So it’s been a long while since I’ve updated in this blog – I sincerely apologize for not keeping you all updated, but this past summer’s been a really hectic one. It’s all good though – I’m sure you all have more exciting things going on in your lives than needing to know about mine haha. Rather than summarize everything, I figured it’d be nice to put all my current struggles/thoughts/prayer requests in bullet form for the sake of clarity:
• Work: I started a new job at Nielsen (the same company that does TV ratings) doing online marketing research about a month and a half ago. I’m really liking the work that I’m doing, and it’s been really challenging for me too, which is good. The deeper I get into my working career though, the more I’m realizing just how different I am sometimes from my coworkers who don’t know Christ. We do different stuff on the weekends, we view the world differently, and our priorities and values are worlds apart. God’s blessed me in the sense that I’ve gotten along pretty well with all of them thus far, and that we’ve been able to develop pretty good relationships amongst our team members up to this point. Please pray, however, that I’d be less timid about my faith, and that I’d be bold and courageous enough to be the salt and light that He wants me to be. A lot of times, I’ll tend to shy away from discussing my faith, and what it means to me, because I’ve just always subconsciously seen it as an “unsafe” topic in the workplace. Pray that, though people may not inherently be open to it (or may even be against it in some cases), that God’s love would make ways for me to share the Gospel with these people in some way or another.
• Church: I don’t really mean to sound redundant in sharing discouraging things about my church every time I write in here, but the fact of the matter is that our congregation always feels like it’s on critical life support. It’s gotten progressively more and more difficult over the years, and I don’t foresee it letting up anytime soon. We have next to nothing financially, many of our congregation members were struggling in their spiritual walks this past summer (college students in particular), and it’s been a struggle for most of them to be on the same page as our pastor because they just don’t click relationally. Because of these and a few other factors, I actually found myself facedown on the ground, weeping nonstop for 20-30 minutes straight during our nightly prayer times at a youth retreat a few weeks ago. To be honest, I was frustrated at God, angry that He could allow His people to fall into such a situation. From the depths of my heart, I’d scream to Him, “WHY, GOD?! WHY ARE WE HERE?!” in desperate hopes that He would reply in some way…that He would give me just a GLIMMER, a GLIMPSE of what in the world He wanted from us as a body.
To be honest, I think I really felt God speaking back to me and responding during those nights…but not in the way I expected at all. He didn’t give me a roadmap or an overall plan or strategy for what He was going to do with our church. He merely said, “I am here”. “I am here” – it reminded me so much of when He told Moses “I Am who I Am”. I kept getting the sense that things will probably get harder before they get easier, and that there’s no sort of instant fix to our situation as it stands right now. However, just hearing that phrase from God was refreshing to me–He IS, in the sense that He has been and will continue to be our beginning and end, our comfort, peace and grace…the things that I guess we truly, actually need right now more than finances or well-run programs, or even a clear vision for our future. To be honest though, I’m still struggling a lot in coming to terms with what this means; it feels like a very incomplete answer to me, as my personally is largely inclined to planning, coordinating, preparing, and knowing exactly what we have to do to achieve something or get somewhere. Please pray that I’d be able to let go of my presumed control over this situation, and that I’d really trust in God’s plan for us and the church, and that “I am here” would be more than enough for me to know and rest on at this point in time.
• Lastly, just pray for my heart – a handful of people that I consider close friends of mine here in Chicago will be moving on due to marriage, life transitions, etc. All of this amounts to me feeling more and more lonely – not in a relational sense, but in the sense that I have less individuals around me who can empathize with me and really connect on a spiritual level. Pray that God would continue to be my sufficiency and peace in the midst of all the hecticness that's going on, and that I would find my sufficiency in Christ, and Christ alone.
11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
-Psalm 42:11
