| who's really in charge? |

Jesus is supposed to be the Lord of our lives...

Why is it that I feel that this is not the case? I feel like so often, I am the bottom line for decisions that need to be made. I'm the one who chooses what I do everyday. I choose my moods and I decide if I'm going to have a good day, a great day, or a crappy day. I decide what I want to do with my money, I decide if I even want to make money on a particular day. I get to make the rules for myself, and I choose whether or not I want to follow them or not. I have rights, I have privileges, and I can assign or retract both from my life as I deem necessary. I wake myself up in the morning and I put myself to sleep every night. I survive my days and my nights. I don't have to listen to anything that people say, because I am my own person. I stand on my own two feet. I look out for myself, no one else wants to do such things for me. I can't trust people, because they let me down.

When I was pledging for my fraternity, there was a rule that all the pledges had to adhere to. We were not allowed to refer to ourselves in the first person at all. This was crazy, most people thought. All the pledges had to refer to themselves in the third person only. That meant that we couldn't use the words: I, me, my, mine, or myself. This really drove my friends crazy, as well as my pledge brothers. It was really hard to see what the point of speaking in third person was. What I realized as we went on in this process, was the fact that there are a lot of times where we refer to ourselves in our everyday thoughts, prayers, or conversations. Having to change my pattern every time I was about to mention something about myself made me pay special attention to just how often I used such words. After a while, I realized that I was pretty self absorbed. Almost everything that came out of my mouth referred to me. I saw how easy it was to put myself into everything, and not to put God into anything.

One of the secrets that we like to hide from God and from each other sometimes is the fact that we like control. We like to be able to have control of all kinds of things. We like to control situations, feelings, and outcomes. Lots of times when we get frustrated about things, it is because we cannot control circumstances that surround us. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten angry because something did not go the way that I planned it, or something that I couldn't control hampered my plans. I think we like to have the last say in lots of things. We are raised in a society that is very individualistic, and we grow into these ideas that we are our number one priorities. We have to focus on how we feel, what we get out of things, how things affect us, etc. At work, I generally seem to get mad when people don't listen to me, because I have particular insights about things. We are so quick to be able to give 95% of things up to God (actually that might be pretty high), but there is that 5% that God is just not allowed to touch.

"It's better if I can handle that one God"

How much sense does that make? He created us, He provides for us, and we can't give Him everything? All He asks is that we trust Him, and allow Him to shoulder our burdens. What's better than being free of troubles, because we can give them up? We go through a lot of self inflicted suffering throughout our lives. This is mostly due to the fact that we have the mentality: "I've gotten myself into this, and I can get myself out of this." or "lemme try to fix things before I go to God about it". How often have I gone to people, complaining about the things that were going on with me, and how I couldn't do anything to change the situation, only to be met with the question: "have you prayed about it?" and me answering "not yet, I think I can figure this out". Why do we think we can figure out our own things? Why do we think that we can outwit God?! He gave us the intellect that we ABUSE most of the time.

What's the deal? What's holding us back from giving complete control of things over to God? What are we afraid of? It can't be that He will find out about the kind of people that we are, or the things we've done. If it is, I have a secret for you: HE ALREADY KNOWS! A lot of the time, we're so much harder on ourselves than God is on us. We are the ones that don't allow for forgiveness. He's all about forgiving people. We are the ones that hold on to sin and think that it somehow permanently damages us. He's quite the opposite! Once we ask for forgiveness, God completely writes things off as if they've never happened.We are made white as the freshly fallen snow in His eyes; Shouldn't that be enough for us!? How is it possible that we hold ourselves up to a higher standard than God does?

the answer is, for most of us, we are our own little gods...

time for a change yes? He is for us...For a reason!

Give up Lordship to the true Ruler and King of all creation.

I'm out...

| dr jekyll, mr hyde |

Being a Christian is hard...

There are really times where I want to just have things the easy way. I want to be able to do the things that everyone else does, not really thinking about the way things are, or the consequences of some of my actions. I kinda long for the blissful ignorance of not knowing how this affects my soul or my ways to heaven.

At the same time, I really don't think I would be able to live like that. Knowing God has really shown me so much, I've been able to grow in so many different ways, and understand the world around me so much better. I feel like, even though I have a lot to consider during my days, that I'm really much more ALIVE with the knowledge of Him and how He controls the things around and including me.

I had a conversation a couple of weeks back, where a friend of mine told me that I'm not really like other Christians that she has met. Which made me think about what the criteria is for being a Christian person. Am I supposed to be a rosary carrying, Bible thumping, openly judging person? Is that what people are expecting when they hear the word Christian?! Are they expecting me to jump up at them and throw the gospel down their throats? Is there the idea that I'm constantly on a "change your mind" mission?

I think we should be willing to evangelize, but I'm not going to change your mind about anything. I'm not trying to be out to just tell you that the way I think is the ONLY way in the world to go about things. The beautiful thing about Jesus is that He loves us corporately and INDIVIDUALLY. That means that I can't tell you who Jesus is to/for you. That's something that you have the pleasure of figuring out for yourself. I can help you to discern how God has been trying to get your attention, and recognize those things. In that process, it's definitely a lot of questions to be asked and lots of different options to be explored.

Back to topic though, sometimes it really seems like non-believers have life so easy. They don't have to do any worrying, and don't really seem to be held back by so many rules. However, when I think about it, I see the flip side of things. There is so much hurt in this world. So much loss and so much pain that is just rampant through our world. So many people feel alone and disconnected and have little hope. Knowing that God loves me, affords me the luxury of not having to go through things alone. I don't even have to deal with stuff completely on my own. I have a backup who is really infallible. There is a being that is much stronger than I am, who is willing to lend His strength and goodness to me. A father that is constantly on watch over me.

There's no way that I would be able to live life without Him. However, sometimes it seems that the grass really is greener on the other side. When I look into my neighbor's yard, I see all the weeds though, and I realize we're all really trying to strive to find a way to make it through the same struggles. Some of us have a little extra help... I wanna help everyone have access to the same resource.

I'm out...