As you could probably figure out from the title, I have been extremely stressed out. As many know, this time of year is stressful for any college student because finals are starting and the classes are rushing to get everything done, but my stress is compounded by a number of other factors. Most of them I am not willing to talk about in a public form like this, but one of which I am willing to talk about and will talk about here. I have been struggling for quite some time with my faith. Not to the point of believing, but to the point of I am feeling depressed because I feel like I haven't been doing enough in my walk with Christ. For example, I read my Bible on a somewhat regular basis, but still not anyways near enough. And when I do read, I don't stop long enough to fully understand and comprehend what I read. I don't spend enough quiet time in mindful prayer. There are a lot of things I've been struggling with. I've talked to very few people about most of the things I'm struggling with. The reason for this is because in know from what the Bible tells me, that no person on earth is going to help me with this. The only way I can get through this is to stay in constant prayer.
Some of the things that have helped me include Romans 3:23. Here it says "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". It has helped me to realize that I am not supposed to have been perfect and God knew I was going to make mistakes. He knew everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) will sin at some point in life. We all have an ancestry going back to Adam and Eve that was rooted in sin. There is no getting around that. The only way that the sins could be paid for was for someone living among us to die and defeat death. Since it was not possible for us to be sinless, God had to send his son into the world to live a sinless life (which had NEVER happened before him) and die, taking on not only the sins of the time, but for all time. Paying for the sins means that our sins have been paid for. We don't have to pay for our sins. "For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." John 3:16-17.
For most of my life, I've had an all or nothing mindset. I either do it all right or not at all. There is no in-between. This caused a lot of problems. I've gotten better about it. This mindset has helped me in school and other things, but it has really hurt my faith in a lot of ways. I would say to myself, I'm going to do better, end up failing somewhere along the way, kick myself for it, realize its impossible for me to be perfect in this regard (or any regard for that matter) and so I ended up doing nothing at all with regard to faith. Then I would get mad at myself for not doing everything I am supposed to and the cycle would repeat. I've heard and used every excuse in the book. I don't have time. I'll make up for it tomorrow be reading and doing twice my normal. And the best one of all, I'm just too tired. Each one of these excuses is something that KILLS faith. Not just hurts it, but kills it.
I believe very strongly that a person's priorities are shown by what they spend the most time doing. If you spend most of your time at a baseball field playing baseball, then your top priority is baseball. If you spend most of your time hanging out with friends, then your top priority is your friends. If you spend most of your time doing work or schoolwork, then your top priority is getting your work done. If you spend most of your time in the word, at church, and/or in prayer, then your top priority is God. Let me explain what I mean by prayer in this standpoint. I am not just talking about the time I bow my head in quiet time, but all the time I'm in communication with God. Romans 12:12 says "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." We are to constantly be in prayer for everything we do. We can be praying and the same time we are doing our homework. We can be praying the same time we are doing our work. We can be praying while we are hanging out with friends or playing baseball. Looking at the amount of time I spend doing all the activities I do throughout the day provides a qualitative look at my priorities. Since I understand numbers and logic better than feelings and other more abstract parts of life, this helps me a lot.
While the above representation helps me a lot, it also scares me. I look at the amount of time that I spend on my different activities, and I realize that God is not first in my life. He's not even close. I'm not going into details of what my priorities look like since that is not the purpose of writing this. I need to do better.
When I was baptized in 2010, I knew I needed to live a more Godly life. I was to leave my old life behind. I did start doing better, but I still was and am not where I need to be. As I had talked about in my last post, I have to stand against the ways of the world and proclaim Jesus Christ in everything I do. If I have went to different places and there is a possibility that people don't know that I'm Christian from the way I act, I have sinned. If I doubt God's existence or if I don't listen to his calling, I have sinned. If I pray a prayer that was not thought out and meant, I have sinned. If I skip reading the Bible for a day or read it without taking time to understand it, I have sinned. If I spend more time on literally anything other than reading the bible and in prayer, I have sinned and am guilty of idolatry. If I take and compromise my beliefs for anything anyone says without proof of the scripture I have sinned and have made them into a god that I. put before God. All of these things are hard enough in and of themselves to follow, but there's even more. If I even think about doing anything wrong, I have sinned. "Anything I think, say, or do that makes God sad is a sin." I like millions of others heard this phrase as a child. Anything thing we think, say, or do that goes against the Bible or that makes something not in the Bible more important makes God sad. When I was baptized, I said I was going to try to stop all of these things. I knew I was not going to be able to accomplish it as I explained earlier with Romans 3:23. I was going to try though. And indeed, I did do better. I still have a lot of work to do as I explained in this post, but I am still working on it.
Thanks,
Seth Pohle