Something I've been struggling with lately, is remembering that my purpose here on earth is to always point to Christ. My main issue is dealing with this at work. It's not that I don't talk about God or church or anything like that, it's mostly when reacting to things that happen. When you spend 40 hours a week with the same people, you can have your bad days. It's difficult for me to remember that people I work with were created in the image of God, regardless of their own spiritual or religious affiliations. It's so easy for me to get annoyed or frustrated with people. Maybe my patience is not long-suffering. That is probably an understatement. (laughing at myself right now) The Bible tells me to be light and others will come to God as a result.
Growing up, my father was in the ministry, so there was always pressure to be good and act a certain way because whatever I did or said could reflect poorly on my dad. I have somewhat resented that my whole life, but mostly later when I finally admitted to myself it was all an act. It was like my whole life was a game of pretend. It is so easy for me to fall back into that, because I did it for 20 years. My goal for the past 5 years has been to be genuine, say what I think, not what I think people want me to say, share my struggles instead of stifling them, and feel free to ... feel the emotions I'm having. The only issue with my emotions lately is I'm feeling lonely, mad, annoyed, and frustrated. Those are feelings that I don't want to feel, much less share. But I do and I have been showing them, much to the detriment of my testimony to those around me.
So now I am tempted to fall back into playing pretend. I won't, but it would be so easy. Be numb to what's really going on and suppress everything. It would be incredibly selfish of me to do that. So now what? Getting outside of myself, out of my own thoughts and focus on God, loving him, helping people, and loving people. I can't hide my light because I want to I want to keep it to myself and make everyone else miserable because I'm feeling frustrated.
My prayer today is for patience, remembering to be a light, and figuring out what God is telling me during this time.
(I know this is pretty heavy stuff for an initial blog post, but I'm just putting it all out there.)
Matthew 5:14-16
Ephesians 4:29
Philippians 2:15
