smorgasbord

So I know that I said that I was going to try and post every single day. Well I was doing ok for a while, but this weekend hit and I was EXTREMELY busy so I didn't take the chance to just sit down and write. There WERE believe it or not, a lot of things that I DID want to write about so I'm going to take some time to briefly write about all of them in one post...

youth conference weekend.

I ran sound for a youth conference this weekend and I really enjoyed it. It would be amazing to work for a church doing all that stuff. Maybe someday, God will open up some doors to work for a church (nudge nudge wink wink, God) ha! But until something like that comes along, I'm stuck doing whatever I can find. Some thoughts on this particular conference though were about the speaker. I felt as though the speaker was very out of touch with the audience he was speaking to. Most of his lessons were about self discipline and about how you should live a life pleasing to God which is a very good lesson to teach essentially.

But with such a topic, comes a lot of responsibility in determining the best way to approach and connect to your audience. The way he did, I felt as though he were speaking to a small group of male, Christian adults. He even got on a kick about how the parents should have boundaries set for their children. Preaching about that, when his audience is a bunch of kids! Now, if that wasn't enough to disengage the rest of his message probably was. Now I can't say that he literally said this, because that would mean that I was paying WAY much more attention to his words than I really was, but throughout his lessons, I couldn't help but think that it sounded as though he was saying that in order for God to give you love, you have to live a life pleasing to him.

Now this struck me very deeply, because this was and still is an issue that I had with my relationship with God growing up. No matter how hard I try sometimes, I CAN'T stop sinning. Now you can call that what you want, but that is the nature of my crappy human self. I try all the time to stop and sometimes I can go a while without. But eventually I mess up again. And growing up, going to many of these types of conferences, I grew to think that God only loves me if I live a pleasing life.

I need to fix my problems before I can have a relationship with God.

That is basically what I thought about the whole Christian thing until about 2 years or so ago. And slowly God has been detoxing me from that mindset. I've had the real truth in my heart since 2006 and I STILL struggle with seeing that to be truth every once and a while.

I'm scared these kids heard lies instead of the truth about God's love even though I KNOW with all my heart that this speaker has pure intentions. God loves us regardless of what we do or who we are or who we were or what we've done. And because of this, when we finally start to feel this love to be real, God loves us too much to let us live our lives the way we have. So slowly, he starts to clean us up. At our own pace. Breaking down walls, breaking down addictions, breaking down false beliefs, breaking down false images of him.

THIS is some of the truth that kids and young adults like me need to hear. Not more people telling us how good we have to be. Us church kids already know how good we're SUPPOSE to be. We've heard it our entire lives.


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Me. God is using me?

So today at church my friend got baptized and on her video she mentioned MY name as one of the people who helped her to that decision. Did I REALLY help her to that decision?! When did this happen? HOW did this happen? For the past year now, I have felt like a failing Christian. I have felt so stagnant not only in my christian walk, but also in my career. I have felt SO trapped and SO lost and about everything and STILL do?! I have never been so unsure of myself in my life until this past year and right now in my life. Hearing my friend say that I'm still making a difference in someone's life made me feel a little bit more at peace tonight. The lesson at church tonight was about pivital circumstances and I have been feeling like I've been going through one since I've moved here. But hearing that God is still able to use someone like me when I'm not nearly the man that I someday hope to be? That is truly amazing. That is truly a blessing. Maybe God really IS turning me into the man I want to be. The man HE wants me to be.