Leaving a Legacy
So this morning was the final day of my church's Men's Confrence. The main message was about the legacy you leave and worth the space you take up. It was great and it made me continue to realize a lot of things.
For a while I'd been kinda bitter. I was particularly bitter at one of my Columbia friends. We grew up together for the most part, we've known each other since I was 12, making this going on 8 years. Through our lives we've seen each other grow up, both of us growing at differnet rates. He did most of his growing during his senior year in high school which was just this year.
I on the other hand, seemed to make a gradual progression toward maturity, or at least that's what I've lead myself to believe. At any rate, he did a decent bit of "living outside of God's will" while I was striving to become closer to God. When he finally decided to live for God he seemed to be flooded with a number of oportunities and blessings that I wish I could even consider happening. Needless to say I wasn't exactly happy with God, I felt sort overlooked and almost forsaken by God. I worked hard and tried to stay focus on my walk while he simply breezed by in complacency.
I finally came to a peace about it this morning. I've been listening to this one tape on rotate for about the last 2 weeks. It's from the 2002 Men's Confrence at my church. When I was driving back it played this part of the tape that I'd only heard like once and I really didn't pay much attention to it when I did hear it until now. The section was about the prodigal son. Eager to get rich, he saw his father as being dead, asking his father for the property that he would receive as inheritance. He sold it to go off to a foriegn land where he proceeded to squander it on fivolous and sinful living. After he was dead broke and eating out of pig troughs, he finally brung himself to go back to his father and ask that he be made a servant. He was instead returned to his previous status by his father's side. His brother was furious, he'd served his father, working int he fields all his life, never waivering, yet he never recieved half the recognition or praise that his brother did.
This is how I felt. I'd done all this work to deepen my spiritual life to no avail, at many points my walk was completely in shambles attributed a great deal to my friend's influence and ridicule of my spiritual and intellectual life. All the while, he was able to simply come back to God, and be blessed beyond comparison, much because of his family's status. One the thing is, the son that was faithful was looking at his relationship with his father in the wrong perspective, he worked for his relationship, seeing as a merit based effort. Given, the walk with God takes effort, but it is based on grace, and that, no man can earn. The prodigal son on the other hand came to his father humbly knowing that he had nothing to offer his father. And in that is where I have faultered.
So to him, I sincerly apologize, of course I will apologize to him in person. I just needed this catharsis (purging of the spirit).
For a while I'd been kinda bitter. I was particularly bitter at one of my Columbia friends. We grew up together for the most part, we've known each other since I was 12, making this going on 8 years. Through our lives we've seen each other grow up, both of us growing at differnet rates. He did most of his growing during his senior year in high school which was just this year.
I on the other hand, seemed to make a gradual progression toward maturity, or at least that's what I've lead myself to believe. At any rate, he did a decent bit of "living outside of God's will" while I was striving to become closer to God. When he finally decided to live for God he seemed to be flooded with a number of oportunities and blessings that I wish I could even consider happening. Needless to say I wasn't exactly happy with God, I felt sort overlooked and almost forsaken by God. I worked hard and tried to stay focus on my walk while he simply breezed by in complacency.
I finally came to a peace about it this morning. I've been listening to this one tape on rotate for about the last 2 weeks. It's from the 2002 Men's Confrence at my church. When I was driving back it played this part of the tape that I'd only heard like once and I really didn't pay much attention to it when I did hear it until now. The section was about the prodigal son. Eager to get rich, he saw his father as being dead, asking his father for the property that he would receive as inheritance. He sold it to go off to a foriegn land where he proceeded to squander it on fivolous and sinful living. After he was dead broke and eating out of pig troughs, he finally brung himself to go back to his father and ask that he be made a servant. He was instead returned to his previous status by his father's side. His brother was furious, he'd served his father, working int he fields all his life, never waivering, yet he never recieved half the recognition or praise that his brother did.
This is how I felt. I'd done all this work to deepen my spiritual life to no avail, at many points my walk was completely in shambles attributed a great deal to my friend's influence and ridicule of my spiritual and intellectual life. All the while, he was able to simply come back to God, and be blessed beyond comparison, much because of his family's status. One the thing is, the son that was faithful was looking at his relationship with his father in the wrong perspective, he worked for his relationship, seeing as a merit based effort. Given, the walk with God takes effort, but it is based on grace, and that, no man can earn. The prodigal son on the other hand came to his father humbly knowing that he had nothing to offer his father. And in that is where I have faultered.
So to him, I sincerly apologize, of course I will apologize to him in person. I just needed this catharsis (purging of the spirit).