Well, it's been long enough since my last post sooo I guess it's finally time for a new one.
Lately I've been struggling with being at school. I don't think I've ever missed being at home and with my family as much as I have since I moved 10 hrs away to go to school in TN. It's not that I hate it here, I'm just not content...sometimes lonely. However, I know this is where I’m supposed to be right now. I'm convicted that God wants me to stay here for the next three years and graduate from Bryan College. He reaffirms that in me daily. I know that sometimes in life you have to do things that you don't particularly want to do simply because it's the right thing and so I'm committed to staying here and making the most of it. And in some way, that does give me a small amount of peace from which I gain barely enough patience to make myself stay here.
Yet, I still feel as though I'm fighting; fighting for something, fighting against something. I haven't really been able to understand why I feel this way and yet still feel like I'm doing what God wants me to do. I've always thought that if I'm putting God's will in front of my own that I would be at peace. And yet, I'm not at peace, I'm not content, while at the same time having one of the strongest convictions of my life that I'm obeying God's plan for me.
Today, I read something by Piper that kind of answered some of this for me. In his writing, he champions a "wartime mind-set" as opposed to a "peacetime mind-set" and says,
"In wartime we ask different questions about what to do with our lives than we do in peacetime. We ask: What can I do to advance the cause? What can I do to bring victory? What sacrifice can I make or what risk can I take to insure the joy of triumph? In peacetime we tend to ask, What can I do to be more comfortable? To have more fun? To avoid trouble and, possibly, avoid sin?"
This made sense to what I’ve been feeling because I think this might be the first time in my life that I’ve had a “wartime mind-set.” It’s the first time in my life that I’ve really sacrificed my whole lifestyle for God’s purposes. I have an idea of what God wants me to do in life and that’s why I think He wants me at Bryan. It’s one of the steps in His plan to prepare me for what He wants me to accomplish in life and daily I find myself asking questions similar to “What can I do to advance the cause?” whereas previously, (as in my whole life) I have been focused around questions like “what can I do to be more comfortable?” or “What can I do to have more fun?” and “What can I do to avoid trouble?”
And I am not at peace and I feel that I’m fighting because a “wartime mind-set” is opposed to a “peacetime mind-set.” They do not coincide. They are opposites. Wartime implies that there is a fight. I feel like I am fighting because I am. My mind, for the first time, has embraced a “wartime mind-set” in the way that it looks at life and priorities.
Piper goes on to say,
"I need to hear this message again and again, because I drift into a peacetime mind-set as certainly as the rain falls down and flames go up. I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth "home." Before you know it, I am calling luxuries "needs" and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don't think much about people perishing. Missions and un-reached peoples drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mind-set that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mind-set.”
I fall into this “peacetime mind-set” frequently but for the first time in my 19 years of existence it seems as though the “wartime mind-set” has the upper hand. It’s not peaceful but it’s liberating and exciting. I find myself really feeling love for “unreached” or “lost” people around me and in my culture and I find myself getting excited thinking about how God might use me to bring about triumphs of grace. It makes me feel like I have purpose in life as opposed to just knowing that. It’s the first time that I have realistically felt that I can make a difference because I’m not counting on what I can do but on what God is going to do.
