tonight has sucked.

tonight has been great.

huh?

let me explain. last night i decided i was going to start reading through the book of job. it’s just something i’ve been wanting to do for a while so i decided to do it last night. i didn’t get very far because i wanted to space it out so i only read the first few chapters. one of the things that stuck out to me was the end of the first chapter. basically it’s job praying to god and he says, “god gives and he takes away, blessed be the name of the lord.” then it says that job didn’t sin or charge god with wrong.

i sat and thought about that last sentence for a long time. i realized how many times something happened in my life where i just got mad at god and said why did you do this or i justified doing something i knew was wrong just because the situation sucked. it was in that moment that i decided i wanted to have a heart like job’s in chapter one.

i started praying. i spent probably 45 minutes or so praying to god and really just talking to him. i said that i wanted the heart that could praise him even when everything sucked. i wanted to be able bless god no matter what the situation or how bad it was.

maybe i’m naive, maybe i didn’t think things through, or maybe i’m just dumb. either way, i somehow thought that by praying that prayer and talking to god that what i was asking for would just magically happen and i wouldn’t have to worry about it. i quickly found out that it wasn’t that easy.

see, when you pray a prayer like that, it gets heard by someone else other than god. it gets heard by the other side as well and one of the things i’ve learned is that the closer you try to get with god, the more the other side is going to try to get you away from god.

that’s why tonight sucked.

things were going good. i was having a good day. i’d played basketball. i’d played volleyball. things were just going really good. then i was sitting out of a volleyball game and one of the thoughts that i used to have and used to struggle with popped in my head. i shrugged it off and went inside just to change the situation and change my mindset.

little did i know that by going inside, i was about to get ambushed.

a simple conversation turned into having all of the thoughts and issues that i’ve struggled with over the past year coming back. things that i had thought i had conquered popped back in my head and bothered me to a point that they hadn’t in a long time. everything got to the point that i went into shutdown mode.

i needed to get by myself.

i needed to get with god.

i drove over to where i’m staying at camp. i came in my room, and i blacked everything out. no lights. no computer screen. no nothing. completely black. i laid on my bed sprawled out, face in a pillow, and started talking to god. it didn’t occur to me at first why this was going on, but eventually it did.

this is when my night became great.

it was in this moment that i realized why all of these things were being brought up. i realized what was going on. i laid there and just thanked god for the blessing and the ability to want to follow him and want to grow in him. i remembered our past conversations and how god has helped me overcome all of these thoughts and all of these struggles and i realized that i don’t have to let this stuff bother me. the reason everything was coming back was because i was willing to take that next step with god and the other side in this battle doesn’t like that.

the more i grow, the more i’ll be challenged.

the more i grow, the more backup i’ll have when those challenges come.

i like my odds.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan