Hello everyone, if you hadn't guessed it by reading the title of this blog; today I was utterly exhausted. Normally as typical college student I wake up late on Saturday morning because I always stay up late Friday night, I go to lunch and pretty much do nothing all day. But this Saturday I found myself zombie walking into the shower at 7:40 this morning in order to get to campus to work on my Christian service hours (for those unfamiliar with Liberty University, all students sophomore class and up have to complete 20 community service hours a semester; these are called Christian Service hours or CSER) I am chat monitor for our online communities program. You can watch streaming videos (sermons from different semesters at Liberty) and talk to a live person while watching. So at 8:45 I numbly (partially because I am not a morning person and partially because it was really cold) walked into the building where I do my CSER hours and spent two hours watching sermons, there will be more about those later. On a side note, I have decided that if the zombie apocalypse were to somehow start at my school, I think it would start on our north campus building. There is an incredibly long and large hallway going down the whole building. At 8:45 in the morning it also happens to be one of the creepiest and silent hallways, with what seemed like human beings traversing the length. I was highly suspicious though because of their slow movements and glazed over expressions, I was afraid at any moment one of them would moan "brains" and I would be done with. But anyway, I digress as usual.
After that I was dragging all day, I ended up falling asleep in the afternoon while watching a movie with my roommate, I woke up mid dream panicking about some strange creature attacking and ended up backhanding a can of soda off of my nightstand, across the room and onto the floor where the entire contents of the can spilled onto the carpet. I then decided it would be best to not nap any longer and worked on homework (so much homework) till I went to go to a friends house to watch Ben Hur (amazing movie). Well those plans ended up being side tracked just a bit when my friend who was giving me a ride offered to help a sweet freshman from another college go buy gas for his car because he ran out on the off ramp. My friends and I did get to watch Ben Hur, the chariot race always stresses me out, I found myself madly twirling my hair while the horses were racing, and practically fell asleep on the way home. All in all it was a great day, even though I felt like I had been in a mental fog all day... who knows maybe I did get infected by a zombie... hmmm... nahhhh overactive imagination is all that is. But if I suddenly have a craving for brains in the morning, I do apologize in advance to anyone I may munch on.
Enough about my day and onto the "serious" part of the blog, ahem. So far I have been talking about my daily Bible readings, which today I read Mark 11:12-19, but I am actually going to talk about the sermons I watched during my Christian service hours. Here at Liberty we have something called Convocation three times a week for an hour at a time, we call it convo for short. But during that hour a speaker comes in and will give a message or inspirational speech. Today I watched two talks one by Michael Franzese and John MacArthur. The first a former mob guy and the second a man who preaches and wrote his own study Bible. Two very awesome speakers in my personal opinion. But a theme of both was giving your life to Christ and what that really means. For Mr. Franzese that meant turning his back on his family and lifestyle of crime and pleasure; with the consequence being possibly death. His story is crazy, I highly encourage anyone to look into it. Both men hit on a few points that really struck me hard. Being a follower of Christ is not just about praying a prayer, receiving a "get out of hell free card" and living your life going to Church on Sunday's and Bible study on Wednesday's. It is a lifestyle, as a Christian you are giving over control of your life to someone else. That someone else being Jesus Christ. Mr. MacArthur spoke about declaring Jesus Lord in your life, this doesn't mean saying oh yeah Jesus is cool, we talk on Sunday's he wants me to be a camp counselor this summer (not that being a camp counselor is bad, it is something I love to do). Declaring sometime to be "Lord" is putting that person in charge of you. I am going to ask you dear readers to think back in history (I know it is hard but try for a moment) anyone with the title "Lord" had rank and power, to what they willed with the people they ruled over. As a Christian I am supposed to give the control of my life to my Lord, Jesus.
John MacArthur pointed out the we are not just to be servants of Jesus and declare him Lord, but if you translate from the Greek, we are to be slaves.I know what you are thinking and it is what I was thinking also ,"ouch, ick, what the heck, who wants to be a slave, there is no way I am doing that" Don't we want to end slavery in the world?? Of course we do. But keep going with me. The master to a slave has complete control over that person's life, where they go what they do. Isn't that what we are supposed to do by declaring Jesus Lord? Yeah... still got that heck no feeling? I understand completely. But here is the thing, something that I have not yet fully experienced but I know people who have. We know the thoughts of Jesus and what he wants from us, he wants us to give control of our lives over to him, by doing this we are no longer just slaves, we become heirs to a kingdom, heaven. We will share in Heaven, with the one who died for us and is our God. God has plans for our lives. We are each the main character in a story that is God is authoring. If we let the author write it out, we will have even story lines, they may not make sense at the time but you don't skip ahead chapters too see what happens in a book, you read every page as you come too it. Allow God to write your story. I have to tell this too myself every single day. I have to swallow my pride and let God do the writing, He is so much better at it then I am. I know for myself that I still struggle with the idea of giving God control of every part of my life. I have thoughts of what of God makes me move somewhere horrible... but there is another way of looking at it, what if God wants to use the passions he has given me in my life for his purpose. Just because I give God my life doesn't mean I stop going to school to be a therapist. It means listening to God when he tells me where to help people. I look back on the chapters of my life and some of them have been downright horrible, but they make the story what it is. Without those times, there would be no story. I am going to add a link to the video's I was referring too, please watch them. They will will blow your mind.
http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=9002 the Videos are under streaming videos, type in the search bar "Michael Franzese, The Good, the bad the forgiven" and John MacArthur Christs Slaves. Trust me, they are amazing.
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