A Lot Has Been On My Mind Lately

This weekend I went on a retreat with my youth group and I had a lot of fun... but that was about it. I didn't really feel like I learned anything spiritually. Now don't get me wrong, Doug and Jeremy gave a GREAT message and there was a lot to be learned from it, so why didn't it impact me?

Well I have been thinking about that all day today and I came up with a very simple but hard answer: I am completely focused on myself. And not only am I completely focused on myself, I WANT to be completely focused on myself. My pride is swelling up big again. Recently I have just been tired with focusing my life on God and subconsciously all I've been wanting to do is just stop it. I have been playing guitar for Chi Alpha which made me really nervous and the whole time I was just completely focused on sounding good. Not leading people in worship. I've been struggling with what I want to do for college and my life and sometimes it seems like that would be an easier question to solve if I took God out of the equation.

But it all comes down to this: I CAN'T TAKE GOD OUT OF THE EQUATION!!! NOR SHOULD I WANT TO!!!

So far many of you may be stunned by this post. Maybe not. But I truly think that all of us feel this way sometimes. Sometimes it just seems like life would be more fun and easier if we didn't have to focus it all on God. And you know what? It might be easier and more fun for a while. But in the grand scheme of things its not worth it. And God's love is SOOOO much better than doing my own things. His love is what I should want. His relationship is what I should want. Being His servant is what I should want. Reading His Word is what I should want. And right now I am trying to do that. I am asking God for the desire to be in His Word and in prayer. The desire to focus my time and life on Him rather than myself.

Thanks for letting me vent. This post was probably more real than any I have posted before. Hopefully you didn't take out of it that I don't want to be a Christian, that is not at all what I meant. This post was just the truth about what I believe to be a lot of Christians' struggles. Sometimes following God is hard, even if life is great because for some reason our sinful human nature starts telling us that it could be even better if we just drop the whole God thing. But that is just a lie that Satan tells us. Following God is awesome although it may not seem like it all the time.

To end this I would like to share with you verses that I think is totally awesome. It helps take away any thoughts that life would be better without God.

" ⁷ But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in^[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead." Philippians 3:7-11