Your Will

I have been struggling to the point of madness over the past two weeks trying to figure out what on earth to do with my life.  To be a student ministry coordinator, to play on the Wednesday night worship team, to be in the plays, who to live with, what classes to take, what major to be, on and on and on.  This is what college is to me right now: an institution where we sit in classes to learn, yet our minds travel elsewhere.  Our minds travel to questions unanswered and a desperate search for the correct answers.  Relationships are muddled by the confusion in our own lives.  Tolerance levels for the people and actions around us are at an all time low.  It has been much too much to handle.

On Sunday, though, my wonderful father gave a sermon that was exactly what I needed to hear, perhaps even what I wanted to hear (So often, what we need to hear is not at all what we want to hear, I'm sure everyone has felt that way at one point or another).  So many questions were buzzing around in my mind and I wanted to find the answers.  No, I didn't want God to present them to me, I wanted to find them myself.  I wanted CONTROL, who doesn't want control of their own life?  The sermon was about us living the will of the father, rather than the will of ourselves.  Exactly what I needed to hear.

If I am to call myself a Christian, I cannot go about doing whatever I please.  There are things in my life that I love and have passions for, but I need to make room for new passions.  I need to do the things that Christ is calling me to do, but the struggle has been in hearing that calling.  It shouldn't have been such a groundbreaking realization to me as to why I couldn't hear that calling.  I was too busy and caught up in my own world to listen to His voice.  We all get caught up in our own thoughts, struggles and feelings, leaving no room for what is truly important: His voice in our lives.  One thing that stood out to me most was when he told us that one of the reasons we stop listening to God is that we're afraid of being called where we don't want to go.

After this statement, I realized that the Christian life is not meant to be a burden, it is meant to be an adventure.  I read a verse in Luke (in the Message translation) Chapter 6, vs. 24 that showed me this.  

"But it's trouble ahead if you think you have it made.  What you have is all you'll ever get."

If we don't take any risks or leaps of faith, we'll never get anywhere.  We will stay in the same comfortable place all our lives and never see the world that has been set out before us.  Faith is meant to take us places where we would never otherwise go.  It is meant to spread our capacity to love all over the world and live a Christlike life here on earth.  I have to give up my life to God, give up everything I have, drop it all and follow Him.

On Wednesday night, I came to the realization that no matter what I do next year, God has His hand over it.  What peace I found from such a realization.  How silly of me to hear the words "Your will, not my own be done" and never truly understand the meaning until now.  How foolish I was to sing the words of worship songs and on so many occasions, barely even believe what I was saying.  Oh, how my life has changed this year.  I thought coming to SPU would be going back into a safe and familiar Christian bubble of a world.  Yes, it is a wonderful Christian community, but it has challenged me in ways I never would have been challenged if I were on a different campus.  

This week is Holy Week and we sang tonight "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again."  I sang these words with the realization in my heart that Christ gave up His life for the broken human race.  He gave His life to ensure the salvation of a group of broken people.  We are helpless, but through Christ's death and resurrection, we are able to have hope in a dark world.  I sang the words with a smile on my face: CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN!