There's always one verse from any chapter that stands out against all the rest. It's sort like you read it and in your mind you can see it being a memory verse in Sunday School. So that's verse 10 for Galatians 1.
"Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of God."
So I've gotten yelled at a lot this year. More last semester than this semester, but still a fair amount. Not actually yelled at, more scolding/rebuking/chiseling, I guess. But everything I got yelled at for, was something that I had a lot of fun doing. It's not like I was out drinking every night or being a floozy, but I was staying out late a lot, and hanging out a lot with people who didn't live near me or were my own age.
I'm not too used to being able to do what I want. At home, the parents are pretty restrictive for where I can go and for how long, and there's always the extra responsibility of watching Grace. Not that watching her is hard or that it requires a lot of me (something Matt always brings up), but sometimes it keeps me from being able to go out with friends because no one else is around to watch her. I love her, though. I don't hold it against her or resent her at all, it's just something I realized when I got to college, I didn't have to make sure someone was home to watch Grace if I wanted to go out, and I loved that freedom - and still do.
But having that newfound freedom made me overdo it a bit. I was never in my room and hung out with the same people in the same places because that's was where I was having a good time, and it makes sense to keep doing things if they're working out for you, right?
But it got to a point where people were getting "concerned" for me and bringing it to the attention of people closer to me who could voice those "concerns" to me. If someone asked where I was, another would say, "let me guess, [blank]." And they were usually right, but the way they would say it was like they were disgusted with me for it. It made me feel terrible about myself. I was just having a good time and exhausting the freedom I'd found to the fullest, and here I was being yelled at.
At first I was resistant to what they were telling me, but I saw their points. I should be spending more time with people my own age, because I'll be spending the most time with them through my college years. I should be spreading myself out more, because it's not healthy to spend all your time with the same people all the time. But when I started focusing on making these changes in my life, I found life very forced. It was like I was working all the time, and everything was a chore.
I began to lose touch with God. It's easy to talk to God all the time when things are going well in your life. But at this point, I was focusing more on what the other people were telling me to change about myself, it was getting harder to hear the message in church and to talk to God on my own. The problem wasn't that these people were telling me to do stuff that wasn't right. It was that when I started changing my ways, I did it while seeking the approval of those people, not God.
When I was trying to find the God-answers to the questions and decisions I had in my life, I ended up only finding the God-answers from others. So it wasn't really God I was looking to change for, it was those other people. When that happened, when I was "still trying to please men," I wasn't able to "be a servant of God."
That was why I was having so much trouble and feeling so disconnected with God. I was too preoccupied with making others proud to see that God was the only one I should be looking to impress. I had no idea that it would take so long to figure out why I've been miserable for so long, when I thought that I was trying to do better. But it's nice to know now, and it feels like I've been rewarded already for reading my Bible more. I wish I hadn't stopped.
So make sure you're not making that mistake, either. It's a pretty dumb thing to do, but it's also really easy to do. Don't seek to please or win the approval of man, but look to God.
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