My Struggle

Romans 12 (The Message)
1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

The Power of Generosity

As students we are often raised to live a normal life. What if we were to live that normal life but for God? In January of 2009 I made the decision to go on my first ever purely Presbyterian college retreat. I was 23. I had never been to a retreat in such a small setting. They kept saying this was one of the biggest college conferences they had to date. The last conference I had been to was Passion 2007 in Atlanta.

I'm talking about a conference that filled the Phillips Arena where the Atlanta Hawks played and also filled an overflow room with 10,000 more people inside the Georgia World Congress Center across the street. Artists, like Charlie Hall, Chris Tomlin, David Crowder, and Tim Hughes (author of Here I am to Worship) led the worship for 4 days. Speakers like Beth Moore, Luis Gigglio, and John Piper inspired me to success in my undergraduate studies.

Then, there I was, in Montreat, North Carolina. The nearest neighboring town was Black Mountain, North Carolina. The one good thing I was thinking about was no distractions. The theme of the weekend was Outrageous Generosity.

Outrageous: exorbitant: greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation; "exorbitant rent"; "extortionate prices"; "spends an outrageous amount on entertainment"; "usurious interest rate"; "unconscionable spending"

Generosity: the habit of giving. Often equated with charity as a virtue, generosity is widely accepted in society as a desirable habit.

In my opinion these words together could quite possibly be the most powerful duo a Christian could imagine.

Getting back to the verse though, in this passage Paul is calling Christians to give their lives. Their ordinary lives, so simple in being, so insignificant and use them to the glory of God. Its incredible seeing my friends who have truly lived the Christian faith and to see how comfortable and confident they are in life, God has truly blessed them. They have given generously and for that God has been by their side.

At the same time, I could see my life. The drinking, cursing, always trying to get ahead of the game, and blending in was worthless. Sure, I had a ton of friends but I could sit and count the amount of true friends I had. I went to church on Sundays because that was part of the routine, not an integral part of my life, but it kept me balanced. I also got an incredible meal out of it every Sunday. Our church had a "college cafe" and couples would volunteer their time to cook a meal on Sundays after church for the college students.

I was miserable. Party for six days, repent on the seventh. That was real, that was my life. School and work during the day. Drink at night. I had a schedule. Mondays, I would go out to midtown. Tuesdays, I would not go out. Wednesdays, I would go out, all you can drink for $7. Thursday, we would all head downtown. Friday, it was back to midtown and then normally a late night house party. Saturday, that was football day. Sunday was left for church in the morning and homework in the afternoon. We called it "the struggle." It was expensive to party that hard, it was hard on the body and it was hard to keep grades up. If my grades fell I would have to go home though. I was having way too much fun to mess it up. 

I am still building the site. I am writing for the blog that will one day fill this page. Please be patient. I am hoping that it will be up and running by sunday.