is clearly convicting you about something? Yea. No fun at all.

So is it convenient to be a missionary? Absolutely not. Is it convenient to support missionaries? Not necessarily. God isn't looking for comfortable Christians. He's looking for people who will step up and do the hard things because they love Him so much that they want to give their all and their best. God uses us when we are out of our comfort zone. I don't know about you, but the mission field is REALLY out of my comfort zone. I want to be an uncomfortable Christian, doing all I can for Christ.

I'm going to close this blog post (that's super long...sorry about that!) by just encouraging you in the ways you can give to missionaries. A loooong time ago, a missionary came to our church and told a story about two little African boys who wanted to support missionaries. They had no money. They asked God to provide for them. They sold eggs in their neighborhood and gave every bit of money they earned to the missionaries. The more they gave, the more God provided. These little boys had close to nothing, yet they gave everything they did have to God's work. Pretty convicting hu?

It's not convenient being a Christian sometimes. It's not convenient being a missionary, or supporting a missionary! It's not always convenient going to church. But that's ok! Do you think it was very convenient for Jesus to die on the cross to save us all from our sins? Not exactly. But He did it because He loved us. We should be able to make a few small sacrifices out of love for Him also.

How Long Does It Take You To Jump In?

  Aaaahhh summer time is quickly coming, aaaand you know what that means! SWIMMING!!!! What does swimming have to do with my blog? Good question. Hehe! Just kidding, I really do know where I'm going with this.

 Last night, I was reading a chapter of "Do Hard Things" by Alex and Brett Harris. The chapter was talking about how teenagers want to spend their teenage years "partying it up" and having fun before "real life" hits. The metaphor they used to explain this was super good and I loved it! So I'm going to kinda steel a little bit of it! ;)

  They used the diving board to illustrate the teenage years, and the pool to illustrate adulthood, or "real life". The diving board is pretty much to launch us into the water right? Well the teen years are to launch us into adulthood. What we do now defines our future. Some people say, "Well I'm still a teenager. I can have fun and party before real life hits. What I'm doing now has no effect on my future. I'll be serious about life and God when I become an adult, or when I go to college."

  This isn't the best idea. Have you ever decided to do a flip off the diving board, and something went wrong and you landed on the water in a belly flop position? Yea it doesn't feel so great does it? If you launch yourself in the wrong way into life, you could be doing a type of "belly flop" into it. It hurts! If I spend my teenage years treating God lightly, not really caring about my future, then I'm going to do a belly flop into life and it's gonna hurt when reality strikes.

  Some people have addictions that they get themselves into as teenagers, and they pay for it the rest of their lives! In the chapter of the book they gave several examples. By the way, if you haven't read this book you should get it...It's super convicting!

  I've been thinking a lot about my future lately and what I'm doing now to prepare for it. Is God pleased with how I'm living my teenage years? Am I doing "fun stuff" because I can and because there's "no real consequences to it" or am I trying my hardest to work hard for God so that I can be launched the right way, smoothly, into adulthood?

  These are some convicting questions to think about. They're not that fun to think about either! I like to have fun as much as anyone else does, but sometimes I have to pass stuff up because it wouldn't have the greatest influence on me and my future. Habits are hard to break. They're hard to avoid! If you will try to live for God, (with God's help...we can't do anything on our own) He will honor that and help you out.

  So! When you are about to jump into life, will you inch towards the edge of the board because you're afraid of how it will feel when you jump in, or will you run off the board because you know you've done your best and it won't be too difficult to face? Just a little something that I was thinking about and thought I'd share with you :)

  If there are things you're involved in that you know aren't pleasing to God, it's never too late to ask God to help you break the habit. He can do all things! He wants to help you out too! Isn't it comforting that God cares about each and every one of our futures?! It's such a relief to me, and I hope that it is to you too!

"Learning to Love Him More"...What does it mean?

  Why did I choose the title to my blog and what does it mean? Well, last month, the youth choir at our church that I'm in sang the song "To Love Our God" by Mark Hayes. This is, and has been, one of my favorite songs ever! The message is so clear, and so powerful! It talks about how we are only on this earth to love God, and that should be our reason to live.
 
A few weeks ago, I started to think about what life is really for. What do we live for, and why do we live? I knew that our sole purpose on earth should be to live for God and to prepare for our eternity with Him, but I kept questioning how to do it.

  I've been thinking about this pretty constantly since then, and praying about it. That song that we sang in choir kept coming to my mind. Yea I knew that we were supposed to live for God and everything, but I was wondering how I was supposed to do that in my daily life, which consists pretty much of school. What does
God want from me?

  I definitely don't have the full answer yet, but I'm starting to get little pieces of it. To start with, my daily devotions. Do I do them out of duty, or do I do them because I want to spend time with the One who laid down His life for me and paid the ultimate price? Do I get up early to read my Bible just to get it over with so that I can have time to do things that I want to do during the day, or do I get up early because I want God's voice to be the first thing I hear in the morning?

  The second way to love God is to do my best in my school work. If you know me at all, you will know that I am NOT very fond of school! I'm in my junior year of high school and let me tell you, I cannot WAIT to graduate next spring! But doing my very best in school is one way where I can give my best. I need to give my best for God in everything...and everything includes school doesn't it? As much as I dislike it, I need to learn to give my best.

  The third way is for me to love my family...unconditionally. My family is wonderful, they really are, but no family is perfect. Me being imperfect doesn't help either. It's hard to love people you live with every day. God commands us to love our families. He says that if we can't love our brothers who we can see, how can we love God who we can't? (1 John 4:20) I have 6 sisters. Four of my sisters don't live at home anymore, but no matter what, there are still those cat fights!

  I could name several more ways in which God is teaching me to love Him more, but I'll save that for future blog posts. ;)

First Blog Post!

  So here it is. My first blog post. I had a blog a while ago, but I forgot what it was called, the username, and the password! Oops! :)

  I decided to make this blog, because I'm not very good at writing in notebooks things that come to mind when I'm thinking, doing devotions, etc. I've always enjoyed writing a little bit, so I just decided to write things that come to mind on a blog!

  This blog will probably consist of random thoughts, scrambled as they may be! My brain works in quite the random way. :) I hope you enjoy reading, and I pray it will be a blessing to someone!

   What does the title of this blog mean? Well I will explain that in the next blog post, plus explain why I chose it. See you then!
--Lindsey