Combating The Ways of the World

The ways of the world. Think about it. The ways of the world. What does the world deem acceptable? Homosexuality, being promiscuous, making everything all about me. Of course, there are others. "It's okay for you to curse." "Let's save those trees, but those African children who are starving? we can leave them be." "It's okay to bully him; he doesn't care." "She won't know I said this about her, so it's okay." And people just excuse it. "No one's being hurt." "He's too popular; someone has to take him down a notch." "I can't do anything to help them anyway, I'm not important enough." One of the saddest excuses ever for some of these is "God's too busy to care." or "God won't notice." There is no excuse for these kinds of things, and everyone does them. That's right; everyone. Even me.
 I have a classmate who is very "of the world." She's bisexual and atheist, although she's Jewish as well. She likes to argue with me about what is true. The other day, we had an argument about gay marriage. I'm against it because of what it says in the Bible. She's for it. Her argument: "It's been scientifically proven that gayness is a chemical imbalance in the brain. How can you make that illegal?" My response: "I don't know how or why, and I don't claim to. I just know what I believe and I know that the Bible is truth." Her argument: "But it says that being gay is a sin in the old testament, and it says that eating shrimp is a sin there too, but you eat shrimp, don't you?" My response: "It does, but it says that being gay is a sin in the New Testament, too. But it doesn't say that about shrimp, does it?" Her arguments go on, but that's all I've got. I never know how to respond to what she says. It's frustrating. The night of that discussion, though, I talked to one of my best friends, the one who agrees with me on being gay as a sin. She reminded me that there's no such thing as beating this particular girl in an argument, because even if you do have a better argument, she'll think she's won. That was really encouraging to me, even though I was still upset that I didn't know what to say. But maybe next time I will have a good response. Here's hoping! (or praying)

Encouragement When I'm Down

On Wednesday, chorus was really discouraging. We were supposed to rehearse, but our seniors were leading us. And the chorus president just didn't care at all. She tried to warm us up, but she didn't care, so no one listened to her. It became a disaster. No one listened, and finally she just gave up. And then when a couple of my friends were talking about going to rehearse in a practice room, I was going to go with them. But then one of their other friends came up to me and told me I couldn't join them because they were practicing with her. So in the end, I sat in the chorus room by myself. It was really discouraging, because I really needed to rehearse, and also I just felt like they didn't care about me very much if they were going to just leave me and not stand up for me. I know that's silly, but I still felt it a lot. But then next period, our French teacher showed us all these cool pictures of when she went to Niger for two years. She went with a Christian missions group or something. Anyway, it really encouraged me to see how she gave up two years of her life to do something for God. She spent two years in what at the time was the poorest country in the world, to do something for God. And she had some great experiences. It just reminded me to be cheerful no matter what kind of issues I have.

Be Still

So I've been really stressed lately about a lot of things. I've been stressed about my grades, about my friends, and about life in general. I get so caught up in everything that's going on around me that it's hard not to be stressed out. I mean, I'm not doing really well in school, and one of my friends grates on my nerves whenever I'm with her and she's a little clingy. Especially in this one class we have. And then I've got this other acquaintance who's not a Christian, and she likes to argue about religion and things that I believe because of religion. It's just been a really stressful school year. But this morning, while I was getting ready for school, I just wanted to read my Bible. Don't get me wrong, I do read my Bible, but most of the time it's after school or right before I go to bed because I have more time then. But this morning I went to read my Bible and decided to read Psalm 46. There's a really comforting verse in Psalm 46 that I love. I knew that verse was there, and it's one of my favorites. In the New King James Version, it says, "Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" I really just felt calmed, and at peace. No matter what's going on in my life, God is God, and that's a comfort.

Standards

Everyone has some kind of standard that they hold people to. I expect my English teacher to be well-spoken, and my French teacher to parler le francais. But people hold standards to me too. My friends expect me to be funny, my teachers expect me to be just like my sister, my parents expect me to know what's going on all the time. I feel like I can never quite meet the standards people hold me to, and I've found that most of the time, people don't quite measure up to my expectations either. Now, God holds us to certain standards, and they can be really difficult to live up to. In fact, I don't think I've ever truly met up to God's standards. He expects us to love EVERYONE and to be joyful ALL the time and not to complain EVER. God expects us not to think ONE mean thought about ANYONE. I can be as sweet as can be on the outside, and on the inside be degrading them until long after I've left them. That's definitely wrong. Now, I don't know if it's even possible to not think one nasty thought, but I don't even really try anymore. That's wrong. We should always strive for God's standard, not our own. I've really been thinking about what my standards for myself are, and this is what I've come up with:

1. Be a good friend to your best friends.
2. At least pretend to listen and take notes when the teacher is lecturing.
3. Don't be too mean to your brother and sister.
4. Try not to snap at that girl in history class who's being judgmental and a know it all more than once per day.
5. Pass all classes.
6. Always know what's going on.
7. If you don't know what's going on, fake it.
8. Don't be mean about people unless they can't hear you.
9. Be responsible only as long as someone else expects it.
10. Try to be respectful of others as long as they are being respectful to you.

The list goes on, but you can see how pathetic these are. I should be a good friend to ALL my friends, and I should really take notes when my teachers are lecturing. I shouldn't snap at the girl from history EVER, and my siblings don't need me to be mean to them at all. The saddest part of this is that I fall short of my own standards all the time. If I can fall short of my imperfect standards so often, just imagine how often I fall short of God's standards for me. I can't even guess how disappointed God is in me on a daily basis. But even though I do screw up, I know God loves me anyway. Just like my parents. I might forget to do the dishes when that's my chore, or yell at my brother, but they love me anyway, and God's the same.