This is a story of how I used God to get the guy. Or at least, how I kept telling myself I was doing certain things to grow in my relationship with Christ, but really I was just doing things that were spiritual to get a guy’s attention.
And also how it’s not that great of an idea to do such things.
I am not a morning person. When I was in high school, during the summertime especially, my mom would get mad at me because I would sleep until noon. That’s how much I don’t like mornings…I didn’t even want to be awake during them.
However, you throw a guy I like in to the mix, I wake up before the alarm goes off. Every time.
A few years ago this guy I liked was in a Bible study that met at 6am once a week, so it became my mission to really grow in my faith by attending this Bible study. And when I say “grow in my faith” I really mean, “get up super early, look as put together as possible, go to this Bible study for a hour so homeboy sees me really loving Jesus, drink as much coffee as possible to be as alert as possible for the time we’re all together, then go back to my dorm and go back to sleep before class starts 3 hours later.”
Not only would I go to this study, I would basically do anything “spiritual” that I could to get on his holy radar: tweet Bible verses, join other studies and make sure I plastered it all over social media, get in to deep conversations to show how in tune with the Spirit I was.
I may not be the greatest person.
But that’s how my mind worked. I thought that if I put myself out there and flaunted my faith in front of this guy, he would fall for me and we would live happily ever after.
Que the game show sound effects: “WWWHHAAAWWAAAAAA”
My master plan didn’t work quite like I thought it would. My heart became more invested in this man than it did in Christ during that season.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m the only one that works like this. I think we can use our relationship with God to try to manipulate our way in to lots of things: friendships, relationships, certain social groups. And maybe it’s not even an overt thing…maybe we don’t even recognize that we are pursuing other things through God.
The point of sharing this short story of The Life & Times of Kayla Smith (more commonly known as the blockbuster hit, “Frozen”**) , is that we need to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.
The point of going to God is to get God. The point of following Jesus is not so I can have all these other things added to my life.
This concept has been talked about a lot in the Christian circles lately in other blogs, books, podcasts, etc., but I still need it to be beaten in to my head constantly.
I can’t live my life using God to get other things. I need to live my life just going to God for the sake of God. That’s it.
A verse I shared last week is applicable again tonight: “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.”-Psalm 73: 25
This is my prayer this week for us all, that our eyes would not be focused on all the “extras” but on God alone.
**kidding about the “Frozen” thing…but wouldn’t that be AWESOME?!
Kayla Smith 