It's Okay to Invite God to Soccer Games

Last Wednesday in the Jr. High small group I help teach, we were discussing the importance of being yourself and standing firm in who you are in God's imagine and in His scheme. It occured to me that these girls really needed to know, deep within their hearts, that God LOVES who they are and LOVES what they love, because He made them. It is fairly easy to understand (though difficult to fully comprehend the significance) that God made each and every one of us, but it is much different to understand and accept that God made all of our quirks, and He designed us detail by detail! He loves these details about us and wants to be a part of them! He uses our talents and interests for His glory and we should never be ashamed to invite God into our everyday activities or to use them as opportunities for discipleship and witnessing. If you like soccer, invite Him into your practice! Doing something you love in the name of God creates true satisfaction and can enable a more deep connection with our Lord, while making us even more passionate about the things we enjoy and are good at. He knows I am a 19-year-old closet grandmother who would prefer to sew and hang out with her cat than most anything, and He also knows I love children and traveling and English culture and pink things and coffee and people and shopping and so many other things. And He can honestly use ALL of those, if I allow Him the opportunity to enter, to take over, instead of me reserving them all for myself or thinking that they are too mundane for Him to participate in. Praise the Lord that we can be of use to Him! This truth has been crashing around me and I have never been so comfortable with who I am. Knowing that not just my body, but also my heart and mind were designed by Him especially for me is such a wake-up call. God has never created something without purpose. God has put to use every grain of sand, so surely he can put all of me, sinful though I am, to use. By embracing my identity, I not only appreciate that I am free to be myself and love me for me, but I also appreciate all that I can do for our Father and how wonderful He is that I am allowed such joy and purpose! I love that He values all that I can offer Him, my mind, my heart, my abilities, my beauty, my brokenness, my purity, even my strange obsession with candles if He so chooses to use it.