Posts Tagged ‘poverty’

Jumbled thoughts of a Christian Teenager 2

Friday, March 27th, 2009

School CorridorI’m finding it more and more difficult to not be ‘deep’ about everything lately. I think I’m just realising how the consequences of our actions, no matter how small, are huge. I was chatting to some classmates in a lecture recently and the subject of ‘religion’ came up. I mentally rolled my eyes, if that makes sense, as the very mention of the word irritates me. The word religion has come to mean some section of your life that you devote to a god or cult or something similar. What I believe is so much more than that.

I know the one and only God. How awesome is that? But how do you tell somebody everything they understand is wrong? I know only God can save somebody but what do you do in that situation, and God’s giving you nothing? You don’t want to move on because this is exactly what life is about. You either live it with God or without him, that’s it. That decision will build that person’s life starting immediately.

Some people just don’t get it. Once you’ve done what God has told you your hands are clean of responsibility for that person’s life, that’s what the Bible says. But these are my friends; I don’t want to see them go to hell. If I could, I would literally hit them with a Bible if I knew it would help them wake up and see the truth! Unfortunately for me God doesn’t work like that.

GlobeTonight I went to home cell, that’s basically a meeting of people from the church who get together in their homes to talk about God. One of the guys had just gotten back from a trip to Mozambique and he was telling us some amazing stories he had heard. As I listened I felt so disconnected, like I was living such a different life. I wanted to jump into the next car and go wherever and tell people about God. Yet, in my own lectures there are people who are so dead inside. They have the world but no soul.

Now I’m not discrediting anything churches are doing in other countries, God is running the attack plan here, not us, so wherever he tells you to go, GO!  It does make you think though. What am I ignoring that’s happening right in front of me? If these guys can talk about the rubbish they get up to why don’t I tell them what I got up too?

These are totally different worlds, poverty where God is substituted for witchcraft and ‘traditional’ nonsense, and then wealth were money, drugs and other idols are controlling people. We are called to be a light to the world, from our backyard to the middle of nowhere. It’s a hectic command. And as scared as I may be, with God on my side I want to get out there and see his miracles, not hear about them.

Experimentation

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

ExperimentationExperimentation. Over the last month I have began to loath that word from the very core of my being. A Google definition search pulled up the following:

experiment: the testing of an idea; “it was an experiment in living”; “not all experimentation is done in laboratories”

An experiment in living? That needs some clarification. What does that mean? When we grow up we are taught the difference between right and wrong, most people essentially think they’re good people and boy do they not have a clue.

“Come on bro, you never drink? We have to get you drunk sometime.”

Please excuse the verbal attacks that will follow. Are you mentally handy capped, retarded, stupid, dropped as a baby, or just blind?

“Ah, you’ll never know what it’s like until you try.”

Buddy, you’ll never know how great it feels to have a truck roll over your head until you try either, that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it. Forget all the normal logical and spiritual reasons for just staying away from alcohol to be safe, why would I ever want to put myself in such a venerable state? I can’t even trust you to look after your own life, let alone mine.

You see, what people just don’t seem to be picking up is that every decision you make today, and every stupid thing you do will affect your entire life in some way. It will shape you as a person, put you into almost unbreakable habits and lead you down paths that would cause your seven year old self to run away screaming if they saw you.

It’s not the kids of today, or the people of today. It’s been happening for centuries. We make the same stupid mistakes our parents made, and one day you’ll sit and tell your kids not to do what you did. When they do it, you’ll probably sit back and say – ah let them experiment.

Hello! That’s not how this deal works bud. It’s not just an experiment; it’s a decision to engage in whatever activity against your better judgement just for… That’s just it, I don’t know why? Why do people take drugs? Why do people smoke? Why do people drink excessively? Why, why, why? I just don’t understand the logic, reasoning, stupidity, whatever you want to call it that’s involved.

Don’t blame it on divorce, television, poverty or anything like that – those aren’t the reasons. I guess it’s just a lack of God in their life. No light means dark.

Today I got told that one of my younger former friends was now experimenting in smoking stuff. The way he’s been going I’m not surprised but it still made me so sad. I can’t even imagine what God must feel. He’s wasting his life on something he knows isn’t right.

I’m a person who really enjoys spending time with young people, but as they get older most change in ways that just make you so sad. They forget God, they ‘experiment,’ they loose who they are in a world that encourages compromise and rejects truth. Maybe that’s why I love young people; they are uncorrupted, open, honest and free. But unless they choose to stay that way, and most don’t, they become the so called good people of today. People that are so caught up in the nothingness of their lives that they don’t even know right from wrong anymore.

I’m not trying to judge other people, because I’m just as susceptible to doing wrong in different ways. In fact if I don’t check myself I easily fall in to the trap of thinking I’m a good person when that’s not what it’s about. God first, life second. That’s how it should always be. If you don’t believe me, try it, you just might find this is the last experiment you’ll ever need.

God means life, love, eternity, happiness, completeness. He makes you want to be a better person all the time. I am a very judgemental person by nature; I look at people and often accurately sum them up at face value. What I’ve learnt to do is see what I don’t like and instead of judging them look at myself and say, do I do that? Am I like that? If I am then it needs to be sorted out, if not then thank God for that and move on.

People often say they just can’t stop sinning in a particular way. My first question is do you really want to stop? The difficulty is not in stopping the action; it’s in the reasoning behind the action. How badly do you not want to do it? That’s what you should be correcting, that’s the root of the problem. If you don’t want to change for the better than nobody can force you, but it’s a shame that your life would have been wasted when there is so much more to find.