all four years of college and have lived at home with my family every summer until this one. Living alone in an unfamiliar area has been a great experience, and God has used this summer to grow my walk with him. Here are two simple lessons that God has taught me specifically about living alone.
Spiritual disciplines are important.
The first month or so of living in Maryland, my spiritual life tanked. I was too tired to read Scripture before work at 6AM, and I was too tired to read Scripture after work at 6PM. It was so much easier coming home after work and just watching TV and playing computer games for a few hours until it was bedtime at 10:30. As expected, this lack of God in my life only resulted in sinfulness, as there wasn't really anyone to hold me accountable either.
God then grabbed a hold of my life again, and he helped me focus on Scripture in the morning and Scripture after work. I've had the opportunity to memorize a few Bible verses a week, and God has used those Bible verses to speak to me at different times of my summer. Memorizing Scripture again has really been monumental in my spiritual life, and I really recommend that everyone do it (so does John Piper)! Spending more time with God has really put things into more perspective. Would I rather watch episode after episode of The Office that I've already seen before, or would I rather deepen my relationship with the eternal, sovereign God and solidify my foundation on His Word? We get sucked up into all of these little temptations that just steal us away from God, little by little, and we miss the great things that God has in store for me.
Looking at the title of this section, maybe it's more appropriate to say instead that "Spending time with God is important", but whatever. These spiritual disciplines are the way that God uses for us to know him and love him more. [I'll probably share more about the stuff God has taught me through Scripture, but just not in this post.]
"It is not good for man to be alone" - Genesis 2:18
Especially in the beginning of my stay in Maryland, it was hard to not feel lonely at times and to desire being in a relationship. It's not so much that I was actually feeling sad and down in the dumps, but it was more of a sense of purposelessness and boredom. Instead of wondering what I would occupy myself with after work, it would have been nice to be able to come home after a long day of work to someone who would be forced to talk to me and spend time with me. It certainly didn't help that seemingly everyone I met over the summer was either dating, engaged, or married. It became very real to me that even though I'm not a very people-centered or relationship-focused person, I wasn't created to live alone, but to live in community and fellowship with others.
God reminded me that I don't need to have a significant other to not be alone and to experience companionship. Accountability with a Christian brother is something I haven't really done since school ended, so starting up accountability again with Cory was really helpful in my walk with God. We had weekly phone calls to talk about life and to pray for each other. These weekly phone appointments gave me one more thing to look forward to in the week, and gave me even more motivation to stay holy and to walk with God. In the future, when I'm living by myself, I'm going to need to maintain these kinds of accountability relationships, so that brothers like Cory can check up on me and we can encourage and build each other up.
I was also able to join the young adult Bible study of a local church, and I built some pretty cool friendships with the people there. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Bible study gave me something to look forward to, and it went further to fill my life with God-related stuff. One of the guys that I met, Shawn (who actually knows Michael from Cornell), picked me up from work to go play basketball and ultimate two or three times a week. In the car, we'd mostly talk about topics like religion, Christianity, and the church, making every car ride was like an "iron-sharpen-iron" sort of experience. Shawn's a mature, older guy who is extremely well-read in matters of faith (and he's also about to get married), and I learned a lot about life, doctrine, and different religious beliefs from him. To me, this was fellowship at its best...or at least very good fellowship.
God reminded me this summer how important being connected through fellowship with other members of the body is important in my walk with Him, as he uses people to speak truth into my life.
Why I need accountability:
I agree. It was so hard to maintain spiritual disciples when living alone during my internship. It kinda scares me about moving into the "real world," and reminds me how much we need that community like we do in AIV, where we have people we can rely on to encourage us and build each other up. God is also amazing at revealing stuff to us even when we feel like we've deserted him.
ReplyDeletevery interesting use of "It is not good for man to be alone" as you arent using it with women haha.
ReplyDeletei would have to say, car rides always have the potential for some good fellowship. i definitely have some memorable car rides that have really helped me in my faith
the picture: priceless. gooooood times
ReplyDelete@ James - Yeah...it's hard to imagine moving into a new place...forever. Hopefully wherever I go I'll be able to meet Godly people that I can hang out with and have common interests like ultimate and basketball!
ReplyDelete@ Chris - Yeah I'm not completely sure if it's a correct usage of the verse, but I do know for a fact that we are not created to be alone. God made us as relational beings - in relationship with God, and in relationship with each other. I think the statement "It is not good for man to be alone" is true when it comes to man or woman, though I'm not positive of the legitimacy of my interpretation from that single verse in Scripture (though I do think that it is valid).
@ Mark - ;)
Yeah, I think that "it is not good for man to be alone" refers to God's design for us to be in community, not necessarily being with a woman (Paul was single!)
ReplyDeleteI feel honored by this post =D
must be easier when you have the voice of an angel.. :)
ReplyDelete