i love the people who read this. i know most of them. they’re all pretty cool people. as much as i enjoy writing things that other people can relate to, sometimes i write things so that i’m reminded of them. that was the case last week when i wrote about being the intentional christian instead of the super christian.

you see, i’m 23. and i’m a christian. it’s a tough combination. i don’t think it’s ever easy to be a christian, but it’s especially difficult at the age of 23.

at the age of 23, chances are you’ve already graduated college. you’re probably in your first, maybe second year out of school. you likely did the whole “bedside baptist” thing during college. maybe you were an overachiever and just bounced around from church to church for a few years but never committed to one because hey, you’re going home after the semester is over.

now that you’re out of school, you’re back into church and realizing how dumb you were for taking the past four years off. now that you’ve found a church, you’re probably realizing that you want to jump back in head first and do as much as possible. you want to serve. you want to be in a small group. for lack of a better term, you’re wanting to make up for lost time.

that is the heart and the intention of the 23-year-old christian.

unfortunately though, that’s not the reality of the 23-year-old christian.

the reality is you’re working a job where you’re putting in 50+ hours a week (and on a side note, making crap pay for that too). if you’re not at a job where you’re doing that, you’re probably working two equally crappy jobs where you’re putting in 25-30 hours a week at each one.

the reality is you’d like to say you know where you’re going to be a year from now, but you really have no clue because you don’t know where you’re going to find a “real” job at or if you’ll have a better opportunity in another town.

the reality is that no matter what you try to plan, “stuff” always come up. there’s no rhyme or reason as to why this “stuff” comes up but it does and you can’t change it. this week it’s having to work late. next week it’s having to go two towns over to pick up something that you hadn’t planned on.

and all of these things just screw up the things you want to do in your church. over the last thirteen months, i’ve had “stuff” get in the way of all of the following:

serving with our student ministry (couldn’t commit to a year because of school)
serving over the summer (connect classes, work, and getting sick ruined that)
helping lead our singles ministry (moved to friday nights – i work on friday nights)
leading/joining a small group (couldn’t go to the launch of the new groups because of work)

i’m pretty sure if you looked in your own life, you’d be able to find the things that have kept you from doing what you wanted to do. it’d be really easy to get frustrated, to give up, and to quit trying.

but we can’t do that.

we have to take advantage of the things that we are able to do. right now, i’m able to serve on our host team on sunday mornings. it’s not much. all i do is smile, greet people, and hold a door for them. if it’s raining, i may even carry an umbrella and walk them from their car to the church.

it’s not much, but it’s something.

the other thing we have to do is let god use us in the ways that we can be used. i know that that sounds a lot like the first thing but let me explain. instead of just “settling” for whatever it is we’re able to do, we need to embrace it. god has us doing that for some reason or another. instead of being upset that “all” i’m able to do is say good morning and hold a door open, i need to embrace it and be the best possible greeter i can be.

it may not seem like much, but god has done so much more with so much less.

i started off by saying that i love other people relating to this stuff but i also write things to remind myself of them. this post is one of those. i have to remind myself that god can use me in ways that i may not even realize.

i’ve said it before and i will continue to say it: we all can’t do everything, but everyone can do something. our job, our schoolwork, our age may keep us from doing all of the things that we’d like to be doing, but just because we can’t do what we want to do doesn’t mean we should do nothing.

if we all decided to do nothing, there’s no way we’d ever be able to change the world, and really, where’s the fun in that?

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan