What Happened?

A few weeks ago Facebook did one of those updates, but unlike the previous ones, this one actually seemed to do some good. It actually made it easier to use. And with this change I found some things on Facebook that I had long forgotten about. Back in the day there was, and actually still is, an application called, "Notes" it's sort of like a blog on your Facebook. I stopped writing them and forgot about them when I started this blog.

Today something prompted me to go back and read through some of them. As I read memories of the events came back to me, things I had forgotten until now, but fortunately they were persevered in type. And as I read I started to ask myself "What happened?" So much of that doesn't sound like me now. So much of it points to a guy who had a closer and deeper relationship with God, a more utter dependence upon Him, and a lot more hope and faith that He would do incredible things.

I thought about the post I wrote a few days ago, and I'm just amazed at how negative and angry bits of it are. That guy back then would have never written that for the world to read. So what's changed in the last half decade? How, when I'm supposed to be growing closer to, and more like, Christ daily does that college student seem to be so much farther ahead than I am now?

If I'm honest, he was.

That guy was closer to God than I am right now. That guy couldn't put the Bible down. That guy knew both how to pray and how to hear from God. That guy knew how to worship. That guy KNEW God.

So what happened?

I think it began with a loss of community. Instead of having the constant support and friendship, he had to set out into the world on his own, literally alone. He got into the Church and started to see what it had become. He got distracted by things that He allowed to become more important, that filled up the time He spent with his closest Friend. It happened slowly, and he just sort of never fully recovered.

There were times when things seemed to get back to where they were. A powerful Sunday, a few days of retreat with brothers, but it wasn't the same, it wasn't permanent. Now he's trying to figure out who he is. Now he's trying to figure out how to love and lead a wife. Now he's trying to figure out what God wants from him, but he's sort of forgotten how to communicate with Him.

Writing this really isn't that embarrassing or humiliating, I'm kind of surprised. None of this is meant to point fingers at people or blame them for not being there. And none of this is trying to make excuses.

I had an intimacy with God that I desperately miss and want back. And the question is, am I willing to pay the price that I was back then? It's defiantly more of a battle now, life is so much simpler for a single college student, but it's also so much more crucial now. This battle must be fought and it must be won.

And so I guess I'm asking for your prayers. Pray for discipline to not be distracted by the worthless things that want to fill my time. Pray for community and fellowship for my wife and I. Pray for an intimacy with God that far surpasses what I once had.

"I have been young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread."

To God alone be the Glory!

Peace be with you