10 tips for growing in your faith while at home this summer

This post is definitely of a different style than most of my other ones, but you will see shortly why I am writing this and how it came about.  This post is mostly directed at Christians who have just finished their first year in college and are now back home for the summer (or any other year in college and are back home for the summer), but do NOT stop reading if you do not fall into these categories.  I mean, I guess you could but a lot of this stuff could definitely apply to you.

Now, I try to steer clear of "10 ways to [fill in the blank]" type articles for the most part, not that they are all bad--there are some really good ones out there!  I do believe that God does in fact teach people different things in different ways from different angles, so once you set out to check off numbers 1-10 on your way to a better relationship with God, you are contriving God to a list, putting Him in a box, and stifling His Spirit.  When these 10 or 12 or 50 or how ever many things reach at the root of the Christian faith--the Gospel--then read on, test it (1 Thess. 5:21), and decide for yourself if this is indeed applicable to your journey.

This post is about how to handle going home after growing in your faith in college.  The other day I was meditating over last summer and how incredibly wonderful it was.  Did I go on a cruise?  Did I feed starving kids in Africa?  Did I take summer classes and hang out with my friends in Raleigh? No.  I went home.  I went home to a small southern town where "supper" is the only allowable word for dinner and where you have to watch out for wild turkeys while driving on the roads.  I was bitter.  I even got a speeding ticket on the way home from college and backed into a bus at the school I had just starting working after-school care at.  A big, yellow, in-your-face-how-could-you-miss-it, parked bus.  Talk about your spiritual warfare!

You can read more about last summer here, here, here, here, here, or here.  If you are going to read just one, I would read the last "here."  It is a summary of the summer, hence the clever name.  For the rest of this post, though, you are going to have to just trust me when I say that I was NOT happy about coming home for the summer.  I wanted so badly to be going on all the adventures my friends were going on, visiting all these exotic places, meeting all these new people.  I tried to make it happen for me, I prayed to God for months for an opportunity to open up, for guidance, for something, anything, but Shelby.  But all I got were a few smirks from God, a sour attitude, and a one-way ticket to the YMCA I had worked at for the past 4 years.

I'm sure some of you feel the same way.  I was worried I would lose the faith I had gained in college.  I missed my friends.  I was angry at God for not "using" me--because I deserved to be used, I was ready.  I thought.  I compared myself to my friends.  I was spiritually lazy and barely talked to God the first few weeks I was home.

And then I had wonderful summer.  A hard, fighting, glorious summer.  But it didn't just magically change.   God had to fight to get to me.  And I had to fight to accept my summer and embrace it.

I went back to school a different person because of that summer.  I am not the same person because of that summer.  And it is easy to write about now, but it was a hard season.  A beautifully hard season.

Now.  I realize that not all of this is going to stick.  But I do believe and have seen from personal experience that God works through us when we tell others about things we have struggled with, things we have learned from God, things that God reveals to us about Himself.  So I am going to take my experience from last summer and tell you about it and pray that God is glorified.

10 tips for growing in your faith while at home this summer:
1.  Pray.  Why is she writing this?  It's so redundant and obvious!  We learned this in preschool!  When I say pray, I mean pray a lot and pray with passion.  Talk with God.  Something so special about this time you have at home is that you can go to your room, closet, take a walk, etc. and pray alone with God.  It can be as long as you want and you can be as expressive as you want.  Pray out loud, write it down, keep a journal.  Whatever you do, talk with Him and listen to Him.  This in itself will always increase your intimacy with Him.

• So...what do I pray for?  How do I pray?
• Ask God what to pray for--this one gets overlooked a lot.  Allow Him to speak through you, even if it seems a little weird.
• Cry out to God.  Don't be afraid to show God a little emotion.  He knows what you are feeling anyway.  If you are frustrated, tell Him!  It's not like He doesn't know.  Embrace vulnerability and tell Him everything. 
• Pray for more of Him.  Pray for God.  Pray for intimacy and a flourishing relationship.  Pray for revelation and for more reception of His love.  Pray for this season to be used to grow and to learn more about Him.
• Pray for opportunities.  To share His love.  To speak His name.  To serve.  To go on adventures with Him.  Pray for friends with whom you can talk about Him.  A lot of us go home to virtually no community, no friends to talk about God with.  Pray for that.  
• Pray for life.  Pray to reject passivity and to embrace an active relationship with Him.  Pray for energy and drive to continue and further this relationship with Him.  Pray for desire to do this.

2.  Steer clear of reliance on Facebook and texting or any other social network or means of communication.  Don't stop reading.  This might sound like a joke to you, but I am being for real.  Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with people, but once you rely on that to keep you "connected" to people, you should probably start weening yourself off of it.  Is not your common ground of Christ enough to keep you connected to your brother or sister?  Texts on the 5-minute mark only distract you and keep you yoked to that need for communication, like you HAVE to talk to that person.  It is much more special to catch up with someone you haven't talked to every day...for the entire day.  Write letters, skype every other weekend, meet up for a day trip.  Put down the cell phone and limit the Facebook usage.  These things are good and can definitely be used for the Kingdom, but once you become attached to them to the point where you feel uncomfortable without them, you are letting them take away from the overflowing freedom you have in Christ!  Be more connected to Christ than you are connected to the world.

3.  Spend time with just God.  How?  What does that even mean?  Well, it kind of goes along with the one above...and I guess praying too!  Build your one-on-one relationship with God.  One really beautiful thing that comes from this is self-confidence.  Not the cliche kind in your psychology class, but the kind that only spending time with your Maker can produce.  You learn as you spend time with Him that all these quirky, weird things that you do, He made.  He loves them.  There is no reason to worry about people looking at you, because you've already been fully exposed.  And you've already been called beautiful.  This isn't cockiness or self-righteousness, this is confidence in your identity as a child of God.  You'll learn that He loves every weird part of you and warning:  you might even start embracing it (there's my excuse).  As much fun as community is, make sure you are not reliant on your community as a means to know your God.  I once talked with a group of young people I volunteered with and each of them were so fired up as a group--"I love God with these people!"  "I love these people and I love God so much!"  And that is great.  But when I asked them, "How is your relationship with God when you are alone?  How do you talk to God, then?" their answers were all similar enough to be summarized as, "Oh, I don't know how to do that!"  Learn who He is when you are alone so that you don't have to depend on others to be around--because they won't always be.

4.  Spend time with God and others.  Community.  Ah, so blissful.  I have learned so much from others and their relationships with God and I have loved so hard because of my brothers and sisters.  Pray for community.  Seek people who are passionate about Christ like you are.  Sometimes you have to find these people, and sometimes they just seem to appear out of no where.  Get lunch with them, even if you don't know them that well.  Serve with them.  Keep each other accountable as you are both home.  Meet with them weekly.  Read a book of the bible together.  You know, the works.  Just have fun with them!

5.  Avoid just "doing" your quiet time.  Live your quiet time.  Do not do your quiet time with spite or obligation or for the sake of a possible blessing.  If you have a job, don't get trapped in the "routine life."  Fight it.  Serve even if it means washing the dishes for your parents when they don't ask.  Be changed when you read the word.  Let it overflow out of your life.  Don't be afraid to do weird things.  Don't be afraid to get uncomfortable.  Don't be afraid to let Jesus interfere with your life.

6.  Expect and look for Him.  Live in expectation.  Look for Him to show up in the same place you have grown up in for years.  Ask for new eyes to see that place differently.  Invite Him into your hometown.  Pray for revival--in your heart and in your city.  And if you expect big things to happen and you don't see them, the big things are probably in the form of a heart change or a newly found passion or just a better attitude.  Or even the fact that you are beginning to expect things from God when you usually just sit back and live and whatever happens, happens...

7.  PLEASE DO NOT view this summer as a place-holder time.  Do not just go through this summer with the mind-set, "Well, I will just get through this then grow when I get back at school and have all my friends and my campus ministry and my bible study and my set schedule and church."  No!  I pray you, my friend, to see that He wants you to learn NOW!  He wants to love you now and He wants you to enjoy Him now!  There is so much potential for you these next few months, so please don't settle for just waiting until you go back to school.  Don't miss this chance at this place at this time.  Fight the war.  Do not monotonously wait around.  Boring.

8.  Do not compare yourself to others.  This only leads to jealousy, self-pity, and/or sulking.  Or maybe that's just me.  God has a life set out for you and if you are confident that He only wants the best for you, then you are exactly where He wants you to be.  Just because you aren't on a summer long project or in another country does not mean that your faith is inferior (or superior, depending on how you look at it).  God's got His own adventures for you!  Measure your life by the cross, not by what others are doing or where others are.  He DOES have things for you in your hometown.

9.  "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." -Matthew 6:33  This is the biggest one I think I had to learn.  Do not look for things to do FOR God, look for God.

Now what?  Go and live and love your hometown and be changed!

It might not be that simple, but the simplicity of the Gospel covers the complexity of, well, everything.

10.  Cherish the Gospel.

LMB

Questions

Last summer, I knew I had been appointed to lead a bible study of freshmen girls the coming year.  So, I started praying.  I prayed for them and I didn't know them.  I prayed for the love of God to sink deep into their hearts.  I prayed that girls would come.  And one day I was praying and I couldn't tell you why I said what I said.

"God, I pray for that one girl who is thinking about not coming, the girl who is torn and who is on the verge of not coming but isn't sure.  Just make her come."

I had no idea why those words came out of my mouth.  I don't know why I prayed that.  And for a few days I tried to shake that prayer and push past it with other prayers for my bible study.  But somehow it kept coming up.  I was confused.  But I prayed it anyway.

I probably prayed that prayer for about a month, up until school started back.  I felt a little weird every time I prayed it.  And then bible study started and so new, different prayers took over for girls I actually knew by name and for faces I could actually see.

That was a year.  A whole year.  Last Thursday, I was eating lunch with a precious girl in my bible study.  My car was all packed up and literally right after lunch, I was making the 3 and a half hour drive back home for the summer.  We talked about the past year and about the year to come.  She is leading a bible study starting in the fall, so she was asking me what kind of things to pray for her soon to be girls.

"What kind of prayers did you pray for us?"

I told her the main prayers and then I laughed and told her about that prayer, the one the Spirit kept bringing up about the girl who was thinking about coming but wasn't sure if she wanted to or not.

It was her.

I am pretty sure I about threw my sandwich across the dining hall when we both realized that she was that girl.  She had told me before about how it took some praying and convincing from her mom to come back to bible study after the first time or two of coming.  She wasn't going to come back.  But then she did.  She just did.

I smile as I write this because I had so many questions and doubts about that prayer.  Why, why would I pray that weird prayer?

That's why.

And this prayer isn't over.  This girl is about to pour into the hearts of her own little freshmen that God has appointed for her.  The Spirit knew what He was praying even if I didn't.

Don't just pray to God, pray with God.

How sweet it is to stare into the face of an answered prayer.

I wish I could say that I am done questioning what God does.  I long to embrace the mystery set forth to me, to stop worrying about how it doesn't make sense or how I could spend my time doing something else or praying something else.  I want to welcome questions, not push past them for answers.

In a recent book I read, Pastor Bill Johnson says this:

"If your encounters with God don't leave you with more questions than when you started, then you have had an inferior encounter."

Strong statement.  But if we truly come in contact with God, won't we leave awed, changed?  Won't we wonder?  Or will we just know Him--all about Him, everything there is to know?  If we knew everything about God, He wouldn't be much of a God.  Questions about who God is or what He is doing are absolutely wonderful, wonderful gifts.

That's our communion.  That is life--to live with this supernatural Being who has an infinite number attributes that we get to learn and unending glory that we get to discover.  That is revelation.  That is beauty.

But what about those unexplained times that are not so sweet?  Those times where you have prayed every prayer and read every verse that is set in front of you, you have obeyed everything you feel like God has called you to, you have prayed in power with the Spirit.  You have done everything "right."  And yet you still don't have an answer.  You still don't get it.

I have learned a lot about this.  And I am not finished learning.  Because this will be my whole life.  Not knowing.  Not ever knowing why things happen--but trusting.  I wouldn't need trust if I knew how everything was going to go.  Life with questions is a fun, fun life.  Because those questions mean trusting God.  And trusting God means knowing God.  And knowing God, well, there aren't many words to describe how absolutely marvelous that is.

Sometimes it's about the questions, not the answers.  Sometimes it's about seeking the answer and not so much about finding it.

That's a hard one.

The mystery of God is a sweet one.  It's one that will leave us with all of these things in our head that make no sense.  I can't tell you how often I have to use the word conflicted.  "God, I am just so conflicted about this because I don't understand how I can feel both of these things"  or "Why does this situation leave me so conflicted?" or the all too often "I AM CONFLICTED BECAUSE I AM CONFUSED."

Sometimes I act like I know everything.
Sometimes I like to "figure God out."
And that's just not possible.

But out of all these questions, there is always one answer: Jesus.  When we don't understand and our hearts are torn apart from the confliction and confusion and we are tired, so, so tired from doing everything we think will get us an answer, when we chase after God like our lives depend on it and we lay it all out, interceding for these other people we love so dearly and we throw ourselves at the foot of the throne just for that one answered prayer, that one answer... and we see nothing.  Exhausted and confused.  But still in love.

Our love for Christ must come in front of our need for an answer.

God answers all of our questions, no matter how complex or silly or hard with His own question:

"Will you take my love?"

When we don't understand, let's chose Him.  Let's take His love.  Yes, I would still love to have it all figured out.  I want to know what He is doing.  Sometimes, He will tell me, show me.  And other times I will be left throwing my hands up in the air saying, "What could You possibly be doing right now?"  But no matter how many answers I don't have, I will always have Jesus.

Always.
No questions asked.

LMB

Impossibly Unchanged

I know I have to write this.  I know I cannot let this one slip by, left for me to meditate on and keep to myself for the rest of my days.  I know that this one is a screaming post, one that has been set to my ears and placed on my heart.  It follows appropriately the post I wrote a few weeks ago about the presence of the Lord.  And now I have received new revelation.

We can't be the same.

When we enter His presence, we can never be the same.  Every time we worship, every time we pray, every time we talk about Him or witness Him work, every time we write His name or speak His truth.  When we gather together for bible studies on random days throughout the week and when we join together on Sundays to unite as a body for church.  When we look at the masterpiece of His sunrise or feel the coolness of His wind as it blows by us on a Tuesday.  When we come in contact with Him, He does not want us to leave the same.

So what does this mean and how do we do it?  What kind of radicality does this assume?  It's not that it's radical, it's that it's only obvious.  We are coming in contact with the Creator of the Universe, how could we not be affected?

He touches us.  We are touched by His mighty presence.  Do we invite Him in?  When we sing of His Name do we tell Him to draw closer; do we make ourselves vulnerable to His power?  Are we open to His refinement?  Are we available for His revelation?

Or do we leave with the same burdens we carried in?  Do we sing those songs with familiar words, simultaneously clinging to the familiarity of the world we are used to?  Do we even let Him in at all?  Do we leave in the same state of romance in which we entered?

Or do we fall more in love with Him?

That, oh, that is what I want!  To enter into His presence, to know Him and to never be the same because of it.  What are our expectations?  To go to bible study and to leave with no practical application, no heart change, no sweet, sweet revelation of how good Daddy is, or no awareness of some piece of my heart that has been wrecked and needs rebuilding?  Do we allow change at all?  Do we expect change at all?  Do we welcome change at all?  No?

That is "doing."  That is legalism. That is religion.  Why even go!

When we invite the Lord into our lives (and we should), we are saying, "God, I don't want to be without You."  When we enter into a time of worship and praise to Him, His beauty becomes magnified to us and His Spirit manifested in us and every bit of His glory swallows us whole as we realize we are singing to the Maker of Heaven and Earth.  And when we declare His matchless glory an unspoken comparison of who we are with who He is takes place and we are overcome with the realization of how broken and little and unworthy we are and through His exaltation we fall on our faces and say, "Make me more like You!  I don't want to be this person anymore!"

So, you see, worship is all about Him.  And if our life is worship, wouldn't that mean our life is all about Him?  This is not a new statement, but it is a different angle.  We ask God to come about us because we love His presence.  His presence is where we are safe.  His presence is where we are created for--that realm, not this earthly one.  When we enter into His presence, lives are changed.  Cliche as it may sound, it's true.  If we attempt to enter into the presence of God with no expectations, but familiarity, if it is just something we do every Sunday, another part of our schedule, "Oh, you know, just meeting up with the Savior of my Soul, no big deal," we will find ourselves trapped in a mundane prison of monotony.  We will see ourselves as conversing with a humanized God, one without limitless power and with just enough love to fulfill to our appropriate time frame.

Let Him change you!  Let Him wreck and rebuild you, His child.  Let Him enter into the deepest parts of your heart, the ones that no one knows, the shame that no one sees, the battles you have struggled with for years.  Don't hide these things.  Don't contrive His Lordship to your own appointed heart hierarchy.  Don't pick and chose what areas of your life you want Him to refine.  Let His revelation fuel your transformation.  Surrender all!  Do not let an encounter with Him leave you still holding onto these things.  Let Him take them.  He wants to.

Not one scripture read, not one journal entry, not one strum of a guitar or one line of a song or one healing or miracle or gathering or fellowship, not one mention of His name...


Let not one of experience with Him leave you the same.  If they do, why are you doing them?  An important question to ask.

Make us like You.

LMB