on the throne.

For the entire month of October, I have not been on any social media. Now you may ask, "But Erin, did you actually have a social media addiction?" Not exactly, but I did have a "self-addiction."

The final day of September, the Lord came to me in the season of craziness and confusion that I was in. I was at a worship concert that evening and the entire evening I was raising my hands and screaming truth that the songs sang. In the final moments of the concert, the Lord convicted me with this, "Erin, you can't fully worship me right now. On the outside, you may have appeared on fire for me and in an amazing season of your faith. But I'm the one who knows you, and your heart wants nothing to do with me right now." I was completely unconscious of what was happening around me. I knew I needed to address what I had just encountered. I walked back to my dorm, grabbed my bible and my car keys and left campus.

Just up the road, there's a lookout where you can see my campus, city, and everything that I encounter on a daily basis. I opened up the trunk of my car, facing the city, turned on some worship music, my bible in my lap, and was still. This was the first time since I had been at college that I allowed myself to be still and listen. I prayed for a solid hour confessing sin and begging the Lord for freedom from what I was clinging to. I don't say this so that I am praised for my bravery in confessing sin. I say this because it had been too long since I had intimately met with the Lord to that capacity.

Leading up to college and the first month here, my identity rested in my own comfort; how many friends I had, what boy I liked or liked me, what classes I was in, what my dorm looked like, how much fun I was having. Had you only looked at my Instagram, you would have assumed I was thriving. Of course, this is what I wanted everyone to believe. But if we're being honest, moving away and leaving everything familiar was one of the hardest things, if not the hardest thing, that I have ever had to do. Once again, I didn't want people to worry about me. I thought that if I convinced everyone else I was okay that eventually I would also convince myself.

But this is not how it was supposed to go. I could not convince myself I was okay because I'm not capable of making myself feel okay. I laid my comfort and worries that I came into college with at the feet of the cross.

Then October came the next morning. The question I decided to ask myself was this: Erin, who is sitting on the throne of your heart? In that moment, I knew that it hadn't been Jesus, but I wanted it to be. Social media was what gave me comfort because I was convincing the world I was living the life I wanted, not the life I had. I wanted everyone to believe that I had just done the hardest thing of my life effortlessly. But, I knew that if I was going to truly be still and hear what the Lord wanted from me in this season of life, I had to cut off my source of comfort. I faced the life I was living head on and I didn't depend on the world's consent to tell me I was thriving.

Now the month is over, and this is what I've learned: The things that we search for in life (peace, comfort, love, companionship, value, etc.) have always been there. They don't have to be on the throne of our heart for us to feel like we have them. God tells us that we already have all of these things through Jesus. A passage that spoke to my heart in this time was from Colossians 2, verses 20 and 23 which read:

"If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations....These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh."

This basically screams at me when I go through times like these. Why do I submit to the things of this world when I already died to my sin through Jesus? They were already taken from me! They have no more power! They can do nothing for me! Yet I continued to hold onto them as if the Gospel had changed.

I'll leave you with this: who is on the throne of your heart? Sometimes it's hard to admit what that thing is, and if you're like me, sometimes it takes completely eliminating that thing in order to allow the Lord to fully reveal himself to you. Take advantage of seasons of stillness. It is when you take time to listen rather than act that you realize what is most important. Be patient in your season of waiting. Listen to what he has to say. Trust in what he has planned. Live the life that you've been gifted with, the good parts and bad. Allow God to be on the throne.

P.S. For fun, I included pictures from this past month. See them as symbols of the Lord's faithfulness in my obedience, not anything else.