This week I have been reflecting on where I am in my life and my level of contentment and confidence in what I am doing. I am in a CS Lewis book club where we are reading Screwtape Letters and it has caused me to be more aware of which thoughts the devil puts into my head and how hard he works to tear me down. I have exactly the life that I pictured I would and the life that I wanted and planned for. Along the way I had a lot of hardships, but ultimately God still gave me what I wanted. What is baffling for me is that the devil can give me so much doubt and discontentment even in situations that I know are right for my life. I realized that there won't be a moment in my life where I will be perfectly content and be absolutely happy about every aspect in my life- not without a fight at least. Reading this book has showed me how actively I have to fight every day to stay alert and listen to the voice of God and tell myself truth instead of listening to the lies that the devil tries to get me down with.
Last Sunday's youth sermon was truly convicting. And not just a "yeah, that was important" type of convicting, but really a "wow, I need to change my whole perspective and really hit the root issue here, truly repent and ask God to change my heart in this regard" type of convicting. The whole time I felt as though the sermon had been specially crafted for me- to really get me to analyze my own heart and realize how little I love the people that are truly my brothers and sisters. By nature I love to critique everything- I always thought it would be awesome to have a career where I get to criticize companies or stores and tell them what they are doing wrong. Unfortunately my sinful nature brings this into the way I deal with people. As I was listening to the sermon I realized that judging people was just my default setting. In my own head, to myself, I always concealed this as honest assessment or analyzing- instead of downright, sinful judging. When I would be c