Prayer

At youth group tonight my pastor talked about prayer. Which I absolutely love, talking about and doing. Plus I think our church doesn't put that much of an emphasis on it but recently we have been and it's awesome. And I am eager to make it more a part of my life. But anyways, I write about this because I want to talk about how we should approach the answer to the prayers.

I want to start out by stating that all prayers are answered. Yes, all of them. But here's the catch. God answers the prayers, but it is not always the way we think it would be. For example, we may ask for deliverance from lust. He will not just take it away immediately. This is coming from my experiences, but I believe that God will often choose the answer to our prayer that will teach us something and make us better because of it. Because God wants to see us changed so that it will not happen again, and also that we develop patience.

Patience is key in prayer because after you pray, God might take days or minutes to answer you, or he might take years. But who are we to complain?

I feel like the toughest answer though, is when God tells you to wait and be patient. Because that's when you are still facing your problem and it isn't getting better, but it is in that moment that we either trust God or turn from God. And sadly many turn from God to try to do it on their own.

I know this is short but I feel like prayer is such a key component in a Christians life because it gives us a direct communication to our savior and creator. Plus it teaches us to be less self reliant and more trusting in God to act for us instead of us as humans taking things into our sinning hands.
So that's all I had for tonight but I just wanted to talk about prayer a little bit. And we can never pray too much.

Daydreaming

It's been awhile, but I finally have a night to write and something to actually talk about. I have really been struggling lately with reading my Bible and having a good attitude about God in general. And I also have a tendency to become complacent with being good and not saying certain things. But as I've come to grow further away from God, I have come to realize the importance of being close to God and how much my life needs my Savior in it. That doesn't make things easy though. Old habits aren't easily broken. But sometimes God adds the little extra push needed. 

That sometime came tonight when I went to Cru for the first time in a while. It was kind of a spontaneous decision to go, and I had fun and saw friends which is always good. But the message the speaker had spoke to me, maybe not in the way one would think because I have an odd tendency to take something and understand it completely different. Tonight the speaker was talking about how Christ values us and is waiting for us to go, to make that decision to fully trust him, or at least that's the gist of it. He mentioned having a Ready. Set. Go. Attitude. What hit me was how I think I have the "go" down, but I really don't, at least for the present.

I have spent my whole high school career waiting to be senior to have a big impact on my school, but now that it is here, I haven't lived up to my own expectations and I have just been lazy and making excuses to not having an effect. You see, I have wanted to be a pastor for sometime, and I have that set as my goal and all  I can think about is what things like when I will be a pastor. Yet I am missing the point. I am daydreaming. I am wasting such good opportunities to have an impact now. Every Christian, whether or not you are a pastor, should be trying to influence this world. I just think sometimes that I will do it later. I guess that is just my procrastination coming into play. Once God has brought this up to me tonight, I have sort of been ticked at myself for wasting such good chances to spread the word of God and better the world. I need to work in the here and the now. And I also want to stop daydreaming. It's ruining any sort of productivity I have and it makes me take things for granted that God has not even given me yet. One Christian cliche is that God will use you where you are right now, and it's a cliche for a reason, because it's true. 

Now coming from experience, be an impact where you are right now. You do not want to miss the chances God is giving to you to advance the kingdom of heaven. You may take this to heart, and I pray that you do, but may also overlook all of this and think me crazy, which would be true. But one day you will look back and wish you had acted now. So Ready. Set. Go.