When I graduated high school, my youth pastor at the time gave me a book, but on the inside he wrote these verses.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (ESV)
For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;a time to kill, and a time to heal;a time to break down, and a time to build up;a time to weep, and a time to laugh;a time to mourn, and a time to dance;a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;a time to seek, and a time to lose;a time to keep, and a time to cast away;a time to tear, and a time to sew;a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;a time to love, and a time to hate;a time for war, and a time for peace.
When I look back over my collegiate journey thus far, these verses pretty much sum it up. They have surely been a journey of growth, of deepening my Faith in Christ, of seasons to experience. I started @ NGU, but God had such a greater plan for my life. He knew what he was doing and many times he carried me through the storms. I have grown up a lot in these years. Never did I imagine that I would be living on my own, working full-time @ a bank, and such…It’s funny how God uses the things that we say never to, to change our lives. I swore that I would never go to college at USC, it was too big, and I always got lost over here and just did not want to be in Columbia. I am not a city girl by any stretch of the imagination; I would much rather be in the middle of the mountains under the cover of God’s creation than around bricks and pavement. BUT God had a different plan! He wanted me in Columbia to serve Him, to grow deeper with Him, to learn how to be me. I’m reading this book right now called “the me I want to be” by John Ortberg, one of my favorite quotes so far is “God doesn’t want to exchange you, He wants to redeem you.” I think a lot of times when we think about being a new creation in Christ it is a matter of throwing away the old and becoming a completely new person, but we can learn a lot from what we were before. So many of the experiences in my life have had such a direct impact on who I am that I can’t just throw them away. They are a part of me, but I think it more directly talks about using what has made you “you” and serving God with it. There is some pretty deep stuff in my past, stuff that I still struggle with today, but when I struggle today, I have a hope that I’m not living to serve the day. I’m living to serve the future of my God. He doesn’t need me, but God chooses to use me. He uses each and every one of us because He loves us. He chose to REDEEM my life and use my circumstances, my mistakes, my failures, and all the good things to FURTHER HIS KINGDOM. Basically it’s not about me, but about HOW God uses me. I pray that I continue to be open to Him. If I hadn’t followed Him to Columbia, I would have surely missed out on what He had in store. It reminds me of the story of Jonah. If God can put Jonah in a whale, He can certainly use me where he plants me. To those of you that have shared this journey with me. Thank you for being there, when I was tired, when I felt like giving up. Thank you for being a shoulder to cry on when I faced tough times. Thank you for being my friend, may we continue to be friends and lift each other up in the eyes of the Lord.
<3 CT
