New Creation

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

-2 Corinthians 5:17

If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. 

-Ephesians 4:21-24

The Lord has been constantly testing my faith in Him when it comes to my future and what path He will be leading me down after graduation. I still trust the Lord will use me in ministry but am still not sure exactly what that will look like. The more I think back to the life the Lord has brought me through, my heart breaks for those young women who still struggle in finding value in what the world has to offer. My heart breaks that I still struggle in finding value in what the world has to offer. I think about my youth group girls who are juniors in high school who still just don't get it. A couple weeks ago we talked about priorities in life and three tiers of how to gauge where our priorities really are. The top tier was those things that were absolutely crucial to our lives, things that we could not live without. The next tier was things that were not necessarily needed but still important. The last tier was things that were cool but did not really matter much at all. The girls were filling out their sheets of where they thought things in their lives should be in their priorities. They wrote down having a relationship with God as crucial, which I obviously was glad to hear at first. However, following God came boys and makeup in the crucial category. I tried not to laugh but then realized that these girls were serious and those things is what they thought were most important. These girls seek worldly attention every minute of their days because they have yet to understand the emptiness that comes with putting priority on worldly attention and beauty. I was very quickly brought back to my own junior high and high school days before truly following the Lord. I was exactly where they were at one point in thinking that a boy pursuing me because of my beauty and talents was one of the most important keys to happiness. I laugh about this now because it is so ridiculous. But, that is where our younger generations are because of media and poor influence in their lives. They have few role models that are willing to stand up and challenge them to think otherwise and load on the truth that they are beautiful even being as broken as they are.

I spent some time today thinking about old friends that I used to spend so much time on. These were great friends in the world's eyes but not in Christ's. They didn't push me to God's hope and promises. In fact, they pulled me away from God's truth. I was accepted by them from the cute clothes that I wore to school that day and how nice my mascara made my eyelashes look. I was judged on how fun I was to be around and how great I could make them feel by complimenting them on the same attributes. I thought about all the fun times I had with these friends that make for great memories but in all honesty, I am glad they are just memories. The world has had such an influence in my life, even after accept Christ's love and forgiveness and experiencing God's grace in my life. I decided to look through some old pictures of my party days. I saw too many bad memories of drunken nights that ended in blacking out on the floor in the apartment I lived in second semester of freshman year. I saw faces of "friends" who were really only my friends because I shared my beer with them or, if they were a boy, gave them attention that wasn't attention the real me would normally give. Pictures from that summer where I had lost control and saw my drunken self almost every night. I saw so many broken promises through these pictures and times that really weren't getting me anywhere in where I wanted to be. Didn't these "friends" understand that the only reason I was in this stage of life and at those parties was because I was hurting with such deep pain that all I really wanted was someone to come along side of me and help me find my way back to who I really was? A friend who would take the time to bring me back to God actually created me to be? Of course not, I was obviously looking in the completely wrong places. I was instantly overwhelmed with joy and praise for the amazing road God has lead me down. "Oh praise the One who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead!" As I looked through a few more pictures I realized that I was seeing nothing but death. I was so far away from the Lord that I was in nothing but the death of my own flesh. The Lord has come into my life and has made me a completely new creation. From the moment that I decided to fully surrender my lost ways to Him, I saw hope in a way that I had never found elsewhere. I found the joy and acceptance that I had been looking everywhere but to God for. The Lord reminded me today that death can be so consuming in our lives but He promises to make us righteous and holy. What an incredible promise. I am not who I was and when I looked at those pictures, I saw a stranger who had no hope and no direction. However, more than that I saw a child of God who the Lord worked miracles in to change this hard heart and has made it overflow with the only love that truly matters. I am continually brought back to the hurting young people who are exactly where I used to be. I want to come along side of them and have God use me in powerful ways to help them also be brought out of the death that used to consume me. I fully believe that the Lord has allowed these experiences to be part of my story to relate to so many broken women. I desire the Lord to use me in the lives of these women because the Lord has done so much through women pouring into me. We all have flesh that does nothing but create death in us, but we have a Savior who has died our death for us and has replaced it with hope and has used it to make us completely new. I marvel at this miracle that God could take such a broken, lost life and turn it into one that strives after His plan and is used to share His grace. I am so incredibly thankful.