Having non-believing parents is really hard. Although my parents are professing Christians, their hopes and ambitions are not set on eternal things. They bear no fruit.

Today I was talking to my mom on the phone and like always, she started going on and on about me going to grad school and getting a master's degree. I then bluntly said, "Mommy, I don't even know if I want to go to grad school." I've told her this before. She was quiet and then exclaimed, "WHAT!? Why not!? If you get a master's, you'll have so many more job opportunities and you'll earn more money because of your degree." I then started to explain that I don't want my life to be my job. I want my life to be my family. "What about the money??" I said, "I don't really care about the money..." Her response to all of this was, "You don't know what financial depravity is. You don't know how hard it is to earn money. It'll be so hard for you to get a job."

I had these already answered thoughts in my head: "If I trust the Lord, He will provide all my needs." I couldn't say them, though. I still have a hard time doing that. My parents have a very hard time trusting God fully and completely. They are still very dependent on the things of this world.

I called her so she could help me with my ancestor project for ED11A. Basically as she was talking to me about it I could tell she was still distraught from the previous conversation. In the middle of me asking her to clarify something, she heaved a big sigh and said, "You lack motivation to do well and be successful in life."

That line can be subjective. What is success? Is success getting a great job, earning a lot of money, having worldly fame, and "changing the world"? Or is success submitting to the will of the Father, working according to His plan and to what He calls us to do--so that on that day of judgement He can be pleased and say, "Good job faithful servant"? So that our time, love, and money invested in this world would be for the building up of ETERNITY?

For me as a boy, one of the most gripping illustrations my fiery father used was the story of a man converted in old age. The church had prayed for this man for decades. He was hard and resistant. But this time, for some reason, he showed up when my father was preaching. At the end of the service, during a hymn, to everyone's amazement he came and took my father's hand. They sat down together on the front pew of the church as the people were dismissed. God opened his heart to the Gospel of Christ, and he was saved from his sins and given eternal life. But that did not stop him from sobbing and saying, as the tears ran down his wrinkled face--and what an impact it made on me to hear my father say this through his own tears--"I've wasted it! I've wasted it!"...The thought of coming to my old age and saying through tears, "I've wasted it! I've wasted it!" was a fearful and horrible throught to me.

- John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

Today in CFG, we learned about the discipline of stewardship.

Here is an excerpt from a long passage we read about being a good steward of time:

Let such, therefore, as have been guilty of thus spending their time, consider it. You have spent a great part of your time, and a great part of your strength, in getting a little of the world; and how little good doth it afford you, now you have gotten it! What happiness or satisfaction can you reap from it? Will it give you peace of conscience, or any rational quietness or comfort? What is your poor, needy, perishing soul the better for it? And what better prospects doth it afford you of your approaching eternity? And what will all that you have acquired avail you when time shall be no longer?

- Jonathan Edwards, The Preciousness of Time, and the Importance of Redeeming It


*SLAP* *SLAP* This is reality.

Please pray for me and my parents. I constantly have a burden thinking that they are such a hindrance to my spiritual growth.