Growing up my life was heavily influenced by the church. My father was and still is a pastor and I was raised in a house that was literally 50 feet away from the church. Through all the ups and downs of being a Christian and being raised by a church, the one thing that stuck with me: is the absolute joy of having a Father who will always accept you.

I struggled so much as a child, as a teen, and even now because of my fear of never being good enough. I was worried I wasn’t being a good enough friend, a good enough student, a good enough girlfriend, a good enough sibling, a good enough christian, and I still to this day am in fear that I will never be a good enough daughter. But the one thing that I could hold onto is that no matter how much I mess up and no matter what sin I commit God will always love me and forgive me for my sins as long as I asked for it. This is such a beautiful and amazing thing and yet our sinful human nature causes us to try and take advantage of it.

A trend that is noticeable in both society and especially myself is the “Sunday morning christian.” This is the type of christian who will sit in church repenting and reflecting on their sins, singing and praising God, and feeling fulfilled and happy in the Lord’s spirit. But it always ends there. Throughout the week they will forget what it means to be a christian, they won’t live their life and make decisions how a christian would. What is so sad about this is that this isn’t Christianity, this is cheap faith, this is expecting forgiveness without true repentance, it is a way people fulfill their desire to be a christian without actually putting in the work that comes with believing in the christian God. What truly made me realize that this is such a common thing is when I started to become one of these people.

When teenagers first go off to college their life becomes hectic and completely different. Everything changes, they’re thrown onto a campus with completely different morals and ideals, and they are welcomed into this lifestyle that rejects the christian faith. I was hoping to overcome this by going to a Lutheran college, but what I realized after a semester of being there that it isn’t the people I'm surrounded with that completely changes how I live, it’s what is inside me. Without realizing it I became one of those people who lived their lives as if Christianity meant nothing to them, but on Sunday morning I would repent of this and promise I will try to be better. But after every church service I would find myself falling into the same cycle.

Every christian struggles with this, but what I have realized it has gotten worse for me over the past months. It could be because of the relationship I was in, because I started prioritizing my own life over my faith, because I became separated from my family, or a mixture of all of these things. Either way, it is something that people who struggle with this need to fix by realizing what they are doing. We can’t coast through our Christianity, we have to work hard at it to live a life that God wants us to. I, especially, need to start working harder and start living a life that a true christian would.