Diary of a Peach

30 Day Writing Challenge - Day 26

Day 26 - Write about an area in your life where you'd like to improve

Alright, Ill be honest. The second I read that I knew exactly what I needed to put.

My faith.

Its not that my faith is bad, or weak, its rather that its not as strong as I know it can be In many areas and aspects of it. Let me give a few examples of places that need the most improvement here.

1. Trust and anxiety
I've talked on this before, so we should all know by now that I have severe anxiety.
All my life I have left it to myself to deal with my anxiety. I tried talking to my family about it before, but they don't take it seriously in the slightest. It's blown off as "Selfishness" or "Satan trying to get to me". Im not denying either of these things. I've become aware that yes, occasionally my anxiety can stem from a root of selfishness, but this is rare. I also have no doubt at all that this is indeed satan trying to get to me, to make my faith shaky. The problem with my family is that they think that I should be capable of immidiatly overcoming any and all anxiety I have simply by knowing and acknowledging these things. Its not that simple at all and they aren't willing to see that. (Please understand I am not hating on my family here, nor am I saying that they are terrible for just this. They are not.) Should I be capable of overcoming my anxiety immidiatly? Maybe I should be. But unfortunately, I'm just not. And all my life, or at least ever since I learned I have no help from my family, I've dealt with this alone. Dealing with this alone has ranged from occasionally venting to a close friend about whatever is causing the anxiety (usually its Elsa or Lan) to bottling it up, ignoring it, and storing it into my subconscious which is, if I'm being honest, what I do more often than not. I do a range of things to deal with my anxiety myself instead of doing the one thing that I should be doing, and the one thing I would strongly encourage to anyone dealing with anxiety as well.
Letting the Lord take over and handle it.

Psalm 55:22 reads "Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken"

The one thing I failed to do, and if I'm being honest I still am failing at this, is letting the Lord take over. Giving my fears, my worries, and my anxiety to God for Him to deal with because He can handle all of my problems, and much better than I can too.

Psalm 56:3

2. Evangelism and proclaiming/standing up for my faith
I am most clearly and obviously an introvert, so naturally evangelism isn't my strong suit in the slightest. But evangelism isn't just handing out tracts on The Strip in Vegas, or traveling across the world to preach and share the gospel in many places. Evangelism can be something as simple as sharing your faith with a friend.
This is, unfortunately, something I struggle with greatly. There are a lot of people in my life right now that don't know Christ, and are not saved. Some of them believe they are saved, but based off of my own observations and things they have said, I unfortunately know they are not truly saved. Others don't know Christ at all, wether its because they don't like christianity or religion in general, or they simply just do not believe.
I want more than anything to help them. I want them to be saved. I love and care for my friends and I want them to know true joy, comfort, and love.
But, this cant happen without two things.
A. God himself must allow their hearts and mind to be open.
B. Should God choose me to play a role in their salvation, I must be willing to openly proclaim and talk about my faith and what I believe with them.
B is kind of a problem for me.
I can't just randomly start talking to someone about God. Social anxiety is crap and I feel weird doing that. But then again, I feel weird randomly talking to someone about anything.
Even when conversations lead safely into the religion territory and I have that chance to go into a good conversation about our beliefs, I freeze, I stutter, and I don't take that opportunity. I then greatly regret it hours after the conversation.
I want to be capable of sharing my faith with my friends. I want to be able to approach the ones who I worry for and say "Hey, I noticed you believe ______. Lets talk about that."
But I have fear. I am scared.
This kind of ties in with point 1. I need to give these fears and this anxiety to God in order to properly overcome this and evangelize to my friends.
Evangelism is an important aspect to every christians life. Its how we get more people to Christ. So if I'm going to do my part in the kingdom of God, I must improve this, overcome my fears, and start talking.

3. Being in the word
The final thing I must improve on is being in the word. Nearly every strong Christian I know is in the word daily, or at least tries to be. I however do not.
Okay not exactly. I do try, and I have before lots, but unfortunately I just fail at it.
At the beginning of the year I started a 365 day devotional so that I would be reading the word every day as I wanted to. It only lasted about 3 months, but the it got hard. The devotionals became 10-15 minutes long, and unfortunately I have an insanely bad attention span. Reading them became harder and harder as I couldn't focus, and soon I just stopped. Ive found and read other daily devotions since then, but not every single day.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that any Christian who isn't in the word daily is a bad Christian. I'm simply stating that I understand the importance of being in the word and I want to be like other people are. The problem is that I procrastinate a lot, I put it off, and then I become too tired, or I have no time.
I shouldn't do that. I know this. But have I tried to fix it? I think we all know the answer to that.
I don't want myself to be this way. I want to be closer to God. I want to improve in this area. Even if it isn't every day, I want to be reading my bible more.

Writing this chapter has quite honestly helped me realize a lot of my flaws and things I need to fix. Im thankful that I did this. I know now more of what I need to do to improve myself, and I truly want to make this happen!