July 6, 2013
0130
I spent the first sixteen years of
my life separated from God. Of course,
as an infant and toddler you can’t be guilty of that. I estimate that around the age of five you
have the cognitive ability to understand God in a small way and make the
decision to accept Christ. So, if we
want to be technical here, I’d say that I spent eleven years separated from
God, from when I was five to sixteen-years-old, getting saved at
seventeen. I’m six years into my faith
now — just six short years. It feels a
lot longer than that, though. In that
short time, however, God has revealed things to me that I never anticipated to
know, and He has set the course of my life on several amazing journeys,
especially now as a prospecting pastor about to start my undergrad. In just four years after giving myself to
Christ, God revealed to me His plan for me to be a pastor and the necessary
steps to take in order to get there. At
times I feel that I’m not worthy of this great calling, although I am grateful
for it. I have Christian friends who’ve
been in the faith much longer than I have, and yet God has bestowed upon me
this calling of being a pastor. As I
write this God is telling me that it is not the quantity of faith, but the
quality of faith. God doesn’t qualify
the called; He calls the qualified. But
I wonder what makes me so “qualified?” Yes,
I take pride in my faith and it is better than most peoples’ faith I know,
which I do not take comfort in but am rather disturbed by it. At first glance my faith is great, but I fall
back into sin just like anybody else, yet God not only forgives me every time
but still holds on to this calling.
So I grow ever more curious of just
what His purpose for me is. What great
accomplishments does He have in store for me?
I have goals, I have visions — I have dreams I wish to achieve for the
sake of God’s people. For the longest
time I’ve seen myself the head of an organisation that takes in abused and
troubled children and educates them spiritually and maybe even
academically. I am no intellectual of
business, so I have no idea how this would be achieved. Whether this is just a desire of mine or
something God has placed into my heart to achieve, I do not know. Perhaps it is because my confidence in
achieving this is lacking, which I see now is a problem with trust in God. I just don’t know if He wants me to do
this. If it is, I’m sure He’ll reveal to
me in time how I’m supposed to achieve it.
I have this overwhelming desire to preach to youth, from children to
college age, especially the younger ones approaching or already in their
adolescent years. Adolescence is such a
fragile state of faith, for in adolescence we are just formulating a sense of
independence and identity. Because we
are searching for this new independence and identity at this age, far too often
does the teenager decide to become independent of God and not gain their
identity in Christ. That was me for most
of my adolescent years, for I was seventeen when I came to Christ — the brink
of adolescence, just approaching adulthood.
I can understand where each of these kids are coming from and I just
desire to preach to and guide each one of them.
I’ve spent more years of my life
away from God than I have with Him, yet God has this great plan for me. Not including infancy and toddler stages,
I’ve spent 11 years away from Christ and 6 years with Him. I always wonder where I’ll be at in my faith
and in life after 11 years being with Him, then 16, then twenty… I suppose this is what makes God so amazing,
that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve known Him; the only thing that really
matters is the quality of your faith in Him.
This quality cannot be calculated.
Only God knows the exact amount of your faith, and if it is great, He’ll
probably let you know. I’ve always had
such a strong desire to increase my knowledge in God’s Word, which is probably
why the past six years seem so much longer because of all the knowledge God has
given me already. Time certainly flies
when you invest all or most of your time in God, and I can now agree that life
is, indeed, short. It’s strange thinking
I’m already 23-years-old, almost a quarter of a century, and even stranger
thinking that it’s only been six years since I’ve known Christ and that it
seems much longer than that. Maybe it’s
the quality of my faith that distorts the time.
I have come to personally know Him so well in just this short amount of
time that it doesn’t seem like it took six short years to know Him this
well. Basically what I’m saying is that
what takes some people ten or fifteen years or even a lifetime to know about
Him on a personal level has only taken me six years. I’m sure others can relate to this. This is a great sense of accomplishment for
me not so I can gloat about it, but on a personal level because of how
miserable I was for all those years. I
don’t boast about my faith; I boast about Jesus Christ and His amazing love and
God’s awesome power.
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