God wants us to offer ourselves as daily sacrifices. Each day offering our worldly desires and sinful nature. For me I would say pride, and unforgiveness would be offered up first, daily!

We must be driven by God's mercy, and trust & be guided by his word & truth. Our hearts want to believe lies, so it's crucial we are saturated in God's word. We were given a gift when we were still sinners, when Jesus lived the sinless life and died for us. He offered up the ultimate sacrifice for us when we didn't deserve it.

My story, like every human story, is at least in part the struggle between faith and fear. Fear will never go away.  We tend to seek a world of comfort. We try to construct manageable lives with some real security and predictability to maintain the illusion that we are in control. Trust and fear battle for the human heart. Eventually one or the other will win. Winning the Olympic Trials was a chance of lifetime, and it was not to be taken lightly. I knew in my heart that God was calling me far beyond my spiritual comfort zone. And for me to truly follow Jesus I had to deny Comfort as the ultimate value for my life. Fear and growth go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly, it’s a package deal.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to save myself. In essence, I was trying to earn my own salvation by filling my heart with various things. Things that I thought would satisfy my hunger for joy, purpose and significance. Time after time, I turned my back on God, blamed him for my present injustices, and just keep searching for something else that would serve my needs. No matter how hard I pushed God away, he kept coming back. He kept injecting my life with people who lived in the light, people who reached out to me time after time, and stayed true to God’s works. I kept resisting, but He kept pulling me in.

There are so many things out there and all around us that rob our joy and steal our dreams away. I don’t want to be dramatic but we are under attack by our fears every day. They kill our dreams, take away our happiness, and would do anything to destroy our lives if we gave in enough. Until this past summer, I took on those “attacks” with my own will, grit, and perseverance. In my eyes I was becoming pretty successful and pretty significant. I started thinking my success could determine my happiness and be a catalyst to the good life.

Each time I ponder the depths of my mental toughness, I like to imagine what it would be like to swim across an entire ocean.  After fully exerting my physical capabilities, and maintaining my composure throughout calm and choppy seas, there would be an inevitable juncture where I would reach my breaking point and succumb to the swirling tides beneath me.