Life Update

Welcome Back!

It has been almost 2 months now since I finished my 30 day challenge to listen to nothing but Christian music, and a lot has happened since then. Some good things, but a lot of tough things too.. And I decided that it is time to dive back into blogging about my faith because I have felt myself start to fall away from my faith. So I am glad that you are back to experience life with me, and I hope that you get something out of this new style of blogs too!

When I left you guys last, I was just finishing up my last day of the 30-day challenge, and I was feeling really good about my faith, and myself. I was also finishing up spring break when I was wrapping that challenge up, and I was definitely in a good mood from that. However, as I sort of alluded to, time has not been very kind to me since I ended my challenge. I have had a number of things happen that have pulled me away from my faith a little bit, and have just left me feeling empty. The biggest thing that has pulled me away from God during this time is my struggle with self control, and shame. When I was following the challenge, one of the big things that I noticed was that I was exhibiting a lot greater amounts of self control and I do not believe that to be some strange coincidence. I have been doing some pretty heavy soul searching lately, and I think that I have discovered three things that have pulled me away from my faith, and back down off of that “mountain” that I felt I was on at the end of my challenge. So for the rest of this blog, I would like to share with you what I believe those three things to be, and my idea for fixing them and getting back to where I believe that God wanted me to be.

1. The first thing that I believe pulled me away from God like I said was my struggle with self control. Self control has been something that I have battled with my whole life, and it has been the thing that has kept me from actually FEELING what I know God says about me to be true. This lack of self control has driven me into the pit of despair time and time again, and yet each time I seem to come out of that bit thanks to the grace of God, only to fall right back into it after God lets me walk on my own again. Huh.. I never really realized how perfect that metaphor is for how I am feeling until now, but that is honestly what it feels like. I feel like an infant who is just learning how to walk. Except my walking is my faith walk, and the parent who is holding me up in order to let me walk is God. Everytime I feel close to God, I tend to make the right choices, and avoid situations that would tempt me into doing something that I don’t want to do. But it is after a couple weeks of that feeling that I start to notice some of those old thoughts creep back into my head. Those thoughts like “You can do this one time Kenny, it’s not going to be that big of a deal.” “Well you already did it once today, so you ruined today. Why stop now?” and “You did so well this week, you deserve this.” And each time, I seem to say to that voice, “You know what? You’re right.” Yet every time that I do that, I am really telling my maker, “I don’t need you. I can handle this on my own.” So God lets go of me, and shows me that I can’t walk without him. I will just fall every time. So my thought for trying to break this chain is to try and grow my faith with Christ. I think that the more I want to learn and know about Christ, the more I will not want to stray away from him. Now, do I think that I will be perfect? Absolutely not. But the whole point of this journey is to learn and understand that I don’t have to be perfect, because Jesus already was for me. So the practical step for how I am going to achieve this goal is that I am going to do one big thing every day to learn more about God and his plan for me. So whether that is listening to a podcast or sermon, or doing a blog post, I will need to do something each day to put my focus on Christ.
2. The second thing that has pulled me away from my faith is the fact that I have let the pressures of life block out my view of God. It has taken a lot of reflecting, but I honestly think that the reason the challenge worked for me so well is because I kept so much of my attention fixed on God. Every day I was listening to different songs and thinking of what I was going to write about them later that day. This caused me to think more about God throughout my day to day life, and I need that!! We all need that! The more we focus on God, the better off that we will be! So my fix for this problem is that I am going to try and get back into this blog. I am going to continue to find songs that speak to me, and share them with all of you on this blog. I will not be doing that every day like I used to though, because I will be doing other things to focus on God during the day as well. But that is what I feel God wants me to do, in order to really grow in my relationship with him.
3. The last thing that I feel has pulled me away from God is the fact that God let me get pulled away from him. I firmly believe that God let’s bad things happen in our lives because he knows that the dark makes the light that much better. And he knows that the most growth occurs during a time of testing. In the bible, and time that God wanted to test a character, and see what they were all about, he would send them out into the “wilderness”. The “wilderness” is exactly where I feel I have been living the last too months. Each night has seemed wild, and I have at times felt like I was struggling to control my own actions. I did not arrive in the “wilderness” by accident though. I was placed there because God wanted to see if my faith was really for real this time, or if I was still in need of him for me to be able to walk. I need to get to a place that God can put me in the “wilderness” and I can hold true to his word and still be the person he wants me to be. The way that I am going to try and fix this problem is by becoming a stronger prayer. I know that I will most certainly have a tough time with whatever God chooses to put me through, but I know that whatever it is, I have two choices: either trust God and his providence in my life, or try and grab the reigns back and take control. But here’s the thing.. every single time I try to take the reigns back, I end up crashing the carriage. So I think that I am going to need to pray daily about God giving me the ability to trust him and his plan, and to know that he will never bring harm against me. And that all his ways are good! Just as it says in Jeremiah 29:11.

Again, thank you for reading this blog. It really means a lot to me that you would want to come alongside me and experience life together with me. Praise God for you, and I pray that he will bless you for doing stuff. I do need to say though, that I will most certainly need some prayers and support throughout this blog plan that I have, because over the next few blogs, I plan on sharing a lot of personal details about the things that I am going through. The reason I am going to do that is because right now, the shadows that I have been living in with these things are giving these demons power over my life. So part of defeating these demons is to know that there is power in the light, and there is loving support in the light. So again, thank you for reading, and I hope that you will stick around and be able to support me as I grow in my faith this way.

Thank you, and my God bless you.

Sincerely,

Kenny Floyd