Free..? Or slave to the world?

Well!

To start off, I am FREE! Free from midterms this quarter, until finals which are in a few weeks. I am free from feeling so stressed, so perfectionist, so tied to goshdarn mundane days where all I could think about was how I was going to budget my time with people, studying, eating, and qt. I hate putting qt into a time schedule. I really just want to do it because I naturally so strongly desire to learn His word and what He wants me to be convicted of that day. But with busy schedules, midterms, responsibilities, and... being human, it's all too hard to live 100% for God, when 99% of you is living by a schedule. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, but regardless, let us truly live not as slaves to this world, but slaves to God.

These past few weeks I took a break from all the "responsibilities" I had, in terms of any work that I was doing in God's name (praise team, ride coordinating, etc.). The reason for my taking a break form these things were strictly to self-examine. "What do you mean by self-examine?" you ask. Well up until that point, there were many convictions on my heart to pray about, to DO, and to plan out. But my heart was so filled with doing this and that, that I had no time to get around to tending to these more IMPORTANT matters. And it's sad because these more important matters got pushed to the back of my mind/schedule because the overwhelming responsibilities that took up a majority of my week. And it was not that these responsibilities were necessarily bad, but it really came to the point that I was just completing the things for the sake of getting them checked off my schedule. And I'm pretty sure that THAT is bad.

(Back from a cooking/eating break) Mmm.. kind of lost my train of thought.

I don't know, I guess I really didn't like the idea of doing things for the sake of doing them. But now, after I've come out of this time of break or "hiatus" from all of my responsibilities, not only am I reenergized to face this sinful world, but filled with the Holy Spirit once again to fight the good fight that the Lord calls me to. And also, good news is that the many things on my heart to pray for have either been confirmed, gone through, or have been taken care of by God. God is good.

One thing that's been tugging on my heart lately is just how when while we are striving day in/day out to achieve our goals, a lot of times we lose sight of why they were even our goals in the first place. That's why I have a post-it on my desktop saying "Remember your goals... don't fall away." And to be honest, it's sad. It's sad that even for students like us doing the best we can in school often get lost in the idea of achieving that 4.0, fulfilling our parent's dream, or getting lost in the American Dream. Ooh mommy that American Dream. I HATE IT. Living on the idea that the only way to live is "successfully." That we shouldn't do what we were made to do, but just get the highest paying job, so that we can get the nice house, car, family, serve society through our jobs, go to church and be a "good person". But all for what? So you can live in a comfortable bubble, your kids end up growing up to do the SAME exact thing, living for and feeding off of the world. Such slavery.

We think that we're free from poverty, the hard life, struggles, and what not. But all that comes in a new level of hardship, complacency and lukewarmness. I don't want to be like this. I don't want to live this way. I want to be FREE from sinfulness, from the world, from my earthly body.

But I was placed here for a reason, and for that reason I will stay. I will live out God's will for me, share the good news, and be a living testimony. May I die to myself, and live for Christ.

-ajc