It is funny how when you are young, you look forward to growing up and being an adult.  But once you grow up and become an adult, you wish you could be young again. I do not think I can say I am fully an adult, but the majority of people refer and talk to me as one. I believe at the age of 20, I should be focusing on school. Rather, I hold many responsibilities; I am a student, a youth leader, a church secretary, a leader of my family, an ate, a Christian, etc. I gladly accept these roles, but when I was a child, I was simply a child. I was a child in a red wagon being pulled by my parents.

    As I get older, it is my turn to pull this wagon, and as I stroll along, different things get put into it. You see, this wagon contains everything with which God has entrusted me. Despite the overwhelming expectations, I know I am able to handle everything that He gives me, because He has this plan for me. And I know that it is normal to feel overwhelmed and stressed with such responsibilities that I get to have in my wagon. Despite the pressures, as I continue to grow up, I learn to cherish and take care of this wagon, because if I do not, everything may fall over while hitting an uneven pavement. I am sure no matter what I do, I will still stumble and may even get too weak to pull. When I do, my prayer is that I’ll turn to Jesus. As I get older, I have been learning to seek God, even learning that I am still God’s child in this wagon that He is pulling to one day be with Him.

    I came across this song the other day, and it is like God spoke to me because my life has been a constant struggle lately, that I tend to turn to my own solutions.

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace"

-Hel­en H. Lem­mel, 1922

by Sarah Sabado

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to see the YouTube video of this hymn. Click HERE
for more information of the history of “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”

Drifting away can become very unnoticeable. Every summer, I usually go to the shore with family and friends. Once we get into the ocean and become occupied with the water, we later look up and notice that we have drifted away from where we first entered. We never intended to move along with the water and move away from where we came. Similarly, I get carried away with everything I do and float away from God; everything can be anything from school, family, work, and even ministry.

Try and remember the first time you fell in love with God. Right away, I remember having the passion to do anything for the Lord, looking for what I can do to get so close to Him daily. It was the start of my daily devotions, becoming a prayer warrior, giving offerings and service; all those things I wanted to do because I had changed. Then over time, things happen; life happens. School comes along, family problems occur, ministry is calling your name, a new job offer…etc. With disregard, you learn that you might have drifted away.

You begin to feel guilty at the realization that you might have drifted away. I start to feel heartless and notice that I am faking certain actions. In Isaiah 29:13, the Lord says, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.” I know how to act like a Christian, and I do, but I am faking. I say I will pray for someone, but then later, I don’t. I begin ministries, and later notice, I am not beside God.

I recently took up the responsibility and position as the youth leader. I think “great, I believe I am well equipped for another ministry in which to get involved.” As I begin meeting with the youth weekly, I notice that as I lead Bible study, I am missing something- that love I first had when I first started to be on fire for Christ. I am not walking beside God, but I have drifted away, still living a Christian life, but with no real love and heart.

To know that you have drifted is one thing, but to know that you have drifted yet still fake a holy life is another. Revelation 2:4-5 “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” God is always there loving you unconditionally. Yet we forget He is there, and seasonally, we aimlessly wander somewhere tangent from God. To get back to where we first entered the water, remember the firsts you had when you fell in love with God. I started to pray and read my bible every day. I am not saying I return to those first days, but I began to do the things I first did when I began to love God.

Instead of listening to what we have already been taught once, we should remember it daily. “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away” (Hebrews 2:1). In that way, we can continue living beside the Lord and not get lost in life. And we do not become the seed that fell along the path or the seed that fell beside the rocky places, or among the thorns (the parable of the sower found in Matthew 13:1-23). We can become the seed that fell in good soil to produce thirty, sixty, or hundred times of what was sown, because we not only listened once, but understand and live it daily.

by Sarah Grace Sabado