My Journey...Revealed

Several things happened today at church that I feel the need to reflect upon but seeing as that would make this post insanely too long I chose to focus on one. Before church even begun, the Lord starting speaking to me. There is a minister at my church who makes a point of going around speaking and hugging all of the people who’ve arrived early, a very nice gesture if I do say so myself. Well today we made some small talk in addition to our usual “good mornings”. Now I’m not much of a small talker truthfully. If I’m not very comfortable with you I will smile, nod, and be as polite as I can but it makes me very uncomfortable and awkward. I always end up replaying the encounter in my head later on and wishing I could have been a bit more graceful, charismatic, or said some more intelligent and insightful things. Now don’t get me wrong, I do believe I am not COMPLETELY lacking in those categories but something about those little meaningless conversations called small talk that just throw me way off my rocker. But this conversation was far from meaningless! I must admit, I believe God used her to “check me” today. He is witty like that —- He’ll have you questioning yourself without even realizing how smoothly He did it. In the mist of our small talk she mentioned a sermon she recently heard on forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of things we all say we can do or have done but never really know how hard it is to forgive someone until the reality of the matter is staring us straight in the face. But it is a MUST, especially as a Christian. How can we honestly ask and expect God to forgive us of our sins, if we can’t forgive someone else of their wrongness? This expectation is selfish and pompous. We, myself included, put people on a pedestal and hold them up to a certain standard but when they fall or don’t live up to our expectations we discard them completely out of our lives. Christians or non-christians alike we all struggle with the difficulty of forgiving others, especially when that person has not only disappointed us but has wrong us in a way through their fault. The difference is that Christians are obligated to forgive, if we did not do this how could we ever call ourselves Christians? Does the title not call us to be Christ-like? Of course it does! Now imagine if God thought like we thought? We wrong God in multiple ways on a daily basis, even us Christians are far from perfect in the area of sin. We fall more often then we’d like to because of course no man is perfect, but who is always there reaching out a hand to not only forgive us but to pull us above our failures —- God. As it is difficult for us to rather forgive than to toss aside a person, I’m sure the easier answer for God would have been to toss us aside. But yet we are all here today, protected under his mercy. It is obvious that God does not do what is “easiest”. All those who genuinely ask for forgiveness from God receive it. The point is that we must learn from God’s example. We strive to be more like Him so that we may glorify Him through ourselves and those that don’t know Him can be reached through our actions. So all in all, this conversation left me one question —— Who am I not forgiving and holding a grudge against right now in my life?

Have you ever felt as if you didn’t fully understand yourself or know yourself? Well that’s how I feel. Of course I know the basics age, race, name — which by the way is Marquisha. But do you REALLY know yourself? I’ve asked myself that over and over again only to come up speechless each time. It is my belief that to fully understand myself I must first understand who Jesus is and who I am in Him. Yes that’s right, I am a Christian and a committed one at that. There may be many things I question about myself but that, my friend, is NOT one of. So here is my journey, my journey to discover not only myself but to discover more of the God who created me. With Him by my side, I’m guarantee to reach the destination of my journey and I welcome you to watch this tale unfold.