Thinking About Things I've Left Behind

“These things will have to go,” is something I heard when I started going back to church. Even at that moment, where I was so very sinful in my life and full of doubt, I understood immediately what “things” would have to go. I didn’t really expect them to just fly out of my life, and I didn’t expect to do anything to let them go either. I was simply conscious of some of the sin in my life; I was guilty. But the “things that have to go” dwelled on me until I was almost unconsciously putting those sinful aspects of my life aside. I say almost because I know I was crying out, and although I wasn’t mindful of prayer, God was helping me. He was drawing me near, into a closer relationship with Him. In order for me to get there, He was telling me that certain things needed to go.

I came up with a bunch of reasons to tell my friends why I didn’t go to parties anymore. I told them that it wasn’t fun anymore, that the thought of alcohol made me sick, and that I always felt like crud the next day, so it wasn’t really worth it. All those things were certainly true, and they still are, but all along the underlining factor was that parties and alcohol were detractors in my relationship with God. They pushed me into this selfist belief that my life was all about what I want and how to make myself happy. You hear it all too often: “We’re young! Enjoy life and have fun!” I believed their ideal “fun” with the parties and drinking and all of the self-centeredness until God said, “Oh, no you don’t.” Those things of human excess were just that: human. It took me a while to understand that what I really want isn’t human. God’s plans for me were so much more than that. Even today, I struggle with giving explanation for my not wanting to go to their party or go out drinking. When really, I just have something way better going on with God that I don’t want to mess up.

I thought that as things started to go from my life, as God started tell me they needed to go, that it would increase in difficulty with each thing that left. I held so much mistaken reliance on those things, those sins. How could I see them go? And it was difficult at first. I had numerous “give-ins” to those things He was working with me to get rid of. I had moments were I broke down and cried myself into depression because I didn’t understand who I was without those people I was leaving behind and without those habits that I attached to them. He’s still answering that for me. I don’t know exactly what God has planned for me, but I do know that Him and I are in a crazy awesome relationship. Without those things I am growing closer into that relationship. I am His beloved. Everyday I pick up the bible I grow a little more. I rely more on Him and not the superficiality that society has thrust upon us.