When you move to college you leave nearly everything you know behind; your family, friends and every building you grew up seeing. You also have to leave behind your dilapidated, and loving church behind. Finding a new home church in Stillwater is just one step to keeping your faith, which is a thriving and forever growing aspect of who you are as a person. What becomes hard is finding time between classes, a social life, campus involvement, and a part time job. It becomes easy to prioritize all these things above your faith. While I have no room to talk as I have done my fair share of slacking off too, but I will say there are a few things you can do to keep up the faith in your life. I attend a service called Overflow on Tuesday nights at 9:00pm; it is a great stress reliever and just a way to add some relaxation to the middle of the week. While there a friend of mine challenged me to start a morning devotional, just a small one. She said read a single verse every morning and just let it soak in, understand what it has to say, what it is trying to make you see and feel. Being a person I hold in esteem I set out to make this a habit and typically it is known to take 21 to 30 days to get a habit nailed down to where it becomes second nature to your daily routine. I'm currently on day 16 and I ran across this verse from Romans, The Day Is Near - "And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." - Romans 13:11(NIV).
Wow, what a powerful verse, did you read what that said; "Wake up from your slumber". So I began to focus on this as I made my coffee for the day, do we walk through our spiritual life in a slumber; breathing, and alive but not responsive or understanding of the world around us. Do I pour my all into those around me? Do I turn the other cheek? Do I respond to the wishes of the world or the wishes of the Lord?
All these questions were rattling around my mind as I sipped my generic broke college student coffee. So just know I'm not writing to tell you as readers what you should do. I'm simply sharing my experience to let you know you are not alone in your struggle of keeping the faith day to day. It can be hard and no one is perfect we all have days where luck just isn't going our way; you may not have time for a reading but just know you are forgiven and loved for who you are. And all you can really be is the best version of yourself.