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