1May

Below life's sea level


Work, focus, sacrifice, and persevere for that one thing you're trying so hard to achieve. You know that once it's yours, there's no coming back -- you'll be a different person, people will look at you in a different way, good things will come right after, and you'll have a story to tell.
Goals can be short or long term. Usually, you need to have short goals in order to achieve long ones. A lot of people skip the short goals thinking only about the long term. Some people want to be saved when the time for them to be saved comes. They tell themselves that one day they'll take their faith seriously... after achieving their career, a family, upon settling down somewhere when they've conquered all they had to in this world.
Breaking News: you can have both! Faith and abundant life are very good friends...
But perhaps that is not really why you're not taking your faith seriously. Maybe deep down, you think you're too young to care about it. You want to be like your friends, take advantage of everything the world has to offer, after all, God must understand -- you're just human. You say 'I want to find myself'...
Alright then, go ahead and live your life away from God for now. See where that takes you and if it's anything like the typical life of people we've counseled over 20 years, here's a preview of it:
1. You'll work hard and you'll have success, but it's short-term. You will experience big time failures, if it's not in your finances, it's in your love life, family, or health. Nothing you conquer will make that failure less painful.
2. You'll have a huge void inside of you that will constantly lead you to bad decisions in your life. You'll want to fill it and if you have to go low, to depths you've never been to, you will. And when you get there, you'll still have that void, as if a huge mass of air is growing right within your chest. But since you're way below 'sea level', and those places are usually hot deserts, you'll be as lonely as can be.
3.  Your conscience will always torment you with the 'What ifs'... you'll be afraid to die and so you'll keep telling yourself you don't believe in God or hell, thinking that's going to avoid you from going there. If you believe it or not, it really doesn't matter does it?
4.  Deep down, you'll always be a sad person. No matter how much success you achieve. But you'll do a good job in hiding it, after all, you don't want to remember what you're reading now, clearly saying "I TOLD YOU SO" in advance.
Yes, you'll find yourself but you'll hate what you find. I just hope it won't be too late for you.


In faith,
Edson Coutinho