Ever since I finished school and got my new job I have been trying to find something new to chase. I have been taking pleasure in having a calmer pace of life and have enjoyed not really having anything to strive for. I thought that maybe with time something new would come along and my next big thing would just fall into my lap and I would be chasing some new success. Every person I had talked to about this told me something that didn't really satisfy my wonder- everything was so earth centered- "pursue traveling, or marriage, or education"- all things that still focused on me and finding earthly success. This past week I had the blessing of hosting someone in my home for the Pastor's Conference at my church and finally someone told me something else. I was so surprised that such simple advice had not already been given to me and that after such a long struggle, I hadn't thought of it myself. My next big chase is... to glorify God in every single situation of my life- to do every single thing in my life to the best of my ability so that it glorifies God to the utmost capacity. I realized that I was doing so many things mechanically and without any joy- I would do ministry and take care of my home and do kind things for people but none of them took everything in me. I realized that the only way to glorify God through my every day life was to give myself completely and use every ounce of my being for physically working for the glory of God. To be tired at the end of the day, to use my finances to bless others, to take care of my home as if Jesus himself was coming over- and to be so happy doing it.
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