Experiencing Life (an alternative to the American Dream)

Originally written and posted by World Racer Keturah Weathers on 12/24/2009
www.theworldrace.org

I'm beginning to see that I've been selling myself short. I want to live more. I want to live better. I want to learn to be everything God created me to be, not just some of it. I think this is a good first step. People seem to think that following God is equivalent to sacrificing your personality. They think Christianity means living inside a set of rules that doesn't allow you to be yourself. It's just the opposite! C.S. Lewis puts it nicely, "The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become -- because he made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be...It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own."

I'm so thankful that I've been set free from the things that I used to be so wrapped up in: the values America teaches us to be concerned with: success, stability, safety. Let's all work 5 days a week so that we can not only put food on the table and clothes on our backs, but money in the bank to buy nice things and entertain ourselves. Since when does entertainment buy happiness? We are taught to spend so much of our time working, checking things off on to-do lists, and creating a nice, comfy safety-net for ourselves. But is that all there is to life? Maybe it is for some people, but not for me.

Get me out of the 9-to-5, I want to experience life. I want to do bigger things. I want to change the world, and I want to be changed. It's not a dream too big for reality, and I will put no limitations on myself, because I am a child of God.

When I read this blog post about eight months ago, something clicked. This was how I had been feeling for nearly two years. This was the concept I had been trying in vain to put into words. This was why I wanted to come to Moody, to go into ministry, to rearrange my priorities.

What do you think? How does this apply to God's calling for you? How do you know when the calling is from him and when the "wisdom" of the world gets in the way?