Some thoughts.

It's really amazing to me how God can speak to you through other people.
There's a cool verse in 1 John that says:
"Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever."
I always thought this verse was talking about our possessions - money, houses, cars, stuff.
Until today, I didn't apply it to people.
This verse isn't saying that you shouldn't love people, but it is saying that we shouldn't depend on people for our contentment throughout life.
My mom slapped me in the face with this today. (Not literally, I promise.)
The past 2 days I've been really bummed for various reasons, but all my problems were due to other people. All my struggles seem to link to friends, or worrying about other people and what they think. My mom knew this, and knew exactly what to say to me about it. She was bluntly honest with me, which was good.
She told me that nothing, and no one, should be able to destroy my joy. My life revolves around my friends, so much that it scares me to think of college, when I have to leave them. I get too comfortable and dependant on the people in my life, and I feel unprepared for change when it hits me.
I feel so pitiful and so dependant on other people, even though I know they will forever disappoint me. I can't seem to focus on that which I can't see: the Lord and the plans He has for my life.
I'm such a strong believer in absolutely no regrets in life-within reason, of course. But my point is, we really shouldn't worry about the things that we go through, the things people say about us. More importantly, we shouldn't depend on that stuff. What has happened has made us who we are. I need to be so strongly grounded in Jesus that I am not afraid to face change, and I'm not afraid to let people go. People are people, but God is God.

Sunday Monday thoughts.

I went to church yesterday, as I do every week, and during the high school Sunday school we had a pair of missionary guest speakers. They were an older married couple who did missions work with children in the Carribbean, and frankly, they really needed to stick with the little kids. They were very sweet people, but I was irritated with the way they explained what they do. I felt my IQ drop significantly in only 45 minutes... they were talking to us like we were 1st graders. They showed us the booklets they give children, with black representing sin, red representing Jesus' blood, etc.
But through it all, I got to thinking about how interchangeable religions are. If a group of Muslim missionaries had come through, then these children would have been taught their religion, and would be Muslim. The same can be true with any religion. Don't get me wrong, Christianity is completely different from the rest, and is the only way to salvation. Salvation is a work of the Holy Spirit and God would find a way to reach these kids even without our help, but it was on my mind just the same.
Time after time, day after day, it was pounded into my brain that we are sinful, God loves us and sent His son, and our sins were demolished through His sacrifice. After about 10 years, it was meaningless to me. In a way, growing up in a Christian school was a disadvantage. I never really experienced God's direct hand in my life until I was 16, when He showed me how amazing and important He really is.
I hear stories a lot about men and women above the age of 30 becoming saved. It has to be so much more powerful then. The way I see it, people like that are similar to the man in the Bible who was blind from birth. As the story goes, he was a grown man when Jesus came by and told him to wash his eyes in a pool of water, and his eyes were opened to a world he'd never seen before. People who live their lives as non-christians are like that. Only Jesus can wash away that blindness, and open their eyes to a world they will never see in the same way again. Think how much more they can appreciate it when they've lived their whole lives without experiencing it.
I have so many friends that grew up Christian. Like me, it became meaningless, and some of them eventually fell out of it altogether. We constantly take it for granted. We are like people who have grown up seeing the world, and every day it becomes less and less exciting. It's so saddening to me to see my friends tell me they don't know what to belive anymore.
It's late though, and I have to go to bed. School is bright and early, after all. Maybe I'll have more thoughts about this tomorrow or sometime this week.
The end.