pray about it

I rarely give testimonies to how God answers prayers. That's because I'm always told to "pray about it," but I seldom take the suggestion seriously. Usually when I do, I forget about what I prayed for anyway, so I'm left with one of three things: no prayers, unanswered prayers that I don't remember, and answered prayers I don't remember.

Yet I got an answer today (and I don't want to say "praise God," because that honestly sounds cheesy to put in a blog post, but praise God!), and I will jot it down while I still remember it.

I often think about what it means to be a Christian - why Christian life is any better than a non-Christian life - and I must say that a lot of the time my mind doesn't come up with an answer. It swirls with vague thoughts of freedom, salvation, love, and even the whole Galatians 5:22-23 package.

Earlier this week, I was drowned in the same thoughts and prayed that I might understand the reason for the hope that I have (1 Peter 3:15), because even if I was supposed to be prepared, I simply wasn't. And then my mind ran to the first fitting answer it found, and it just happened to be freedom at the time. I wasn't really satisfied, but I've learned that thinking about something for an extended period of time is not healthy (except when you're programming, but life's not like an algorithm). So I stopped thinking.

This morning, at church, the pastor said something that was ridiculously applicable to all of this:

"The goal of Christian living is not so much to be free, but to be full. Of Him."

Well, my mind came up with "free," so I was all ears when he mentioned that. When he finished the sentence, I thought about it and I decided that's a good reason - we are called to live life to the fullest. But I felt a little uneasy about just taking what some pastor says on faith, so I flipped to the concordance in the back of my NIV and looked under "full."

I found this:

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
- John 10:10

The reason for the hope I have in Christ is that I am utterly powerless to free myself and live life to the full. Life to the full is life lived in God's story, not mine.