What I hated about school when I was younger is the very thing I love now, reading and writing. From elementary school through most of my time in college I hated reading and writing. When a teacher gave the class a reading assignment I would cringe. This feeling was magnified if I was required to write an essay, book review or any other type of writing assignment. For me reading and writing was worse than any time of manual labor, cleaning and quite possible torture. It was torture! Many classes a large paper or writing assignment made up a large portion of your grade. Several of those classes I failed because I refused to complete the assignment. Two different summers I had to make up those classes in summer school because of my lack of zeal and discipline for writing.
It’s funny how God changes you. The more that I submit to God and His will for my life, the more He creates a passion for reading and writing. I want to read through scripture, read about how other churches are succeeding, and read about what other Christians have learned as they pursue Christ. Anything written that strengths my relationship with Christ and strengthen his Church, I want to read! I’m still not a disciplined as I would like to be about finding the time to read, but I definitely have a new found passion that hasn’t been there before.
The same goes for writing. I now have a passion and desire to write out what is going on in my life. I want to share how Christ is working through me and renewing me. I feel like it’s a small contribution to those around me for the amazing gift the God has given me. As I write I learn that I’m not complete, that I have room to grow and that I should have paid more attention in school to things like grammar, sentence construction and spelling. I’m still a work in progress but I’m eternally grateful that God chose to work through me.
Here’s today’s question, what has God changed within you? It could be a passion for reading and writing like myself. Maybe a passion to work with excellence? Maybe it’s to prioritize your time? Maybe it’s a passion to reach out those who are hurting and need to experience God’s love through you? What new passions is God giving you?
Over the last several weeks I’ve been pretty busy and have not had the time I would like to write. Everywhere I look there is something to do, someone to call, or somewhere I need to be. It has not been overwhelmingly busy, just busy enough to keep me from writing. Even though the busyness of life has kept me from writing it has not kept me from reading which I am very thankful for. Hopefully over the next couple of weeks I can catch up on some ideas that I have wanted to write about.
