Living everyday with purpose.

Throughout my crazy schedule filled with class, friends, school work, and social events, oftentimes it’s much easier to push Jesus to the back burner and tell myself, “I’ll get to that later.” 

But one of the many lessons I’ve learned during my three weeks here at school is that Jesus needs to be the center of my life. When he’s not, I find myself dragging myself through my day, feeling purposeless and burnt out. 

In order for me to gain the reward of having a relationship with Him, I have to put in an effort. And a relationship with Him is rewarding. Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in my desires and my own selfishness that I forget about my ultimate purpose as a human being. I forget about how blessed I am and about how amazing God’s love for me is. 

I don’t want to slip back into a life dictated by my own desires and my own checklist. I want to live a life for the name of Jesus, for His glory. I need to remind myself that I shouldn’t depend on the world for acceptance, but on Jesus because he accepted me in my worthlessness and loves me despite my sin.

Intentional surroundings.

So, I’m cuddled up on my futon after my extremely long second day of college and all I can really say is that God is pretty awesome. I am so blessed to know a good group of girls that I got to go to church with on Sunday. Church was so good and the sermon was amazing. There was one point that was made that really stuck with me: every relationship in our life is intentional. Wow. 

And it got me thinking, that every single person I meet during my time here at Clemson is an opportunity to show Jesus to someone. In my actions, in my words, in the way that I carry myself… I can show Jesus to everyone. Every day. In every instance. And He deserves so much more than that. I am so incredibly in awe of Jesus and cannot wait to see what He has in store for me during the next four years. 

“Praise the Lord, O my soul; 

all my inmost being, praise his holy name.”

-Psalm 103:1

How deep the Father's love for us.

When I think of this song, I think of the life transformation that came with the realization of Jesus’ unreal love for me. I think of how broken and stubborn I was and how I thought my sin was too much for Him to forgive. For months, I dug myself deeper into my depression, excusing myself from Christianity, saying that I was too dirty, I was too dark, that He wouldn’t want me anyways. Now I think of how incredibly false those statements were and how His love reaches past every single one of my mistakes and shortcomings. 

Now that I’m in a relationship with Him, I take every opportunity that I can to share my story for His glory. It hurts sometimes to admit, hey, I used to cut myself. But knowing that there are other people that struggle with the same thing and feel the same way I did- I want them to know about Christ’s unending love and that their scars don’t make Him love them any less.

So, to the girl that feels unworthy, alone, lost and hopeless- you are loved (1 John 3:1), you are NOT alone (Deuteronomy 31:6), and there is HOPE in all situations (1 Peter 1:3). Being thin will not make you happier. Being desired will still leave you feeling lonely and having more clothes and possessions will not cure your emptiness. So, stop trying to meet all of these expectations! Stop taking it out on yourself! You are a precious child of God and YOU have a purpose. Your meaning is intertwined with His name. The only way to cure your depression, loneliness and emptiness is by finding your meaning in JESUS (2 Corinthians 5:6-9). Knowing Him and His love will bring you a joy that lasts in the toughest of conditions (Habakkuk 3:17-19). A joy that beauty, possessions and clothes cannot provide.

I pray for each and every person that struggles through what I went through. It is a tough battle that is impossible to fight alone. Jesus intervened in my life and showed me that the things I was placing my value on were like shifting sand and that I needed to place my value on Him, the Rock (Matthew 7:24-27). Ever since He came into my life, I have been learning more and more about what it means to place my value in Him. He has made himself evident in my life and taught me that what the world has to offer is temporary, but what He has to offer is eternal. This is a lesson I am still learning today and will continue to learn for the rest of my life, but I promise you… when you allow yourself to be vulnerable and bring your sins to Him, your life will change for the better and you will never be the same. 

“Behold, the man upon a cross,

My sin upon His shoulders.

Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice 

Call out among the scoffers. 

It was my sin that held him there

Until it was accomplished.

His dying breathe has brought me life,

I know that it is finished.

I will not boast in anything;

No gifts, no power, no wisdom.

But I will boast in Jesus Christ,

His death and resurrection. 

Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer.

But this I know with all my heart:

His wounds have paid my ransom.”

A mess we cannot clean.

Recently, my mom has been getting frustrated with my little sister, Hollis, because when asked to clean her room, she will throw her clothes under the bed, in the corners of her closet, basically anywhere so she doesn’t have to hang them up or fold them. When my mom asks her, “have you cleaned your room?” she replies, “yes” and hides the fact that her room only gives the appearance of being clean, but hidden in the nooks and crannies, there are clothes, toys, and piles that are not clean.

When my mom discovered this, she called her into her room and told her, “Hollis, this is not cleaning your room! You can’t just hide your clothes and tell me that you’ve cleaned your room!” My little sister takes it in, nods her head, but eventually ends up back to the place where she’s hiding her mess to keep my mom happy.

I thought about this for a while, and realized that this is a metaphor of our relationship with Christ. He asks us to clean up our act and try to be like him, and we respond with the attempts to hide our mess from him. But we are incapable of hiding our mess from him because he is omniscient and sees us in our sin. We cannot perfect our actions, but he calls us to try and assures us that he will make up for our lack. So many of us are just like Hollis. We think that we can hide our sins and our failures from God and we think that that is necessary. But in the midst of our sinfulness, in the midst of our mess and uncleanliness, He loves us the same. That is the beauty of God’s love. 

He doesn’t ask us to stop sinning altogether, he asks us to bring our sins to him. We need to stop hiding our sins by piling them in the corners of our closets; we need to bring the piles to God and say, “Lord, I cannot clean this without your help.” And in that moment where we admit our inability and ask for his help, he takes the weight of the heavy sins from our hands, and he puts them away in their rightful place. 

Our sins are a mess we are incapable of cleaning by ourselves, a mess that only God can clean. But we have to bring our mess before him and be vulnerable in admitting we are not clean in order for him to do so. A relationship with God is not one in which we appear to be a certain way; it is where he sees the very depths of our heart, where we come to him with our piles of sin and allow him to cleanse us of them.

⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

- 1 John 1:9

"Seemingly perfect."

For some reason it has become desirable for us as humans to hide the fact that we aren’t perfect, that we make mistakes, and that we’re not always happy. It has become appealing to sweep our problems under the rug, to put on a mask and to keep quiet about life’s real struggles when in the public eye. But this isn’t the way it was intended to go, this isn’t how it should be. We see people’s tweets about how wonderful life is and how much they love their friends, but there is an underlying pain they hardly ever speak up about for everyone to see. Even in our churches, nobody wants to fess up about life’s hardships. Nobody wants to seem like they don’t have it all together, like life isn’t picture perfect, and like they could use some encouragement. Because, let’s face it… who asks for help anymore?

But what I’ve learned is that in the vulnerability of honestly admitting, publicly for others to hear, “I am not perfect. I am struggling and I need encouragement,” is that people care and respond lovingly because so many of them feel the same way. Oftentimes, relief fills people’s faces when you bring up a hardship or something tough that you’re going through because they realize it’s okay for them to be open about their own struggles. That’s what friendship is. That’s what neighbors need to be like today. It shouldn’t be a competition where we want to act like everything is okay so that nobody knows that everything is actually falling apart- we are all sinners in this together and so we need to rely on one another. We need to encourage and persevere with one another. The church isn’t for perfect people; it is a hospital for broken people that desperately need to be fixed by God.

But that’s not the way that it is. We have families that are falling apart, too afraid to ask for help or even bring to light the fact that they’re having problems because they don’t want people to know. We have teenagers who are depressed, who are cutting themselves and starving themselves but they can’t tell people that for fear of what people will think. But what if it wasn’t about impressing the people around us? What if it was about struggling with and helping the people around us? 

We live in a fallen world. What it has to offer us might please us in the moment, but in the end it will not bring us happiness. We are sinners that will never be fully satisfied apart from God. He is the perfection we are searching for, we are incapable of being. So we have to be willing to be vulnerable and open with the people in our lives. We are all hurting, we are all broken, but we need to stop acting like everything is perfect because it’s not. It’s okay to be imperfect. God loved us in our imperfection and He alone can satisfy. 

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
     Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
⁹ Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints,
    for those who fear him have no lack!
¹⁰ The young lions suffer want and hunger;
    but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

-Psalm 34:8-10