who do i want to be...

I am currently sitting in Starbucks reading the book of Hosea. I have read through this book before, and it is one of my favorites. It’s all about how Israel is unfaithful to God...how I am unfaithful to God. Whenever I read this book I begin to reflect on who I am, what I want to be, and how I want to get there.

WHO AM I? I am a Christ Follower, or at least I try to be. I fail way to often but am beginning to let God’s grace live through me. I am the whore that is mentioned in Hosea 1:2, as I walk away from God far to often, but put on the show of love and affection when others are looking. I absolutely hate that about myself, how I can love God so much one minute and deliberately do something I know he doesn’t love the next minute. I am continually working on how I can be a better Christ Follower, how I can authentically live out the love I know I have for God.

WHO I WANT TO BE: I want to be the same person on the inside (how I see myself) and on the outside (how others see me). This is my deepest desire, to not be a hypocrite. I also want to be someone who knows the Word of God. I want to know the heart of my creator and be able to accurately share that person with the world at any moment in time. I want to be an authentic Christ follower. I also want to be an awesome husband and father someday. I have a huge passion for family and family ministry, and I want to first live that out in my own family whenever that comes around in my life. I want to be a spiritual leader in my home, in the church, and in my oikos (relational world).

HOW I WANT TO GET THERE: Well I don’t really know. I’m 21...but I know the path starts now / already has started. A passion of mine for a long time now has been to do a master’s degree with a strong biblical emphasis. I have been looking at that for a while. That passion somewhat dies down when I’m in the middle of a semester and thoroughly engulfed in the overwhelming amounts of work I have. But it is an underlying passion, because although I have no need to go to school to learn the Bible, I feel like I will learn in much better through an institution/program. As for now I want to commit to being in a personal Bible study all of the time. Whether that is through a curriculum or just me exploring and studying and reading for myself I don’t know yet, but I need to be in the word constantly.

So as I sit here, only on Hosea 2 because I got distracted with these thoughts, my eyes turn back to Gomer. I don’t want to be a Gomer, I want to be a Hosea. Gomer betrays the unconditional love of Hosea time and time again. It breaks Hosea’s heart. I want my heart to break like God’s does, I want to be faithful to what God is calling me to, and I want to one day hear the Lord say “well done” when I see him in Glory.