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Discuss/Describe why we walk by sight instead of walking by faith. How has God worked in your life, and when has your faith grown?
I guess walking by sight is easier because we're more likely to believe something we can see, feel, touch, experience with our senses. Something we can't see, can't explain, can't prove exists, that's harder.
My faith grew when I was younger. I was very committed to church, really believed in God, and was a good Christian. Since high school, though, starting with the death of my grandma, who I prayed and prayed about, for her healing as well as her salvation, that went downhill. I think I had high expectations, because shortly before that, the daughter of one of the leaders in our junior high group at church had been deathly ill, and people had prayed (myself included), and she got better. I was mad at God for not answering my prayer.
Then the next year the whole thing with Kyle happened, where I had my first close relationship with a guy, even allowed myself to feel something for him. But I suppressed the feelings, cause he had a girlfriend, and I wasn't going to take away from whatever they had. Then came the day I did a three-way call with him and this friend of his. I don't even know why we were doing that. Anyway, they kinda forgot I was there, I think, and I found out from that that Kyle wasn't what I thought he was. I'd met him at church, so I assumed he was a Christian. But I guess the tendency to shoot BBs at innocent birds, him wanting to put his arms around me at the Christmas Progressive Dinner, and his Project A-ko comics (which, while not porn, are pretty darn close) should've clued me in that maybe he wasn't the right sort of guy for me. It turned out he wasn't a Christian as I'd thought. Shortly after, when his girlfriend got on the phone one time when he called me (we went to different schools so we mostly just talked on the phone) and she was there, and yelled at me cause she thought I was inviting him to the Winter Formal at my school (I wasn't btw...I was just telling him it was happening), I confronted him about it and he didn't seem to care, blaming the outburst on PMS or her red hair. Now, I had met his girlfriend a couple times, and she had seemed pretty nice. But her outburst concerned me. I mean, I can see in retrospect why she was so upset. If I was dating a guy and he was calling another girl while I was at his house, I'd be upset too. Especially if I thought the other girl was asking him on a date. Anyway, after a while, even my parents were encouraging me to break things off. So I did, on Valentine's Day no less. And he called me before I could call him. When he said he was calling to wish me a happy Valentine's Day, I almost lost my nerve. But I went through with it, telling him not to call me so much, and when he didn't understand, I hung up on him.
We didn't speak for almost six months. Then I called him to ask him stuff about Comic-Con, at the prompting of my best friend Amy, who for some reason I hadn't told about the breakup. This prompted him to think it was ok to start calling me again, and finally about the middle of August, I properly ended it, telling him not to call me anymore.
I found out later, at my friend Tammy's graduation, that he and his girlfriend had had sex, and it gradually became apparent that he was more into the physical side of things, meaning it was good I got out when I did.
A while later, he snuck up behind me while I was at InterVarsity Bible Study at MiraCosta to say hello. It was very embarrassing. I saw him a handful of times at the bus station after that, and during all of them he acted like we were still friends. I acted rather mean to him on purpose, trying to send the message that I wanted nothing to do with him, hoping he'd take the hint. I don't think he did, but the last time I saw him, he said he was moving away. I haven't seen or heard from him since. His sister Rhoda, who'd initially introduced us, remained on my FB friend list for a while, but I finally got her off it, cause it was too much of a reminder.
Then there were all the stresses of my junior year, growing apart from my long-time friends and so on, and my dad's mom's death in late 2002 (my senior year).
Where I think it has really gone downhill is in the last 7 years. My work schedule made my church attendance sporadic at first, as my current job is the first one where I've had to work on Sundays. I tried to do mid-week church stuff too at first, but with my constantly changing work schedule, plus school on top of it, I stopped doing that cause I was worried about being flaky. So I haven't had the Christian support I used to have. I was also kinda burned out by InterVarsity at MiraCosta, which made me hesitant to join any sort of Christian group at school. It was only in my last year at CSUSM that I found out about Chi Alpha and got involved in that. That helped a little.
I think things are looking up somewhat. Hopefully things will get better.
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