Moreau First Year Experience Erik Oswald December 3rd, 2021 How To Walk and Talk Like a Child of God This semester I’ve asked myself countless questions. I struggled with believing what is true. There was a moment a couple weeks ago where I could not trust anything that the world was saying because everyone has their personal biases. I felt lonely, felt displaced, unable to trust even my own thoughts. I wanted guidance, I needed a reliable mentor, in the end I just wanted real truth. Then you ask yourself the question “where can I get truth?”, surely there is something I can go to on earth that would bring me comfort, a sense of understanding of what I should be doing for my life. Thankfully, my Father in heaven gave me His word, which is kept in the Bible. This is where we should all go to for guidance in our lives because He gives you His promises, He gives you hope to live for, He answers your most desirable prayers in unexpected responses because He loves you. You just have to act in faith, believing that He will be there to guide you when you take that step. God does not need anything from us, our debt has been paid through Christ. He just wants us to live by the account of faith, to live for His will. Afterall, that is the most fulfilling most valuable thing you can do during your time here on earth. Nothing else matters. Living for fleshly desires, living for the world, living for anything else that is not for Christ has no purpose. Everything that we do should bring glory to God! Now, this might sound like you have no freedom. It sounds like this is the life of a slave, I get it. But, then ask yourself the question, “what is true freedom?” Is it doing whatever we want and any given time? Is it being able to do anything you want without any restraint? This is not freedom this is being a slave to your personal desires and not allowing yourself to experience the true freedom that Christ has for you because you’re too busy living for the world, too busy wanting what the world has to offer when you can have and experience something much greater. True freedom is doing what you were made to do. For example, if you wanted to dig 10 holes in the ground where each of them was five feet deep you would get a shovel and start digging. So you space out an area of land to dig these holes and your goal is to get all 10 done by the end of the day. Digging a hole in the ground is a lot of work, you start to feel back pain, your hands are getting weary, and next thing you know you’ve spent half your day digging one hole. You realize that the shovel is not meant to be used for this amount of intensive labor. It’s certainly not impossible, but the shovel is meant for much lighter work. Your neighbor sees you strain yourself all day trying to dig this one hole and asks you why you don’t dig these holes with an auger. Augers are meant to dig multiple holes in the ground and their sole purpose is to make digging easier, especially in harder soil. Perfect! So, you go to Home Depot, buy an auger, come back home, and try it out. It took you 30 seconds to make one hole and soon after you finish digging all holes in 10 minutes. You see, when we realize, what tools are needed to do specific things, life is much easier and freeing because you are using a tool for what it’s meant for. Humans are the same. When we strive to live for our personal agendas, we do not get to experience true freedom because that is not what we are called to do. We all have a specific role to play for the building of the kingdom of God. When we strive to be like other people or live up to the standards of society, we are limiting ourselves and nothing that we do is ever fulfilling because it’s not how we are meant to live. We are trying to fit ourselves into a mold that is for something else. We are called to live for the will of God because He is our creator. The creator knows everything about its creation and there can be so much freedom in that. It is not extra work, rather it should be a new way of living, different from what the world tells you. Believers in Christ are called to stand out, not to fit into the world that isn’t even our own. I’m here temporarily, my citizenship is in heaven, I’m going to do everything that the Lord tells me to bring more of His lost children home. How can believers in Christ get to such a point in their life where they feel conviction over their calling in their life? We all do not just wake up one morning and understand what is truly meant to live for the will of God. It in fact starts the opposite way. In “Advice From a Formerly Lonely College Student” by Emery Bergmann- Moreau FYE Week 9, she said, “Loneliness is too often paired with self-blame and self-criticism: “I can’t find my place among these people, so it must be my fault.”.” She is coming from a place of dissonance, she does not feel like she belongs, she is unable to connect with the community around her. This is something that everyone experiences. I have certainly experienced this in the beginning of the semester. Being stripped away from my church community back home and worried about not finding other Christians on campus was a big worry of mine. Not that it was impossible for me to stay firm in my faith alone, but it is a lot riskier to run a race by yourself. The first couple weeks of the semester were lonely, but I have never felt more closely connected with the Lord in any other moment in my life. I only had Him to talk to, He was the only one truly there for me in those moments and I continued to go back to Him every moment of everyday during those first two weeks. I feel like He was wanting me to learn and to experience my need for Him so that even when I do find people on campus no one can ever understand me nor complete me like my Father can. After this time, God placed people in my life that I am so beyond grateful for and have established such firm friendships in Christ. True friendships require a genuine interest and love for one another, wanting to out serve each other and not seeking benefits for yourself. This is such an important thing to understand and to experience and I have made it a mission of mine to love everyone I meet and to involve them in my friend groups because it would be selfish not to share the joy I have in my community. Friendships are supposed to help bring one another closer to Christ. That is why we fellowship. It should be more than have common interests, it should be an established community of people willing to bring glory to God in whatever we do. How can we glorify God in the midst of adversity through community? Everything that we say or do should be with the intentionality of doing the will of God no matter the circumstance. The world is broken, confused, and desires a profound solution that fulfills moral obligation. In 13 Ways of Looking at Community Parker J. Palmer says, “ In the face of resistance, an ungrounded leader will revert to bureaucratic mode.” (Moreau FYE Week 11) This statement captured my eye in such a way that it made me realize that is what everyone unknowingly does in today’s society, unless of course, you are actively resisting bureaucracy. Living in today’s society it is uncommon to want to stand apart. Standing apart is known as something bad, strange, and foolish to desire. As followers of Christ we are called to be different, sharing the gospel in the darkest places in the world and to love one another as Christ loves us. Everyone has some sort of morality when it comes to social issues but politics and fleshly desire to be greedy is what so often prevails in a world that so deeply need Jesus. I do understand that using Jesus as a cop out for everything might seem to simple-minded but if the world truly understood the meaning of the gospel, it would be much different. There was a statistic I saw once that said that 70% of American was Christian. This is certainly untrue. The U.S. would be much more united if it were. But this is exactly what I am talking about when people don’t understand the true meaning of the gospel which is that Jesus came to earth and died for the price of our sins. OUR SINS. Who are we to deserve this love? To deserve this kind of reward? We are nothing, we do not deserve it, we are sinners, and we are meant to https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/well/family/advice-from-a-formerly-lonely-college-student.html http://couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/13-ways-of-looking-at-community/ http://couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/13-ways-of-looking-at-community/ go to hell. But Jesus paved a way to heaven, He made it possible to have a relationship with God, it is because of what He did on the cross that He deserves all praise. All that we can do is to continue to me messengers of the world and to do everything for His name’s sake. “He guides me along the right paths for His name’s sake” Psalm 23 We should trust and rely on the word of God for His direction. Therefore, we should respect and love everyone as said in 1 Peter 2:17. This is how God wants us to treat one another! This is how we build community and have true freedom in life. The enemy is to blame for all hatred, deception, greediness, etc. So, it is our job as Christians to actively fight against those lies. This is something I have encountered on campus. When I see other students in the classroom be fooled into believing that desiring personal security is okay. Should the U.S. have intervened in the Rwanda genocide? Some students said no because it is not the United State’s responsibility for the lives of all people around the world. I believe that as humans, we have a moral obligation to care for one another no matter where you’re from. “I believe your faith can have a transforming effect on the world.” Says Fr. Jenkins at the Wesley Theological Seminary 2012Commencement Address (Moreau FYE Week 10). This is true that your faith can have a transforming effect on the world. But knowing this and believing it in your heart are two different things. As believers in Christ, we are therefore children of God. We are heirs of God (Romans 8:17) I know this too be true but sometimes I do not really believe this in my heart because it sounds too good to be true. So I pray that God would help me with my unbelief. This is the same thing but for acts of faith. When I struggle to show an act of faith I pray that God would help me with my unbelief and He does and my faith becomes stronger and when my faith becomes stronger then I am a force not to be reckon with because God is guiding every action. It is important to acknowledge that you are broken first, humble yourself. It is a good reminder to acknowledge that we are not meant to live perfect lives and that we are promised hardships in our lives that will have us make mistakes and feel unworthy, but we are still beautiful inside and out because of what Jesus did on the cross. God uses our broken pieces to create a mosaic. The Lord calls upon broken people to allow His works and miracles shine through each person. I’ve seen God work in my life and has answered prayers during my time at Notre Dame. I have gone through loneliness, tests of faith, and anxieties. I firmly believe that God allows us to go through suffering so that we may understand and empathize with one another to bring glory to Him. God does not say come to those who are successful, has everything figured out, but He does say come to those who are weary, who are broken and in need of our Savior, Jesus Christ. For the unbeliever, there is so much to be said about how to find true fulfillment in your hope. Some believe that there can be hope even if you do not believe in God, they are just fooling themselves. I say this with such directness because it is true and the truth should not be handled lightly. What happens for the unbeliever when they succeed in their hopes and dreams? It always follows up with another hope, another desire, something that actually gives them fulfillment. For the believer, this is found through faith, faith in God’s promises for your life. This is an everlasting hope, so much more fulfilling than whatever you can come up with yourself. “Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not Everything Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle.” -C.S. Lewis, From the Preface (July 1941) (Moreau FYE Week 12) I believe that this quote is important to take apart to really understand what C.S. Lewis is trying to tell his readers. When he says that readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar it means that the devil is going to try to deceive you and tell lies to you so that you lose your faith in Christ. The devil knows the Bible through and through and he is going to use that against all people, especially followers of Christ. He will come to those who are https://president.nd.edu/homilies-writings-addresses/wesley-theological-seminary-commencement/ file:///C:/Users/nglez/Downloads/The%20Screwtape%20Letters%20by%20C.S.%20Lewis_Chapter%208.pdf preaching the gospel and it is important to have discernment in your walk in faith because you don’t ever want to confuse the enemy’s lies and think that God is telling you these things. The enemy wants you to pursue your fleshly desires and that is where unbelievers think they can try to find gratification. The only true fulfilling hope we can attain is with Christ and His promises. His word in the Bible is more than enough to believe that this is true. No one in this world should be relied upon to give you the cheat code for life. When answering the question “how do I live and grow in hope”, it always comes back to whether you have any faith at all. When there is no faith, then there is no real foundation where hope can build itself upon. I say this because when you have faith in Christ and have given your life to Christ, then there is no need to worry about the future or about the betterment of your current circumstances because God’s plan always prevails. Not to say that there won’t be times of uncertainty, even for the believer there are hardships, but we give those burdens, those worries, those anxieties to Christ Jesus because He is the carrier of all things and has already conquered everything. I had a hard time accepting that I had anxiety and to seek counseling for it in the past month at Notre Dame. I felt guilty for having it. Once I gave this burden, this worry to Him and trusting Him that He will take care of it, I felt comfort. I felt loved. He is taking my anxiety and turning it into something beautiful, and I will be a testimony of that to whoever needs to hear it!