Hashin It Out

Everybody knows what a Christian is supposed to be, what the philosiphy is and such. But there are so many different ideas on how it should look like. SO many. This pondering started out as a pet peeve, and then transformed into an intense quest to find (at least for my own life) the right way to live in this world and have the right relationship with my Creator.

I grew up in a Christian home with traditional Christian parents, that tried to raise me on such things like white boy 80's Gospel music and took me to the first hour service, when all the old people went. I don't know if it's just my personality or the way I was brought up, but since hitting my teenage years I've become quite resistant to any tradition that doesn't involve a lot of passion and energy, and are led by people that don't try that hard to maintain the quality of that tradition. People that skim any of that become targets of deep-rooted annoyance in my eyes.

Up until this point, I've been fed how to live my life. I've had guidelines and advice given to me, that I blindly accepted. Now, I'm not saying at all that the Christian belief I've been living out all these years is wrong, or that my past mentors and people I've taken advice from were wrong at all. What I am saying is I'm at the point in my life where I question and contest everything that I believe in, because I'm making choices that will affect my entire life and I need to know that what I believe in is something I can rely on. I need to know that my core belief and passion is being lived out and displayed in my life in the right way, without stereotypes, without hiding, and without doubt.

You hear these questions all the time, what's it like to be free in Christ, how do you live your life for Him, how do you evangalize? In my case, you can read about it all you can in the Bible, you can hear as many solutions as you want from all the motivational speakers in the world, but you can not know it until you involve yourself honestly and entirely to finding the answer. I know there's people that read a verse out of the Bible and they just get it and that's how their lives work, but from what I've noticed, most people have to be weakened for a long time before they start to be enlightened by anything. Some people get revelations from God in the weirdest ways, and some get it from hard times and being broken so He can change us and open us up.

Yknow sometimes I have the fear that people that know me, and believe in God like me, think that I'm trying to shirk away from what I say I believe. And I'll admit I'm not doing everything right currently, but most people don't know that :). The bottom line is that what I'm doing is what I'm doing, I have not turned my back to God, and I know what I'm doing is right. I know that it's right because I see the blessings that God continually gives me, the new doors He's opened up in other ministries, and the new hope that He has given me after the betrayals I recieved.

This I encourage you with: follow God with everything you know. Treat what people say as advice, unless it comes straight from the Bible (words directly from God). Stay away from stereotypes and closed ways of thinking, because they will put walls up. Don't be afraid to make a mistake, but never forget to learn from it and be a better person becasue of it. And, if you believe like me, never turn your back on God, because you'll be left in the dark.