American Dream

To start off I absolutely have LOVED reading the book Radical!! It has given me a rude awakening to what my life IS like and what my life SHOULD be like. In my blog "Living Missionaly" I talked about this book for the first paragraph. This book is bringing my attention that I AM LIVING SO WRONG. And its so so crazy that its taken me so long to see this and I feel so blessed that I was recommended this book and am reading it. Why is it that I am okay with eating three meals a day, when I have 10,000 neighbors in my own city who don't get one meal a day. My personal dream for the rest of my life is soo opposite and honestly hypocritical. I have dreams of being a missionary in Africa or being a teacher who brings my co-workers to Christ or the stay at home mom that devotes my life to raising my children to be strong men and women of Christ. But at the same time my materialistic self wants to live in a big home and drive a nice car. I was reading this article the other day about whether or not you should get a tattoo.. And I created my view that I think you should not get a tattoo if it is to make yourself look better but you only should if it is to bring the glory to God. To start a conversation with someone that could bring them to Christ. One that could open the door to sharing the good news to the people around you. But if someone got one that was representing Christ it acts the same as the whole car with a christian bumper sticker thing. You would ALWAYS be representing Christ. And I started thinking about it and could I do that? I dont think I could. I honestly think that I would be a bad representation of Christ most of the time - just by doing things I don't even think about!! And it makes me upset that I wouldn't be a good representative of Christ. I want to be radical, I can't wait to read the challenge at the end of this book. Every chapter I read makes me want to just sell all of this worldly popular crap that I have and give my money away. Why can't I just do that?? The other night I read a chapter and was laying in my bed just imagining how strong my faith would be if I just sold everything I had (when im not relying on my parents) and just kept the bare essentials and gave it to the poor. To not worry about the stuff I don't need but to trust that God would provide what I need! In class a couple months ago someone said that they think the Bible doesn't actually mean sell all of your possessions and give it all to the poor. I rebutted it quickly and only a few people in my whole Bible class agreed with that. How messed up is that??? We are totally TWISTING the Bible and like re-writing it to fit the stupid idea of what we want and how we want things to be. and it makes me soo sad because I'm sure in someways I'm doing the exacttt same thing..... haha this blog is turning into like a major vent for me. But anyways my dream for the rest of  my life is I want to give my life away. Can I? With God totally!! Will I? I'm not sure but I want to sooo bad and I need to start now. I want to have a total of five beautiful children, two of them being adopted from Africa. I want to marry a man who loves Jesus infinite times more than he loves me. I want to raise my kids in Christ and I want to be a full time missionary regardless of my location or occupation. I just refuse to be the ordinary luke warm Christian. I have way to much desire and God loves me wayy to much for me to just settle with this lifestyle of the normal American. I want to be radical. If that means not getting married and not having my five sweet kids - okay. If that means adopting an orphanage of 20 kids - okay! If it means moving half way around the world to a not so pretty place with a not so good reputation - I'm all for it!! I want to live my life for Jesus and I need to start now.