Purpose

I’ve thought a lot about purpose lately. It seems to be recurring and most of the time God puts those words in my path when I need them the most.

What is purpose? What is our purpose? The purpose of our marriage? The purpose of school? The purpose of our jobs? Without “purpose” what would we be motivated by? The issue is, we look for purpose in the wrong places. My purpose in my marriage isn’t found in my husband but instead it’s what purpose do me and my husband have together. What purpose do we have for the kingdom of God. Without God, without knowing he gives us purpose what are we even here for? When we seek out Gods plan in our lives and we truly live for him is when we fulfill a purpose. In our jobs, marriages, schools, etc. We serve an earthly purpose for the kingdom of God, and one day when the Lord takes us home, we will fulfill the greatest purpose of all, the reason we were created, an eternal life with the Father. We can spend our whole lives living for a purpose other than God’s but it won’t work. Why? Because God created us and without him, what would be the point?

Faith, you either have it or you don’t.

We read or hear so many sermons about faith, but how often do we actually dwell on it until it has to do with our situation. If you think about it, our trust is based on earthly situations, we have trouble trusting God because of our interactions with people and how often they fail us here on this earthly realm. BUT that is what we have to realize. We have to stop putting God in this human box. He is endlessly more than that. If we hold God up to our standards of people, how can we ever have faith in him? Like scripture says, he is spotless, perfect, and NEVER FAILING. I think as sinners, we honestly cannot comprehend the word “never”. Just think about it. As humans, “never” is almost used as sarcasm or a joke. “Oh, I never do that.” So we can only compare never to how we experience it. But we have to stop putting God on the human level. He IS spotless and truly never failing. He will never ever ever fail you. 

So next, comes our faith. 

Do we have faith or do we doubt? My lifelong preacher, the wisest man I’ve ever known always said, “Faith. You either have it or you don’t.” That’s simple, right? To put all your faith in God? Nope! We are human, we can't help but doubt. We many times pray and pray and convince ourselves that we have given it to God and then turn right around and doubt everything we said we believed. Then we wonder why our prayers aren’t being answered. The Bible says in James 1:6, “But let him ask in faith, with NO doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” What we can take out of this is the simple two letter word, “no”. “No” doubting doesn’t mean pray and give him 50% of it, it doesn’t even mean 99.99%, it means 100%. I can count endless times I battled with so many things and I would pray and doubt, pray and doubt, but when I finally got it in my head that this won't work unless I give everything I have to God and fully, 100%, put it all in his hands, things started to be answered. I can remember a month ago wanting something so bad, I was in my car and I said out loud, “okay God, no more. I am releasing this all to you right now. There is nothing more I can do” and the same night my prayers were completely answered. Now this doesn’t mean when you give it to God he has to answer right then. Through my whole life one thing that has always stuck with me is that our God is not a now God. Our prayers are going to be answered in his timing. That is part of the trusting process. You have to know that he will always do what is in your best interest. Never forget that what you may be going through, no matter how big or small, is all just as important to God. He does not want to see you fail. What you are going through is God giving you a testimony to be able to say, “this is what God did in my life.”  We are human and it is our nature to doubt and it is so easy to trust God when everything is going our way, but start losing faith as soon as something bad happens. We have to realize that in the hard times is when God needs us to let go and let him. We as humans can't simply handle things on our own. Submit to the one who created the heavens and the earth, every star in the sky, and most importantly he created YOU. 

Trust in the lord with ALL your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5.

love over judgment

Matthew 7:3-4

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye?”

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My hope and prayer for everyday is that I can be a light in someone’s life. I sit and type these blogs, not because I want to “brag” or “boast” but to hopefully speak to someone who needs to hear it. I pray for God's guidance while I speak his words in hopes of reaching someone who struggles just like I do. I want everyone to know that none of us are perfect, and something I have learned is that everyone goes through something. Encouragement is what I want to give someone who may be having a rough day, the Lord knows we all do.

One thing I have learned just in the past year is how to interact and talk to people who don’t believe the way I do. As Christians, or at least for me, I battled with judgment and acceptance. I was quick to close myself off and boil with anger if I came across anything that didn’t represent the word of God. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to some degree, but I was letting it control me, rather than just praying for the situation. Instead of asking God to let me interact with his love, I would let it completely ruin my day. It’s almost like I developed such a judgmental attitude along with the anger and just to be honest an “I’m better than you attitude”. Then, I looked in the mirror, I evaluated myself and how I would mess up. No one is perfect and for me to think I was only held me back from the relationship that I strive to have with God. So to be honest I realized that:

1. I needed to show the love of God to everyone.

2. Having that mindset would only make things harder for me. 

3. Reality is, I can’t stay huddled up in a shell for the rest of my life because this world is awful.

 So it was something I had to get through. I knew I live in a world of evil and cruelty and I would have to encounter people that I didn’t always agree with. Don’t get the wrong idea here, I do mess up, like all the time, we all do, we are human. That is why God showed me that I was in no place to judge. I began to ask God for peace and patience in times where I would encounter things that went against his word. I asked him to help me show the love of Jesus to everyone! This has been a process but I have found myself not getting so angry when I see or hear things, but instead praying. So as christains, let's not be influenced by worldly things, but let's be the influencers. So things began to get easier, I listened to people in class sate their opinions and my heart wasn’t heavy anymore, I could pray for them and talk to them without getting angry. Then as things began to get better God definitely sent me a sign. In class this week, we were told to get in partners. Me and another guy happened to be the only ones without a partner so we just paired together. We had to do an activity where I talked to him about a topic and he talked to me and we had to listen to each other. We had no clue what to talk about, it was kind of awkward, so he asked what I liked to do and I said, sing at my church. He proceeds to say, “oh! Tell me about church I have never been.” I kind of locked up for a moment, sadly because I had ever met anyone in my life that hadn’t heard about Jesus and also because my time was here to tell someone about God and what was I going to say? I just began to talk to God in my head, “Jesus, thank you for this opportunity, guide my mouth with your words.” So he asked me about what we do and why we have church on Sundays. It was a simple conversation but yet so powerful. He began telling me about his beliefs and the protests he leads around Alabama. It was an amazing feeling because I smiled and showed him the love of Jesus, even though I didn’t believe like he did. When I left I doubted myself, and thought of all the things I should have said, but I remembered what Blake, my youth pastor, always taught me. He said, “I have all these people I know that don’t believe in God, but they know I do and when they go through something they always come to me for prayer and that is my ministering moment.” So I realized that by me showing the love of God to this guy that I had never met in my life, I had overcome everything I prayed for God to help me with. Instead of pushing God onto him and slamming it in his face, I showed him love. Because if that was his only interaction with a Christian and I had been mad or angry, he would probably have developed a hatred towards christains. The moral of the story is that I want to always show love to people I meet because like Blake taught me, they will remember you, know your beliefs, trust you, and come to you when things get hard. A year later after working on the judgment and heaviness in my heart, I sat down and had a 30 minute conversation between (what he told me he was) a socialist democrat and me, a republican conservative. It was purely love and I reminded myself instead of dwelling on the things I should have said I left proud to have shared the love of God to someone who was from a totally different world than me. 

Being A Christian in a Non-Christian Atmosphere

Growing up in a small town, in the south, that barely reaches 5,000 people, I guess you could say you tend to unintentionally block out the real world . You grow up in your small church, go to school with the same people for 12 years, and have the same activities each year that everyone in your community goes to. Let me backup and explain the phrase “ unintentionally block out the real world”. Your whole life you are surrounded by people who share the same, if not close to, the same beliefs as you. All of your parents are friends and there aren’t many people that are a different race or culture than you. You begin to forget there is a world outside those 5,000 people. See, I began to get curious and venture out, and go through my (what they call) “raised sheltered rebel stage”. I wanted to leave, I didn’t like my parents during this time, all because they tried to discipline me. Just typical teenage actions I guess you could say. This stage didn’t last for long and I didn’t get too far, I have praying parents I can thank for that. I was raised to recognize my convictions and I usually couldn't do much without the Holy Spirit convicting me. Like the bible says in Proverbs 22:6, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” I thank my parents for raising me like this, even though I went through a time where I was angry at them for not being able to do the “normal” things my friends were doing. I am here to tell you now, if you are in middle school or high school, even early college, I cannot thank God enough for my parents because of that very reason. Now, as I have moved out and grown up I don’t even want to do the worldly things that I once was so eager to do. What the Bible says in proverbs is the reason I did not stray too far. Now as I got older and just recently moved to the city it was a MAJOR change. UAB was somewhere I wanted to go to try out the “city life” and “get out of my town”, but I didn't realize just how different it was going to be. Now, other than the silly reasons I wanted to come here, I do know that God put me here for a reason. The weeks leading up to my move I didn't understand why I was going. I had just made Godly friends, met a God fearing man, and everything was just going how I liked it. But the key word here is “I”. God had different plans. He started showing me things, “Tristan, you are going through a different season.” but still, I thought to myself, “God, there are no Christians around me, this isn't a christian environment. There are all these clubs, religions, ways of life that I don't believe in. How can I be one person and shine your light in a school that has THREE times the amount of people than my whole town does.” That is when he stopped me. He began to show me something, what asset would I be in Glencoe, Alabama.I am surrounded by my christian family and friends, who is there to minister to? Then I remembered what my mom has always said: If you can go your whole life and tell one person about the word of God, then that is all that matters. She also instilled something in me that I couldn't get out of my head in this season in my life. Which was, “Tristan, you can't pray to God and give it to him and then doubt it. You have to truly give every bit of the problem to him.” (See even in college I still hear my moms wise words in my head) So that is what I started to do. I started to tell God, “Okay, I know you have me here, i'm fully ready for what you have for me.” This is when he started showing me things. My roommates wanted us to go to church together, we met a friend who works at a church here and invited us in, I met Christians in my classes, I heard a girl go down the hall blaring worship music. See, if you honor God, he will begin to move more in your life. I have been here for around two months now and I would be lying if I said I wasn't still struggling. We are only human, but he gives me peace everyday and continues to open doors, and as my boyfriend always tells me, you just have to have your spiritual eyes open to see them.

UAB campus