How I Used To Be

I've been struggling a lot lately with my writing. For some reason everything feels...forced and contrived and so...square. I feel stifled, but not just in my secular writing but in the writing that i desire to glorify God with. It's all...so not up to par. And it got me thinking to how it used to be before. How did I do it before? How did it come so easily? Because there was a time where you couldn't get me to stop and I had so much to say. So I went to go look. I went back into my old stuff and read it again and again and again. Trying to remember the mindset I was in and that's when I stumbled across this post on my xanga. It was my post after the last day of school junior year. I had bombed my Madrigals audition and not made it into the advance group which broke my heart but...by the end of the week I had been named President of Aria for the next year. I had been given a different chance. haha. And so this post came out and it reminded me about what truly and honestly SHOULD ALWAYS be the focus of whatever I do. God.

Build A Bridge

It's easy to get disappointed in life.

There are so many things that can go wrong, so many things that you can blame on circumstance or things that make you feel inadequate. Like you're not good enough. But, the important thing is to understand that with all those faults, with all of those flaws; God still loves you. He will always love you.

The important thing is to build a bridge with that knowledge.

Whether you fail a test or you didn't get the part you auditioned for in choir, God is consistant when we aren't.

It's been an intersting week for me. The first two days have been full of disappointment and self-pity. I've felt all of these emotions of being not good enough, and I've at times beaten myself up for being less than what I really think I'm capable of. But I've come to realize that no matter how others may judge me, no matter what others may think of who I am. They don't know me. God knows me. God knows me better than I know myself and if I can convince myself that I've just had a bad week, that I am better than this, then, I can know that God has always had faith in that fact.

He made me in His image. I am from Him, and because of that I can be whoever and whatever I want to be. I have the potential to be everything, because He is my everything. He is my rock, my Savior, my redeemer, my strength. Through Him I live, and no one else in the world can take away that truth from me.

It's so easy to feel like you don't belong, that you don't matter, and it hurts, it will always hurt. But, no matter what, God knows the truth. That's all that matters in the end. It's ok to cry, to feel disappointed and feel as if you failed. It's ok, because those are human emotions, that's the price we pay for being only human. The next step is to accept that you made a mistake, that you did ultimately fail. But you learn from that, you take the knowledge from that experience and spin it. You tell yourself that I don't ever want to feel this way again, and you take strength in Christ, in God; you take strength in the fact that he loves you and you build a bridge over that failure. You get over it.

No one other than God can tell you you're not good enough. Because no one else knows you. No one else has the right to judge you. Life is full of shortcomings. You will have to build bridges over and over again, and some you even have to tear down because the only way to accept that failure is to wade through it to the other side. But take solace in the fact that God has your hand. With him you can go anywhere, you have no limitations. You have the ability to be everything he has planned for you.

How much of a relief is that?

How can you continue to sit on feelings of inadequacy when God gave His only Son for you, so you wouldn't be inadequate anymore? So you would be enough? He sacrificed for you, sacrificed because He loves you. With that fact, don't accept anything less than being the best you can be. It's the least you can do. Not because it will make Him love you more, but because you want to be an example. To be a light among men. Sure, God isn't asking you to be the best at everything, because works don't put you higher on the list of entrance to heaven. But it can lead people to that list. It can make people ask, "What do I have to do? How can I be saved?"

Humanity does not understand love. It understands earning through works, which is why it has such trouble with idea of good people, who aren't saved, going to hell. But, with that, if you can understand God's love. Understand that accepting that gift of grace and love can fuel your good works, make you want to be better, then they will ask, "Why are you so good? What's you're motivation."

And with that, you can bring people closer to Christ.

You can tell them of your disappointments, tell them of your shortcomings and give your testimony, because we were all born the same, we were born sinners like the rest of the world. But now you show them that the only difference is Christ. You can teach that He is the ultimate salvation, through your failures, through your losses. People understand that, people understand struggle and they are inspired by others who build themselves to a higher level of success. It appeals to the human nature of society, it appeals to the belief that good people go to heaven, but that's where you teach them the truth: Saved people go to heaven.

You give them the Gospel.

Again, it's easy to be disappointed in life.

It's so easy for things to go wrong.

But the important thing to remember is that we are judged on a whole new level and the love of God through the sacrifice of Christ is our biggest accomplishment, even though we didn't do anything to deserve it. You teach that to a non-believer. You show them that even though they are sinners, they don't have to feel like they aren't good enough. If they accept Christ, they take Jesus as their Lord an Savior and really dedicate themselves to that truth, to the Gospel; then they don't have to be good enough in the end because He is. And that's all that matters.

-aarika

I want to get back to that mindset. Where I found it easy to write because I truly had something worthy to write about. And I still do, I just keep trying to look for answers elsewhere where the only solution is staring me right in the face.