For His Glory

My freshman year of college, I had lunch with a friend of mine who wasn’t a Christian. We were just getting to know each other and I was telling him about some Christian organizations I was a part of. “Oh so you’re a church girl, huh?” He asked “Yeah, but I mean, I still want to go out and party.” I replied. He shook his head and laughed, “No, if you’re going to be a church girl, be a church girl. You can’t do both.” I was speechless, and his response has stuck with me ever since. I think a lot of young Christians live where I was during that conversation; in a position of straddling the fence with one foot in the Church and another foot in the world. I believed in Jesus, but I wasn’t quite ready to give my life up and completely live for Him. I could act like a Christian when it was convenient; when I was at church, or at a youth conference, or I needed a nice inspirational verse to post on twitter. But if you saw me in real life, you might not have been able to t...

For the majority of my life, I tried to hide the fact that there was something different on the inside of me. See, I didn’t just grow up in a regular church, I grew up in a tongue talking, spirit filled, laying on of hands, casting out demons, speak to your situation, use your authority type of church. As a kid, when you know that much Word, it requires you to live your life on a higher standard. However I wasn’t ready to do that. I wanted my salvation and to walk in my authority as a believer, but I also wanted to fit in with the crowd. Eventually, I got to a point where I was all God’s on Sunday, but Monday through Saturday I was busy trying to figure out how I could blend in with the people at school. People at school cussed, I cussed. People at school smoked weed, I wanted to smoke weed. People at school got drunk, I wanted to get drunk too. I saw the lifestyle that everyone lived that looked so fun, and even though I didn’t have access to things like alcohol and weed in high scho...

It’s been a long week of finals and now all you want to do it curl up on the couch and binge watch a couple seasons of your favorite show on Netflix. But before you log in, take a moment to stop and think about how binge watching television shows affects your heart. I speak for myself when I say that I had become so desensitized to the garbage I had let into my life through television. Every time I turned on the TV hatefulness, gossip, lies, greed, cheating, lust, etc. were everywhere. I wondered why I was so hateful when all I watched on TV were teens my age rebelling against their parents. I wondered why I was gripped by fear when I had to go outside at night when I constantly watched shows about murder. I wondered why I lusted after every cute guy that walked by when I was constantly bombarded with sex scenes. Jesus cautions us in Mark 4:24 to “take heed what [we] hear. With the same measure [we] use, it will be measured back to [us].” We can’t allow ourselves to listen and...