Struggling?

"Sanctification is about our obedience  It involves work.  Empowered by God’s Spirit, we strive.  We fight sin.  We study Scripture and pray, even when we don’t feel like it.  We flee temptation.  We press on; we run hard in the pursuit of holiness.  And as we become more and more sanctified, the power of the gospel conforms us more and more closely, with ever-increasing clarity, to the image of Jesus Christ."  C.J. Mahaney (Living the Cross Centered Life)

How goes the struggle?  It’s a question we asked each other towards the end of my Bible school year.  The idea was that we will always be fighting against sin this side of heaven and it is helpful to acknowledge the existence of that struggle.  We like to avoid struggle and I find myself thinking that when I’m a super Christian there will be no struggle.  It will be a joy to spring out of bed at 5am, pour over God’s word, pray for hours on my knees and then go for a 5K run.

But I think struggling is actually a sign of health.  To cease to struggle does not mean perfection; it means I’ve become complacent, more concerned about my creature comfort than growing into the image of Jesus Christ. 

For me it starts with little things that become habits that become major stumbling blocks.  Two big ones for me are sleep and food.  When my brain recognizes that morning has come and that it would be conducive to my physical and spiritual health to get up rather than roll over I don’t even think twice.  I roll over.  There is no struggle involved.  No questions asked.  My body wants to sleep therefore I will keep sleeping. 

This morning I realized there’s a word for that.  Disobedience.  I am a disobedient daughter.  Day after day I choose to not struggle in the little things at the expense of spiritual maturity, humility and godly character.  What a trade off that is so not worth it. 

Oh God cause me to change. 

Better Than I Deserve

Tonight was an event that I was actually dreading. 

The "Just Because We Can! Party".

The point was to have fun just because and be quite random.  Originally I was super excited about it.  But as plans progressed (or tried to progress) more and more people said they wouldn’t be able to come because of conflicting schedules, I was out of town for a week and a half and couldn’t work on planning anything and when I asked for volunteers at youth group there was little response.  The closer today came the more excited others got and the less excited I got. 

I wanted it to be a big event, an outreach event, a fun event but was not prepared mentally, with stuff or even spiritually.  This afternoon I was like "okay God, I’m free falling.  I’m just going to enjoy whatever happens today and let You take the reins."  Really, it wasn’t that spiritual.  No major release of pressure.  But it did help to do that and to just sit and sip coffee for 20 minutes before jumping into activity.

But really, I should back up a bit.  God had shown me He was good to me earlier this week.  I was stressing about food.  What kind of snacks to get.  It was just another detail.  That totally got taken care of by someone.  Someone else took responsibility for some of the games, including getting the supplies for them.  May sound like small things but those were huge burden removers for me.

And now that the event is done I must say, God is good and has been good to me.  We had about 30 kids.  Lots of enthusiasm but also listened well when I talked about God creating us "just because He could" and loving us "just because He can."  Clean up was done quickly and with lots of help.  In fact, the car (that we smashed….bye bye Bernice) was taken care of by my dear roommate and friends while we were playing games at the gym.  That’s a huge blessing to me!

So, as I sit here (fresh out of the shower because I got egged…) I’m thankful for some great kids who love to laugh, people who are willing to serve and a God who is much better than me at handling the reins.  

*Update:  There are now pictures of the party in my photo albums.