Why am I doing this?

Well, I tried blogging once before but it didn't go so well.  Why, you ask?  Well, to be honest, I never could (and STILL can't) remember the password to actually get into my old account.  It's not that I didn't want to blog, but it just never happened for me.  So, here I go....Shannon Petty blogging, take two.

Here is my goal (and I'm hoping that since I'm posting it on the world wide web for the wide world to see that I stick to it) - to grow closer to God.  Maybe to understand this, I need to get a little more transparent.  I grew up in church and prayed "the prayer" at 10 or 11.  Did I understand what I was doing?  Well...yes and no.  I knew I didn't want to go to hell, I mean who does, right?  If you believe in that sort of thing then hell sounds pretty miserable.  And at 10 or 11, when you still have an active imagination, hell is REALLY miserable.  The other reason was that I have always felt God.  And I knew that night that God was with me and was calling me.  So I prayed...and then I went on living life as usual.  Isn't that what happens to most new Christians?  They pray and get high on God for a few days, and then the real world creeps back in and life goes back to whatever normal was before "the prayer."  While I'm sure I was counted in the numbers that night of people who went to the alter, no one told me what happened next.  No one explained that Christ would not only be my Savior, but also my Lord.  No one talked about the relationship part.  Again, doesn't that happen today?  Aren't we excited about announcing how many people were "saved" at this or that event...but what happens to them afterward?

On with my story....I basically lived a pretty "good" life throughout high school. I did the normal bad things...drank some, stayed out too late, lied to my parents....but all in all, I wasn't too bad.  When I ask myself why now, I have to say it was because I wanted to make my parents, especially my father, proud of me.  The thought of disappointing him was devestating.  So I did the "right" things in order to please him.  Usually, I was the D.D. and I really didn't mind.  Then I met a boy, well I knew him most of my life (small town), but then I fell in love with him.  And I truly believe I loved him as much as I knew about love at that age.  And I began to want to please him (see a theme here???), so I did things that I knew God wouldn't want me to do, but more important to me, they were things my FATHER wouldn't want me to do.  Quite the conundrum.  But I chose pleasing the boy over the fathers.  I wish I could convince EVERY girl I teach that it is so NOT worth it...but that's a story for another day.

I think college was the first place I was really aware of God working in my life.  I went potluck on the room and roommate my freshman year.  Only God could have placed me where He did surrounded by the people He chose.  My roommate was not the Godliest of young women, but every other young woman on my hall was.  I made some amazing friends, many of whom changed my life in one way or another.  That was the first time in my life I saw people who actually had a relationship with God.  It wasn't just a religion for these girls...they truly loved God and wanted to know Him more and more.  And so did I, for a while.  I guess it's time for another confession here....I'm not good at follow-through.  Ask my husband, he'll tell you.  I have LOTS of great ideas, and I often start them, but then I get bored or something more attractive comes along and I get sidetracked.  So I'll say that's what happened here, I got sidetracked by college life...sorority life...party life...social life...you name it.  But, again, God was so faithful while I was being sidetracked.  My second semester, I roomed with a precious Christian girl whom I miss terribly.  My sorority was filled with Christian girls...some who walked with God and some like me.  It could have been worse, but God was faithful.  That doesn't mean Satan didn't mess with me all that time...he did.  But I had grown closer to God and it was a little easier for me to discern what God wanted me to do.  But I was still a pleaser and I still lacked follow-through.  Not a good combination.

My last year of college I met my future husband.  And again, looking back at how things played out, it could only have been orchestrated by God.  I should have been in Disney World that summer, but I wasn't.  He is SO good.  Within a year of meeting him, his father died, my father got sick and died, and we were married.  I always felt that if we could survive all that, we could survive anything.  The beginning of our marriage was not spent looking for a church home.  We grew up in very different church backgrounds, so although I knew what we should be doing, I was just enjoying being a wife.  Having kids changed that.  There are other things that happened, but since they are part of "our" history and not just mine anymore, I'll skip those things.  I can just say that one of the greatest days of my life was being Baptized with my husband and first born son.

So, after all that, I still don't feel that I KNOW God.  He has sent some amazing women into my life who are SO in-love with Him.  Young women who KNOW the Bible and KNOW how to put God first in everything.  Don't ever say you can't learn something from those who are younger than you.  These young women that God has put in my path in only a way God could do it have changed my life.  God has used them to create a desire in me to KNOW Him in the way they do.  I want to be in-love with Jesus.  I want to choose spending time with God over doing frivilous, life-wasting things.  I want to be able to comfort my friends with scripture, with words that are God-breathed, not Shannon-breathed.  See, I can play "Christian" with the best of them.  I can say the right things at the right time, I can volunteer for the "cool" Christian stuff. I can even sacrifice some of my free time to do something that involves serving others.  I might even be able to quote a verse or two.  But can I say that I KNOW God?  Can I say that I KNOW where God's will is going to take me?  Can I say I trust God completely?  Can I say that I want God more than I want stuff?  I don't know...sometimes yes, others no.  I feel so completely inadequate in my relationship with Him.  I think there is a lot of stuff about God that I know in my head and I believe in my head, but I don't in my heart.  Does that make sense?  I believe that Jesus died for me on a cross so that I could spend eternity in heaven with Him; I believe that He has a plan for my life that is far greater than what I can imagine; I believe that only He can keep my marriage together in this crazy world; I believe that He is in control and is sovereign over everything. I DO believe these things...but do I trust Him in those things?  Do I let him have control over my life?  To quote my amazing pastor...am I willing to lay down my life as a blank check to God?  Am I in-love with Jesus?  Honestly...I don't know.

So, now you know where I am.  My hope is that in the days leading up to Easter, that through various books, verses, and lots of praying that I will come to understand my sinfulness and His holiness; that I will understand exactly how wretched I am and how lost I would be without Him; that I will always remember that I bring nothing to the table and He brings everything; that I want to live a life that brings God glory and to understand that I can't do that without God.  Ambitious you say....yes, it is.  But where I can't do any of these things, God can do them in me.  I know that I am almost there...I have felt it before, but I have allowed Satan to pull me back to my earthly desires and convince me that my life is fine just the way it is.

The plan is to give up television from 3:00 pm until 9:00 pm until Easter.  (Yes, I am going to DVR my shows, but the plan is not to give up TV, but to quit letting TV suck my time before I spend time with God).  Those hours will now be used to spend quality time with God in study and prayer, time with my family, and hopefully I can get some exercise in there too.  I also want to use that time to share with anyone who cares...or who doesn't....what God is revealing to me during this time.  I can't be the only person out there who feels this way.  Hopefully, by blogging this journey, I can reach someone else who is almost there and bring them with me into the light of His holiness.   Hopefully, God will use ME to change someone else's life.  We'll see....only He knows the plan....I'm just working on my obedience.

If you do decide to follow me on this journey and you see I haven't posted in a while, then send me an email or something to keep me accountable and to make sure I haven't forgotten my password.  (Yes, I will write it down somewhere...but then I have to remember where I put it....oh, it's a never-ending battle in my head) As I've said before...I lack follow-through and Satan loves to use that against me.

Until next time.....