I had a really great dinner tonight with a good friend of mine and I just wanted to share some things that have been on my mind since. I realized something. The reason why I was so worried about the future and the possibility of wasted potential was because I was worried that the grand future I had envisioned for myself would not come true. I feared that I wouldn’t be able to fulfill the things or challenges before me and that I’d become an average Joe, barely reaching half of my potential. How selfish and greedy I’d been, that it had blinded my eyes from seeing that God, all this time, had a plan for me from the beginning and all this time I was worried about my own plans coming true rather than following His.

When God gives you something to accomplish, He doesn’t let you do it alone. God gives you the strength and the guidance to do whatever it is He has called you to do, and walks with you every step of the way. Its not about what He will do or how He will do it, because we know, from His word that He indeed has a plan in place already (yeah, you’ve heard it a million times if you’ve been in the Christian circuit for awhile, Jeremiah 29:11 =D ) — its whether we will obey Him and whether we are truly, truly willing to give up our plans in order for His plans to happen. We’ve got to learn to wait on Him and not to force His will to come prematurely. You can’t speed up God’s will. You can’t tell Him to hurry up His will so you can be where you think He wants you to be right now. If you aren’t “there” yet, chances are, there’s a lesson God wants you to learn in your current circumstances. God isn’t all about changing our circumstances, He’s about changing our hearts.

At the end of the day, we are here to know God, glorify Him, and make Him known. At the end of the day, we have what our hearts are longing for — a relationship with God, made possible because of what Jesus did on the cross for us: every person in this world, convict, saint, murderer, or that seemingly perfect church goer down the street, every person is on even ground before God; no one is perfect. Through Jesus’s death on the cross our sins are forgiven, all the things we’ve done that we know we shouldn’t have, that we know aren’t doing a good thing for our hearts that are taking us further from the person we were meant to be — if its taking you further from God, its sin. This gift of salvation is offered to every single one of us and all these things I’ve mentioned are promises for those who believe and accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord of their life.

You might be thinking, heck, I could get this “sort of thing” from any other motivation book or from watching Oprah where there’s an abundance of resources promising to help you meet your potential, to be positive, having an unwavering belief that everything is going to be fine, etc. I’m telling you its not the same. When you take God out of the equation, you miss the entire point, everything else is meaningless. It all comes back to God. We were made for Him. We were made to have a relationship with Him. If you’ve felt that void inside your heart that something is not right, or something is missing, that’s the God-shaped hole right there. You’ll be searching for substitutes until you let God take His place in your heart.

Thing is, He can’t force Himself to be the Lord of your life. He’s given us a choice. We just have to pray and ask for Him to come into our lives and into our heart. And let me just say, I made that choice to follow Jesus when I was 13 years old and I feel as though I’m still having to make that choice every day, now at the age of 22. Its not easy. I’m human, I’m imperfect, I’m a sinner. I admit it, I’m not perfect. I have worldly desires too for fame, money, hot guys , pretty clothes, the list goes on. But at the end of the day, I realize these things are not what I was meant to live for. These things don’t bring happiness or fulfillment. Its God. And yes, its not an easy life seeing as though not everyone’s doing it. Its easy to do what everyone else is doing but its not so easy to live the life of a Christian. But I know that in God, I have everything I have always wanted. In God, I am who I’m meant to be. I believe there is no other way to live but to live a life devoted to Him.

That’s my two cents for the day. Be blessed.

Alyssa.