My Generation

As I write this, I am sitting at my Nene and Pappaw's computer in Beaumont Texas on Friday Afternoon. I had a long drive home last night, and from it came plenty of time to think and reflect.

On my mind is the subject of gen. xer's and gen. yer's (My Generation) and our complete complacency at times to anything outside ourselves. My heart has been burdened as of late for the 20 something crowd and the intense hurt, and pain I see all around me. We are a generation that came long after man set foot on the moon, but had been around a few years before the startling world changing movement of the internet. We have seen communism fall, (although many of us were pre-teens when the wall came down), and have been through two different wars in the Middle East. We have more opportunity to explore, innovate, and communicate than any generation before us, and have more luxuries, and amenities than some kings of the world's past. The world is our oyster, and we have the tools to find the pearl. Yet, with all this opportunity, and with all this freedom, at the core of us we are hurting, angry, bitter, and confused. The many promises of happiness we have been told we would find have been shattered along the paths of growing up. Most of us have never experienced nuclear families, have never known a world where it was expected to actually know, and be friends with your neighbors, or have known life without the ever present medium of television. Here we are, all grown up, a quarter of the way through our lives, and yet are just as misguided, and child like as we were a decade before.

My thoughts form around a statistic that I heard last week, in our generation we can boast that less than 20% of us our Bible based Christians. Surely this has something to do with the struggles that seem to be a common thread among us in this nation.

Inside my heart I think of the response that is sometimes given when the idea of Christ is presented.....
" Ive got it all figured out, Ive been to church, and I did the salvation thing with I was a kid. I don't need to open that Bible anymore, I don't need to bow my head and pray anymore. I have been there, done that, and my life is not what was promised to me when I made that decision! I did not find peace and happiness then, and I still don't have it now"

"Im grown, I make my own decisions, I choose my own path, and I am making it, Im on my way to happiness, Im on my way to peace, and there is nothing, nothing that is going to stop me. I can only rely on me, and I am the only one who wont let me down."

"My parents divorced when I was a kid, my first love left me heart broken, My friends want to help, but are too caught up in there own vices. I have struggled with OCD, Anxiety, Depression, and Anorexia, and still have to battle them daily. I don't have true peace, and I have come to the realization that I will never have it. I can only make another step each day to reach the idolized dream of American success, with a hope in myself that one day when I have struggled enough, all the pieces of the puzzle will come together and I will at last be happy!"

"So, as for serving Christ, that is fine if that is what you want to do, I hope it goes well for you, but don't ask me to serve him, because I already know that it is not the answer for me, and I already know that I am really on the right path, after all Im a good person, I don't steal, I don't lie (much), hey I even gave some money to a homeless guy the other day. I know what I need to make it, and as long as Im "normal" why would I begin seeking after someone who Im not even able to physically see? I prayed the prayer, I did that thing, Im good, and now Im living my life the best that I know how, and things are not easy. If God really cared about me,then I would have everything I ever wanted, and wouldn't hurt so much on the inside. I don't believe he can take it away, I don't believe anyone can. I just have to deal with it as best I can and one day its all going to go away"

Sound Familiar!

Yea, I think in some way or another we can all relate to this way of thinking. To those of you out there who have been walking close to the Lord, this may seem like a distant memory from the past, but I think underneath it all some of this tormented thinking may sound familiar.

So what then? What do we do with "My Generation"? Well, I pray that for one, we begin to pray for it. Two, I know that the Lord is literally hurting to death over our pain, and is wanting so much for us to choose Him. He knows our suffering better than we do, He has experienced everything and more. What do we do then? Those of us in that place where we can say we have peace, and overcome the world, what do we do? Do we sit back and absorb this peace, and do nothing? Sometimes I think that we get so involved and engrossed in the peace that we now experience that in reality, we do nothing more times than not. I myself am severely guilty of this.

I thought on the drive home last night, about the agony my life was in before I met Christ and began walking close to him. I began to try to go back and feel the utter chaos that was once so familiar. I remembered the many days of internal confusion in which I was sure there was no hope for freedom, there was no hope for peace, and I began to see that this is the place where so many of us are today.

We have been deceived into thinking "IT IS ALL ABOUT ME" to the extent that the idea of God is actually secondary. We have a difficult time giving it all to Him because we don't really believe He is bigger or more important than us.

Why is it that we can go through our lives living in such deception? Because.......in the world around us, we have so many things to take His place. In the moments of the most intense hurt, we can drown Him out with TV, alcohol, the opposite sex, internet, video games, text messaging, traveling, ANYTHING! Instead of turning to Him, we turn on the music, we turn on the movies, we open the next pop up window. For a very short moment our thoughts drift from the immediate hurt that we don't want to face, and for a very short moment we are deceived into thinking we have acquired the long awaited freedom that we have searched so hard for. Alas, this is but for a moment, and then, chaos begins once again.

So what is the bottom line? What does this whole blog mean? What am I trying to say? and Most importantly what is the solution?

One word

Christ.

For 23 years I thought I knew Him.......For 23 years I thought I had him "all figured out", but what I have felt, seen, and been given over the past two years is an actual relationship with Him. I have found that I love Him more than any person on this Earth, I love Him more than anything,.........BUT THIS IS THE CRUX.... I LOVE HIM MORE THAN I LOVE MYSELF!(Sometihing I had no idea I was guilty of for such a long time) For 23 years I didn't really know Jesus, but fooled myself into thinking that I did. Only when I got to the point where the hurt, the pain ,and agony where more than I believed I could handle, did I finally, finally give it to HIM. Let it go, gave my life away, and let Him be the most important Thing, even above myself. I realized I couldn't control everything, and for that matter, anything. I was not in control, and I was not ever in control.

On top of that, I found that He loved me in a way that I had never known existed. There was absolute, and complete acceptance, and mercy and GRACE, OH THE GRACE!!!! He loved me for me, he loved everything about me, he loved me without any expectation for me to love Him back. What a love. So secure, so accepting, so unconditional.Something I had wanted for so long. When I let Him have my life, I couldn't help but try to give him as much as I could back. Suddenly, I just wanted to thank Him for giving me peace, to thank Him for giving me life more abundantly. FOR KNOWING THAT HE UNDERSTOOD ME! OH HOW I LONGED TO BE UNDERSTOOD! I began to realize that my life is for Him, for His glory,...... and all these issues that I was hurting and struggling with started to take on a new perspective,......I finally realized that there isn't anything wrong with me, I was created this way by Him, for a special purpose which only I can fulfill FOR HIM! ALL I have to do is be willing to let go of ME!!!

I know this is a bit long, and probably even somewhat confusing, but it is really on my heart right now. Our lives were not created for us! If we can just understand that, absorb that into everything we do, then we find the peace, and joy that we long for. Why is this? Because we are doing the one thing we were created for,..... to glorify the LORD! NOT OURSELVES!!!! Its all about Him, from the minutest detail to the most complicated problem, Him, Him, Him! When I found that perspective, my life changed forever!