To Do

So let me be straight up honest. I have had a lot to do. I made a "To Do" list yesterday and it consisted of 17 things:

1. Daily Bible reading
2. Email
3. Read When Is a Bible Example Binding
4. Return Poppa K's cooler
5. Car Decals
6. Youth Ministry class
7. Eat supper
8. Attend Preacher's Club/Missions Club meeting
9. Read How to Read the Bible For All It's Worth
10. Write Mrs. Gipson, Jessie, and Zach
11. Review lecture notes
12. Read Marriages and Families
13. Attend dorm devo
14. Write this note
15. Read Wild at Heart
16. Update F3 Group
17. Do Youth Ministry packet

Hold on. Wait a minute. Did you catch that?
#1-Read my Bible, #8-Attend Preacher's Club/Missions Club meeting, #13-Attend dorm devo...etc.
Did I just say I was SCHEDULING in God? Whoa! What has gotten into me lately?

"Yet this is the frustration of so many! They are so defeated trying to 'live the Christian life' that Christianity becomes an 'impossible burden' rather than an exciting joy!...One of my favorite statements is, 'Do not live the Christian life; live life as a Christian.'" (Thank you, Charles Hodge and Nathan McVeigh.)
Procrastination usually is not one of my problems. But sitting down to write this note was tough. Not because I didn't have time (#14, it is "planned" writing into my schedule). It was, and is, tough because sometimes---I fear feeling. It has been my struggle ever since I was born. You see, it is just so easy to wake up, go eat breakfast, go to class, go to chapel, go to my room, go to lunch, go to class, go nap, go to supper, go to an activity, go to bed, and wake up the next day just to go all over again. It is so easy to be, to feel...NUMB.

But to write-for me-is to feel. To write out my emotions, my passions, my LOVE, my LIFE---forces me to feel. It forces me to digest all the emotions throughout the day. It forces me to constantly be looking at life through "Jesus glasses" (Thanks, Nicole). It forces me to stop pretending to live the Christian life...

It forces me to LIVE as a Christian.
It forces me to be...HUMAN.

We need to love..."There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear," 1 John 4:18. "To step out of your comfort zone it means you are not afraid of rejection...Don't be afraid to have your heart broken," Sammi Jones.

We need to live in the Lord..."For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord," Romans 14:7-8.

"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins," James 4:14-17.

So here is my "To Do" list, if God wills:
1. Live
2. Love
3. Die