There is a war within

There is a war within me that has been ragging for many, many years. Basically there are 2 sides of me. One side is the spiritual side that is deeply sensitive to God's leading and wanting only to please him. The other side is the side that stares me in the face almost everyday. The side of wanting to be successful in the world's eyes and not wanting to do anything that would not make sense to worldly influences. This has been a struggle for me since my early childhood.

I have never shared this story with anyone before...in fact I often wonder what really happened. I think I was 10 years old? Maybe a little older... I am not sure of all of the details but I remember I was mad about something and ended up running into the pine forest behind my parent's house. It was a sunny day in the summer and I looked up into the sky with the sun shinning bright on me and with tears in my eyes I "heard" this clearly "I want you in full time christian work". I did not know really what that meant and being so young I just thought I would figure it out as I got older.

Then as I finished high school I was heavly influenced by worldly thoughts of success and money. I went to college wanting to become successful and I achieved a lot of goals almost immediately. At the end of my Freshman year God grabbed a hold of my heart and life and I completely surrendered to him.

However, now a lot of confusion set in for me. I had things mapped out before...I was busy...I was focused on my goals for success. Now I was not sure what I was supposed to do. So I spent the next 3 years of college confused about where God wanted me. I developed some bad habits and some undisciplined behavior because I was not sure what the goal was anymore. I slept in a lot...skipped classes a lot...etc, etc.

When I graduated from Houghton College I found myself even more confused. I toyed with seminary and decided not to do that at the time. I began working for Young Life as a part time leader and watched God bless that ministry. I was a step away from taking a full time position but the "worldly" side of me kept questioning how much money would I make? I remember specifically asking myself in the car once...how would I respond to having to fund raise from people that are far more "successful" than me. I ended up resigning from Young Life.

Since then I decided to dive into my success driven goals. I tried several times to start a company with a partner and each time it flopped. In fact I lost over $6,000 from the latest attempt early last year. That was part of the reason for my financial collapse that I am still dealing with.

So what does all of this mean? I am not totally sure. I do know that I am trying to be more sensitive to God's presence in my life on a daily, hourly basis. I have not done a great job of that lately and I am getting frustrated with myself. I am so easily distracted and so undisciplined at times. I really want each day...each moment to count for God but I am still so caught up in "worldly" goals. I want to have the faith of Abraham to just follow God even though he didn't know where they were going. Could I do that? Could I have the same faith that he had when he put his only son on the alter to kill the only thing that made sense him just because God told him to?