The Daily Walk: Honest tidbits on how to become closer with God in your everyday life
By no means am I claiming to be an expert, I simply aim to share some wisdom on what I have learned throughout my faith journey while being a college student.
Spending Time In the Word Daily
When we know the voice of God on paper, it’s so much easier to be in tune with when He’s speaking to us outside of the context of reading our bibles. There’s a reason that we were made to know God through His word, and it’s so beneficial to our intimacy with the Lord when we can carve out a part of our day to be with Him through reading our bible.
God doesn’t care if it’s 10 minutes or 2 hours, He’s just happy to be able to spend time with you! Don’t get caught up in how long your reading time is, first just focus on the spiritual discipline of reading every day.
I always think to myself: if I’ve got time to be on my phone for 2 hours, I’ve got time to read my bible. It’s not lack of time, it’s allocation of resources.
Something that’s always helpful if you don’t know where to start is to check out the YouVersion bible app, and search up a reading plan that you feel like may apply to what you’re feeling or what you need that day!
God speaks to us directly through the Word. It's His love letter to His children! We also learn about the character of Jesus and the path to salvation that can be found as a result of relationship with Him.
We find peace and comfort and joy through the Word, and we are able to renew our minds daily and recenter ourselves around what's important. It truly is God's heart for us to know Him and be loved by Him, but how could we know what that even looks like if we don't know what His voice sounds like?
Seeking Out Community & Accountability
Community is everything! Which is why I’m so glad you’re here!
Walking with other people in the faith is so beneficial in maintaining a solid relationship with our Creator, because it’s coming alongside another brother and sister in Christ and saying, “I know this can be hard sometimes, but I’m here for you and want the best for you and your relationship with God, so let’s do this together.” The amount of times I have prayed to God for comfort and received it through a good conversation with a fellow-believer has forever changed the way I view God’s faithfulness. Have you ever heard the phrase, “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future”? Well when I was far from God at the start of college and only cared about making friends and hanging out with boys, I realized at the end of the semester, that I was beginning to be shaped by the people I surrounded myself with, and I was saying and doing things that were not reflective of my core beliefs and values. I had to sit down alone with the Lord and ask Him to convict me of areas in my life that I had fallen into complacency. It was such a hard thing to bring myself to do, but once I sought out life-giving relationships that were centered around the Lord, I felt more filled and more encouraged that I had in a long time; this was a direct result of seeking community that was going to better me as a person because they were in pursuit of God!
This next one is huge: find a mentor! Being able to confide in someone that is older and more mature in the faith is so crucial when seeking out wise counsel in the form of a human being!
The Lord can fully speak to us through a thought, dream, vision, or passage of scripture, but sometimes a good, old-fashioned face to face conversation is needed. So if you’re in pursuit of advice from another person, having a mentor that is invested in your spiritual life that you can be honest and open with, will make navigating hard seasons not so isolating.
Boy, do I wish I had found an accountability partner sooner.
Being vulnerable with a close friend who’s walking in step with the Holy Spirit is a discipline that has grown my faith immeasurably. Confronting our sin head-on by keeping someone in the loop about what we’re struggling with is one way to be transparent with God about what areas of our lives we need really need His strength in! My roommate and I help keep each other accountable by verbally checking in every week about what we’ve felt tempted by and we also talk about areas of struggle that we felt triumphant over!
We’re called to champion each other in times of triumph and in times of trial, so find someone that can be in your corner, to hold you accountable and to celebrate what the Lord’s doing in your life!
Placing Our Identity In Who The Lord Says We Are
Being honest with ourselves about what is dictating our worth is the first step to truly being free in your identity in Christ. Let’s try asking ourselves:
- Is it a relationship with a boy that’s currently taking God’s rightful place as King of my heart?
- Is social media causing comparison to take root in the soil of my soul and rob me of my joy
- Are the people around me telling me things contrary to what the Bible says about my worth?
Stripping ourselves of things that are causing us to doubt our value will allow space in our hearts for God to move. We cant be filled with the fruits of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22-23) if we’re allowing apathy, anger, or worry to just sit and take up space in our hearts.
I like to think of it this way: if a friend gifts me a beautiful bouquet of flowers to put on my counter, but my countertop is filled with a ton of junk and clutter, I can’t fully receive the gift because I haven’t made adequate space for the beauty of the flowers to be seen and appreciated. In the same way, the Lord can’t change a heart that hasn’t made space for Him to work. I make this point in order to help us gain a better understanding of the importance of seeking God’s hand in changing us, instead of looking to the world to tell us how to live. When we are resting on the truth that the Lord has made us on purpose and with a purpose, it’s impossible to see our lives as worthless or without meaning.
Luke 12:6-7 says “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
The Lord has chosen YOU for such a time as this! If you are struggling to understand your purpose and why you were created, or what gifts God has given you that make you unique from the other people in your life, just ask Him! Our Father takes delight in speaking to His children, and we are called to ask the Lord for what we need, and seek His help in times of both desperation and celebration; but, it’s up to us if we’re going to set aside our pride and take time to recognize how much we need Him in all that we do.
The better we are able to understand how precious we are to God as His daughters, the harder it becomes to be swayed when we’re met with opposition or in times when we are hurt or disappointed by what someone has spoken to us.
Read Isaiah 43:1-2 for some encouragement!
Dealing With Guilt and Shame
In order to really comprehend the reality of the endless grace and mercy God has for us, we must first understand the significance of what Jesus paid for on the cross. Jesus didn’t die for the seemingly perfect parts of us. No, He died for the ugly parts of us that we wouldn’t dare let anyone else see, in fears of people knowing the messiness of our lives that exists behind closed doors. God’s only Son willingly came down from His throne in heaven to be with us on earth, in order to pay the ultimate price on the cross for our sins. He was fully man and fully God, so that He could relate to us and feel every single thing that we would feel in a lifetime, all while being perfectly sinless and resisting temptation because He is the Son of God!
Now I understand that some of you may be reading this thinking, yeah that’s great news, except I still feel an unexplainable heaviness come upon me each morning, and I can’t seem to shake it, even though I know Jesus died on the cross for my sins. Well, the reason you may feel trapped in cycles of sin, or feel overcome by guilt and shame is because you haven’t allowed God to come into the deepest parts of your soul and provide healing. He knows you, He made you, and He loves you more than anything or anyone on this earth ever will, so why would you try and hide the ugly stuff from God?
Understanding your position in Christ as forgiven and pure is step one to receiving freedom from the guilt and shame that has plagued you because of your past sins.
Asking the Lord for freedom from guilt and shame and the chains of sin that are binding you to your past is what will allow you to see yourself as forgiven, just as God sees you. If the enemy can get us to remain complacent in our sin, or remind us of our past, then it distracts us from the freedom that Jesus has given us because of the cross. However (!) if we recognize that the devil seeks only to steal, kill, and destroy, then we can also recognize the authority that has been given to us by the the power of the Holy Spirit., in order to come against the havoc that Satan is trying to wreak in our lives. As a result, the power over our minds, bodies, and hearts is given solely to God.
- A SUPER EPIC TIP: Something that has allowed me to walk in this freedom in a practical way is reading scripture over my life that declares the blood of Jesus as more powerful than any force of evil that could come against me; I linked a PDF of “The Christian Birthright Card” from one of my favorite books, the Salvation Encounter Manual by Brian and Christy Brennt below.
