When Desire Become Necessity

As many know, being recently engaged brings about many questions. In the past few weeks, the question involving where we will live and what we will be doing has been at the front of both Carson's and my mind. As we are pretty well set on moving to the Peoria, IL area sometime this summer, we have had some thoughts as to what we will be doing. There is a cosmetology school in Peoria that I have visited and would love to attend. After the year that I would be taking to complete the cosmetology program, we may then move to Chicago, IL for Carson to attend Moody Bible Institute.

There was recently a scholarship contest on facebook to win $5,000 towards this specific school that I have looked into. Here are some thoughts:

It is dangerous to be at a place where earthly desires & pleasures decieve you into thinking they are necessities, rather you letting yourself be decieved. This $5,000 scholarship has turned from desire to necessity in my life. When I first thought about entering into this contest, my thought was "we'll see what happens with it.." I am now finding my self frantically finding people to vote for me because if I don't, I won't have the scholarship!

[If I don't have the scholarship I might as well not go to cosmetology school becuase that's $5,000 more that I'll have to spend. That is not affecting only me-it's going to affect Carson as well. I can't make him sacrifice this money for me to go to school.] --These are the thoughts going through my head. It is consuming me & my time. I feel that it is necessary to work towards this. I am obsessed with checking the status of my votes & other entries' votes.

Jumping to conclusions about it doesn't make those thoughts & my actions any more true or right than if I wasn't behind in votes & I was just working that hard at my goal-to win. I have come to a point where I have surrendured this scholarship. I have given it back to the Lord-it was never mine to begin with. I was reminded by my finace that if God wants me to have the $5,000, then He will give it to me. He is in control. If He doesn't give it to me, then He will provide in another way.

While I would still love to recieve the win, I am not making any more efforts towards it. If other people want to help out-great! But, I had come to a point where it was an idol in my life & I now must separate myself from it as much as I can. I also felt the Lord prompting me to vote for the entry with the highest votes-which at frist I did not want to do. In Luke 6:35 it says to "Love your enemies" & although I don't even know this girl, she was an "enemy." I voted for her entry a couple days after I first felt the prompting.

God has taught me quite a bit through this. One area is surrender-again. Oh, the time and time again process this is! Another thing was loving those that are against me-& treating them with more love than I give myself.

The last thing that I have been realizing while writing is the passion I had for this scholarship. I was putting so much time, energy, thought, worry, & worth into winning something that I don't necessarily need. Why can't I have that passion for things of the Lord? I want to use my time to spend in the word & praying & making myself useful for the sake of the gospel. I want my energy to be spent in pursuit of Christ. I want my thoughts to be consumed with meditating on His word. I want to always find my worth in Him. I want the same passion I had for this earthly thing that will not last, for the One who will never change & will be with me forever. I want Him to be the core of my life. The center.