Running the Race

So I haven’t written in a really long time. The last time I wrote I was still in Jersey. Weird. A lot has happened since then. I feel like 2 Corinthians 4 can sum up a lot of my life the past monthish.

I recently finished reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I must say that everyone I spoke to about it got extremely excited when I said that I was going to read it so the expectation was pretty high going into it. I’ll admit that it was a good book. I enjoyed Miller’s writing style. But it wasn’t as amazing or inspiring as everyone built it up to be except for one thing that really hit me hard. There is a chapter towards the end where he talks about loving your neighbor as you would love yourself (Mark 12:31, Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:13-15) and he goes on to say that he treats himself horribly and would never think to treat anyone else the same way. It’s like he’s treating others better than he is treating himself and that doesn’t sit right with him. I realized from this that I do the exact same thing. I would never treat others the way that I treat myself. I don’t treat myself that well and I find myself repenting about this all the time lately.

God is really showing me that it’s important to remember that we are His children and through that, how we undeservingly deserve to be treated by others and by ourselves.

Two weeks ago, if I were to love my neighbor as myself…..

-I would tell them that they were worthless

-I would beat them up

-I would make them feel like they weren’t good enough

-I would feed their insecurities

-I would convince them that they need to live up to the world’s expectations

-I would tell them to give into authority figures even if it’s against God’s will

Let’s just say that people wouldn’t have been lifted up if I treated them the way I was treating myself. Look at the way that you treat yourself and ask yourself if you would do that to someone else.

God has brought me into a new light and is revealing to me more about myself everyday. I am learning what it is to be a woman of God and what I am to expect and what my responsibilities are with being that. Learning how to stand firm in the truth (2 Timothy 1:7), how to hold people accountable in love (James 1:19), discerning what I am called to do and what is put on my heart (Psalm 119:124-126), and learning to embrace the person that God made me to be and to embrace the changes that He is going to make in me (Psalm 25:5).