Sacrifice

I had to come directly home from bible study and post this, because I can honestly say I've never been more convicted than I have been in the last few weeks through this Beth Moore study on Daniel. One of the main points of the night was the difference between selfishness and sacrifice. Living in the post-modern Christian world, we live by the idea that we do things quickly, efficiently, and at a minimum cost to us (and I don't just mean financially). We pull together lunches for the homeless, and feel great about spending a couple hours of our day giving out food to people less fortunate than us. We see kids starving in Haiti and send $5 that we've got lying around, then proceed to tell our Facebook friends that we gave to Haiti and they should too. I'm not saying that those things are, by nature, bad things, but they don't require much from us. They don't take us out of our comfort zone or take too much of our spending money, so that we are not inconvenienced in our comfortable lives that we've been blessed with.

BUT GOD CALLS US TO DO MORE.

He calls us to give all that we have; to come out of our comfortable lives and do something radical for His glory. For some people, He calls them to be missionaries in foreign countries. For others, He wants them to impact their local community through outreach, child mentoring, etc. Maybe for people that are blessed financially, He calls them to prioritize their finances to give freely and without trepidation.

I find that I struggle most in my life with giving God control over every aspect of my life. Even as I write this, I'm struggling with what is going to happen in my future and where life is taking me. But ultimately, when I give over those feelings of worry and doubt and submit my life to God, things start falling into place. I like to think of those times as God knocking me on the head ever so gently and saying "Thanks for remembering me. I'm still here, and I always will be."

I don't know what kind of radical thing He is calling me for, but I pray diligently that He shows me that direction and that I do everything in my power to take on that responsibility with everything that I have. When I think about it like that, it makes all of these decisions that I'm needing to make seem a lot easier.

Moving?

So, I found out today that my condo that I've been renting for 14 months now has been sold. What does this mean for me exactly? Well, I have two choices: I can move out, as long as I give 30 days notice, or I can stay for the remainder of my lease, which would be about 10 months. It would seem like the obvious choice would be to stay until my lease is up, right? So, why am I suddenly feeling like the other option is better?

I've been saying for awhile now that Nashville is not my home, and that I would love to look at moving somewhere else. I had some ideas of a few places, but only a couple of them really seemed viable. I want to go back to school, and had begun looking at UT as an option, simply because it's a good school, I could transfer jobs there, etc. There are other places I could go, too, that would offer me those same choices. But then again, I love my townhouse and have had some really amazing memories here. My friends, my church, and my responsibilities are all here. But it's not like this would be the first time I've moved away from all of that before. I've done it twice now, and each time, things have been even better in that next chapter of my life.

I think I'm just struggling with how to look at this situation: either staying here in a place where things are familiar or take this opportunity to do things that I might not have had a chance to do before. I need take this time to really pray about what God has in His great plan for me. It's not going to be an immediate decision, I'm sure, but I feel like its been laid on my heart to really take the time to look at my options. So, I'm taking this chance to ask for prayers from you, my dear, rare readers on this choice. The old me would have stressed out about this, but the me I'm striving hard to be is letting the Lord be in control.

Taking Risks.

When it comes to matters of the heart, I find myself torn between being a realist or an optimist. Naturally, it would seem like you should go with what your heart wants, but what if you know that by doing so, you could be setting yourself up for more hurt? And here's a twist...what if being a realist means that you still believe your heart is right? Almost sounds like a lose-lose situation, right?

But I find myself wanting to take this risk, not because I feel like it's going to magically change my situation, but simply because I have to take it. My heart tells me and my brain tells me, too. Because at the end of the day, there's nothing to lose.

Advice

Have you ever been asked to give advice on something that ended up helping you just as much as the person seeking the advice?

Tonight, I had someone seek my advice on something that hits very close to home. While the situation itself was different on the surface, at its core was miscommunication. It was a girl desperately trying to express how she feels, but not willing to listen to how the other person feels. Not knowing the girl in the scenario, I could only speak on generalities of the female sex, which is always a hit or miss. But the part that struck me the most was how the other person readily admitted to me that he felt like nothing he ever did was good enough for her. Getting a small insight into the mind of a frustrated man who wants to be everything that she wants AND still be himself was extremely enlightening.

As females, we tend to only look at things by how it makes us feel, and so we can tend to make larger deals out of things that men never would think twice about. To that same degree, men may feel something, but for their own reasons, never admit to feeling that and make decisions based on facts and hold back emotion in order to follow through with that decision. Ladies, please believe me when I say that I'm not trying to give away all the secrets of how we operate...trust me, I don't even understand why I do the things I do sometimes. But we've got to start recognizing that we communicate differently than men, and men need to realize the same. I hate using the word compromise, because sometimes it gives out a negative connotation of "giving in" to the other person just for the sake of stopping the argument. But if we start recognizing that men do, in fact, what to be the best they can be for us, then maybe we can start trying to reach a point of understanding. I think that would change the dynamic of a lot of would-be great relationships that are on the verge of destruction.