I Will Waste My Life...

“I will waste my life I'll be tested and tried
With no regrets inside of me to find I'm at Your feet

I'll leave my father's house and I'll leave my mother
I'll leave all I have known and I'll have no other

I am in love with You There is no cost
I am in love with You There is no loss
I am in love with You I want to take Your name
I am in love with You I want to cling to You Jesus
Just let me cling to You Jesus.”

The first time I heard this song was at large group the spring semester of my junior year. The words hit me hard, but not necessarily in a way that convicted me, but in a way that simply scared me. In a couple months I would be getting on an airplane and flying to Kenya and I was terrified. People kept asking me about it and I would put on a smile and say that I was excited, but inside, every piece of my being was saying “Don’t go.” This song explained what I feared. Would God ask me to “waste my life” during this trip? Was He going to call me into something that I simply can’t do?

These fears surrounded the lie that there is anything in this World that I can’t do with God working through me. We see the limits of ourselves as humans and forget that the Creator lives within us and is constantly working through us.

In the World’s eyes we will do some things that may look as though we are “wasting our lives”. When our priorities are straight, it should look to outsiders this way.

During my time in Kenya I learned more about God than maybe my entire life up to that point. When you are put in a situation where the only thing you can rely on is the promise that God is with you, you learn that there is truly nothing He can’t do! God carried me through the hard times and celebrated with me through the good times. He wept with me and danced with me, He spoke through me and guided my every step. There is beauty in giving up complete and total control and trusting purely in God.

Through this experience God proved that He is with me always. My faith grew in exponential amounts. Towards the end of the trip I started to dread going back home for many reasons, one being that I feared my monotonous, routine life. I loved living from day to day, not knowing what to expect and yet knowing that God would provide regardless. I feared living a life that was predictable, comfortable, and essentially boring. 

This was an extremely wrong perspective to have. While there is more of a challenge to live a dangerous life here, it isn’t impossible! There are multiple times in the day where we have the opportunity to live out our faith or speak out about it, yet we do not always take the chance. Looking for these opportunities and acting on them is what we can do in our day to day lives. Even though I long to get out of my country of origin and explore and learn, right now I am here. God has me and 

you here for a purpose.

Let’s waste our lives in the view of the World, not in the view of God.