If you follow my page Proverbially Emily on Facebook you might have caught my post about trying to organize my thoughts. Turns out my thoughts are too big to contain in this one blog. Therefore this will be the first in a series of blogs on similar topics. TBD for when the series ends!
Crusader: Noun. A person who campaigns vigorously for political, social, or religious change.
We need to be campaigning vigorously for religious change, but I think we have a lot of it backward. Therefore we are not as effective in our efforts and it would behoove us to assess why.
I’m talking about assessing just ourselves. I’ll get into that a bit more in a minute.
Crave Comfort
Note, when I say these things aloud right now, I say them just as much to myself as I do to everyone.
I have not flipped some magic switch and become the perfect Christian.
The more I wrestle with my faith, the more I assess how I’m living now vs how I should be.
I’m going to start out by saying ‘we’ because I do believe I am not alone in this.
We’ve become these comfortable crusaders.
Willing to campaign for religious change. As long as we can do it from our home. If we can do it our way, It has to fit into a scheduled time or only if we allow so much time in a week for religious activities.
We are so busy worrying about our comfort, our wants, and needs, and our success and status. How it might affect our earthly relationships. So focused on the comfort level of our own day-to-day. Therefore, we are more focused on ourselves and less focused on what we are here for. It turns out we aren’t really campaigning for anything.
We are fitting Christ into our lives VS living our lives for Christ and fitting the rest of it in when we can.
Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
Matthew 6:21 NLT
Crave Christ
What would our day truly look like if the first thing we did was open our bible vs open our phone?
Or, if the first thought we had, we took it to prayer? Perhaps if we didn’t plan every second of it, and chose to leave some room for reflection, for God to come in and meet us. What if we lived a life of truly giving it all to God?
Give us Lord our daily bread.
There is a book I read with my kids, and I can’t get it out of my head. George Muller everything he needed, he prayed over. It’s an extremely inspiring book. I was excited to read it due to it being about orphans. A large space of my heart is in this topic. The book also really made me stop and think about how we walk through this life. How much we’ve tied ourselves up into possessions here on earth.
Possessions are not only things that we own, but also, things that own us. They take from us our time, energy, and brainpower. They leave us tired and rundown. At the end of the night, you’re so tired crawling into bed you just want to watch a video or two, a show, tiktok, and so on and so forth.
What would our sleep look like, or mood look like the next day, if we left our phones out of our rooms?
(She says as she types this blog, in bed, at 9:30 pm – I started with I need to adhere to my own thoughts)
What if at the end of the day when we are exhausted and want to just escape from it all, we turned to our bible, or worship music, or heck even a Christian-based movie, put some good content into our bodies?
This is the hard stuff. The stuff that changes the course of our lives. Instead of setting limits like how much time I’m going to set aside for my Christian life this week, we need to flip that. We should start to think holistically about our lives as Christ’s followers. Stop cordoning off some small portion of time to be Christian. Making the move to be a whole-life Christ Crusader.
Christ’s Crusader
If we are meant to be Christ’s Crusaders (spoiler alert – we are) then maybe we need to set limits on the comfortable things in our lives. In the beginning, I mentioned assessing just ourselves, so back to that!
These are the things that have been weighing on my heart this year. Sharing this with you because maybe it’s something you too would like to assess in your life. Have you been living as a comfortable crusader or a Christ crusader? We can’t assess these things for our spouses or family members. We could think well I am more of a Christ crusader than (insert name). Take everyone else out of it, where do you stand?
In assessing my own life as of late:
I assessed my boundaries, guarding what I say yes to. The biggest key to that, is don’t just say yes, take it to prayer, sit on it. If it’s something you’re meant to do, it will happen.
I (We – big task, involved family) stepped down from work. You can absolutely be a Christ Crusader where you are! However if where you are is making you more comfortable and less a servant of Christ, it may be time to say goodbye. This was a hard one, yet I know the right move, challenging, but right. You know you’re moving in the right direction when you cut something from your life and the devil comes around to make things difficult.
Even in doing the above, I still have much more journey ahead to greater equip me to live my life for Christ VS living my life to fit Christ in it.
Tomorrow I start by taking my own advice. My next step is leaving electronics out of the bedroom. In hopes that I begin and end my day in prayer. Not the kind of prayer where I’m always falling asleep because I spent longer than I planned on my phone. A solid 15 minutes in the morning in which I connect before anything else. Then reflect, and put into action Christ’s plan for my day, not my plan.
Each day, reflecting at the end was I in comfort crusader mode today or Christ crusader?
Waking each morning –
The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”
Lamentations 3: 22-25
The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.
This is my journey; I’m waking up to being asleep in the day to day of life, switching the way in which I search for Him.
Bold orange lettering leads to outside sources