So What Now???????

25 years of life has been seen through these eyes and lived through this heart. 25 years of lives have been touched and many lives have blessed mine in 25 years. I've gone through a lot in 25 years and I have overcome a lot in 25 years. At the same time I have been blessed so much in the last 25 years. Its weird to think that I am 25 years old. It honestly feels like just a couple of weeks ago I was 10 or like yesterday that I went to get my drivers license on my 16th birthday. Or hanging out with my friends and family at my 21st birthday. At 25 I can actually say i am proud of the boy that I was. Every year on my birthday my Paw Paw always asks me "do you feel older" and in typical Greg fashion i say "yep a day older" but something changed when I turned 25 I had this almost anxiety about my life and what the Lord has for me. Almost like its time to mature and grow and stop settling for the scraps but ask "What do you have for me" I feel like I can handle myself and quite frankly for the first time in my life I feel like I have say over my life.

SO WHAT NOW?

that question keeps pulsing through my brain. What do i do now? How do i grow? How do I become the best MAN that I can be? In 1 Corinthians 13:11 Paul sums up how i have been feeling lately when he says

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

I think that I was a reasonably good child. I made mistakes of course but overall I feel like I never ran away from the Lord or had a real rebellious heart. I learned from my mistakes and had a lot of help on the way. There are so many people in my life who are responsible for the man that I am today. I have leaned heavily on them and leaned heavily on what I thought of the world. But now I feel like there is more that the Lord is calling out of me. A whole new level of responsibility for my heart, my life and future. Its weird knowing that the mistakes, the insecurities,the fears and even the triumphs a child has are kind of thrown away when you become a man.

SO WHAT NOW?

I feel like the lord is calling me in this season to be a man that depends on him for the things that as a child I depended on my mother and family and friends for. For that comfort and safety and guidance and wisdom. I have always been a person that runs to others for advice and help and for security. But i know that the Lord is calling me into being a man that runs to him. It's a very apparent thing in my life right now because the Lord is not really giving me too many options of people to run to in this season. He wakes up with me every morning and calls me to depend on him for strength and joy in a place where i feel I am losing it everyday. But somehow i make it. When all of the things of old cant fulfill or entertain he calls me to be with him. He calls me to go to him for advice with my girlfriend or with my fears and struggles. There are times where he literally gives me no other option but to sit with him.

SO WHAT NOW?

I dont have any idea what happens now in my life. I am in a place that is honestly the hardest for me to be in. At a job that is the worst for my heart and my sanity. A culture that does nothing but frustrate and annoy me. And at a place where the people i love and care about most are on the other side of the world. And what does the Lord do but challenge me and extend a hand to help me be a MAN. in this season the Lord keeps throwing one scripture at me over and over no matter how hard it is for me to do.

James 1:2-4 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your FAITH develops PERSEVERANCE. PERSEVERANCE must finish its work so that you may be MATURE and COMPLETE, not lacking anything."

SO WHAT NOW?

Like i said I dont know what the Lord has for me but I know who the MAN the Lord is calling me to be. One that has PERSEVERANCE and one that be a complete husband and father someday and one that HE has called to abundance.

There's a big part of me that wishes I could just skip these next few scenes in my life. Because in order to become complete you have to take the broken pieces to the maker in order to be put together. the saying goes hindsight is always 20/20 so I cant wait to look back at this next scene and see how the plot thickened.

REACTION

I have learned two big life lessons so far in Korea Life is crazy. I mean we all know that and we all believe that. At the same time of life being crazy another certainty is that God is Good. I mean he really is. I have been in Korea for almost 5 months now and these two truths are constantly in the front of my mind. the last few months has brought up a lot of questions. What do I do? Why am i here? Are all Koreans horrible drivers? And the answers are trust the Lord, to grow closer to him and heck yeah they are all terrible. But i have had a lot of changes since my last post. Most importantly I have a girlfriend that is amazing and has really helped me grow as a man and as a Christian. (thats for another blog) I turned 25 which my body is reminding me of right now because for some reason i played football and didnt stretch which at 24 was ok but at 25 not so much. Gosh I am really getting old. Anyways another thing is learning how to survive on my own. how to make decisions that will better myself and the people I love especially when it seems like you are getting hit in every possible way.

Its kind of like being in one of those money grabbers where they put you in this big air tight cage with a bunch of money on the floor and out of nowhere the air comes on and all the money goes flying in the air and you only have 30 seconds to grab as much as you can. the question is do i go for the big bills which are fewer but more rewarding or do i play it safe and go for the one dollar bills grabbing as much of the sure thing but not as rewarding. well that has been what the last couple of months has been like for me. trying to figure out do i risk, do i play it safe. and I have won doing both in certain situations but its hard to articulate a strategy or look back even and say the best way to do it. all i know is that I feel like a whirlwind is upon me every morning when my eyes awake from my sleep. and every day i have to decide the best plan of attack. Craziest thing about a money pit is that there is only enough time for a person to react. Strategy goes out of the window and you just react. You miss things back at home and you can only react to the situation, friends leave and go back home and you can only react no time for strategy just a hug and a goodbye. your girlfriend leaves and as many plans you have you can only react. New people come into your life and you let them in or you dont.

This season is teaching me the importance of the reaction. Who I really am. Because when you only have time to react the real you comes out. You dont have time to butter things up or look smart or good. You do what you do. So as I react I can choose to react out of Life being crazy or God being Good. I hope that God being Good is the reaction more and more because Gods goodness far outweighs the craziness of the place we are in, the season we are in, the crap we go through and the sins in our life.

HOW WILL WE REACT????????