I'm an Alien!

I was asked to do a video testimony for church. Only God can make that video look good - I was so nervous. At any rate, this is what I wrote out as some of my thoughts beforehand. I feel much more confident in the written word than in the spoken word, thus the reason you've never seen me vlog before, that and I don't own a video camera.

“I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody who can save anybody.” Denver Moore, Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

As a youth, I asked Christ into my heart many times but I did not make a public decision until Easter Sunday my senior year of high school. All of my life, I had watched Christians proclaim Christianity, but continue to live a mediocre life and that’s one thing I always knew that I did not want to do. If I was to be a Christian, I wanted to be totally sold out to God. I think that’s when I first recognized that I would be an alien in the world, but as I’ve grown, it has become more and more apparent to me.

God is a good God and He has been good to me in so many ways. We have gone through many stages together – the nostalgic I’m in love stage like Pastor Blake mentioned on Sunday, where I saw God do great things and my faith grew wide but not as deep, the stage where it seemed like He withdrew His presence from me, where my faith grew deep and I learned the true meaning of obedience, and the current stage is a very sweet, tender, and intimate stage where He speaks to me all the time through random means, but I always know that He is there and I am not alone, and even when I don’t know an answer to a problem, I can fully trust that He’s working it out.

Though I mentioned I wanted to be a sold-out Christian, I have learned that as a wife and mother, my focus is not always 100% on Him. Sometimes, my focus is divided. However, that’s when He brings me to an awareness that this world is not my home. I get distracted sometimes by all the desires of the world – a bigger house, nice clothes for my children to wear and opportunities for them, even such things as simple as friendships.

I am currently in a bible study called, “No Other Gods,” where we have explored how we sometimes make gods out of our worldly desires. One thing I know without a shadow of a doubt to be true is that although many of the things the world can provide are nice, all of them, even friendships will pass away and may fail me, but God never fails. His love is eternal and He is always faithful, even when I am not. As His child, He will never forsake me. One way He makes this known to me is by not allowing me to have something I really want because He knows I will make that thing a little god over Him. This is how I am always aware of my heavenly citizenship and that I am an alien in this world.

I know that as an alien of this world I am meant to be different and not meant to blend in with the rest of the world. I make sometimes feeble attempts to influence the rest of the world for Christ, sometimes only through the writing of my blog, sometimes, by asking simple questions to get people to think about how Christ is working or wants to work in their lives.

I am a stay at home mom, and that’s one very big decision we’ve made as a family that is sometimes a sacrifice. We make choices not to have some of the simple luxuries that most people have. I don’t have internet access on my cell phone. My kids typically wear second hand clothing and shoes. At Christmas, we only bought a couple of very small new items for our children and mainly gave them used toys, so that we could buy new things for a needier child.

If I was driven only by the world, then I could work and we could have a bigger house with finer things to go in it and my children could have new things all of the time. However, I have found that Daniel and I are the greatest influences on our children, and the time I spend staying at home with them is priceless and valuable in an eternal sense, even when I often struggle with my role as a mother over them.