I am not a great Christian.

I have a fondness for the word “mofo”, I suffer from road rage, and my downfall has always been sexy black men.

Thankfully, I love a God who shows himself strong in my weaknesses. I don’t actually curse (that much), I seldom use communicative hand gestures on the highway, and I am actively hoping and praying for a sexy black (or blue, or purple, or green) man who loves God and will love me.

The truth is, once you become a Christian, all of your faults don’t just magically disappear.  Don’t get me wrong, God does help, and sometimes miraculously (for example, removing a crippling addiction). Usually, though, he starts by changing our hearts and giving us the Holy Spirit to help us want to do life differently.

I trust God for my salvation, assured by Jesus’ death and resurrection. Because I trust his character, and know he loves me,  I strive to live in obedience to God’s commands for his people. Sometimes, I want to do things my way. I then immediately fall flat on my face and God is always right there to pick me back up.

This is the Christian walk. Trusting and striving. Failing and trying again. So what’s a not-so-great-Christian girl got to do to get it right?

The key to living a “good and faithful servant” life is  obedience.

By being faithful in the small things: all the little situations and temptations that arise daily, hourly, or even by the minute, our life will become one that points to Christ.

When we develop a character that habitually submits to God, we can trust that he is working out the big picture in a way that is better than we can imagine. This, my friends, is living in God’s will. In my life, this looks like a thousand years of waiting and not hitting up the clubs looking for a husband. It’s not trying to grab the reins to speed up the process when I see something that could work if God would just tweak a few things. I pray daily for him to crush any rebellion in my heart, because it’s present more often than I’d like to admit.

I have to have faith. He (probably) hasn’t forgotten about me and he will honor my trust in him. As Lysa TerKeurst wrote, “Our job is obedience. God’s job is results.”

There’s always more to the story, but obedience to God is a direct by-product of faith, and it is by faith we are called to live.  A great way to know how God wants us to respond in every situation is by knowing his character through his Word, and by praying and asking for guidance and help.

Our greatest privilege as children of God is to lead other people into faith, and to teach them to love and obey the Father Then, in turn, they can shine that light into someone else’s life, and so on and so forth. As it says in Romans 1:5, “Through Him and on behalf of His name, we received grace and apostleship to call all those among the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.”

That verse is for us, but we have to be in a place of obedience or no one will believe us.

Lots of responsibility. Lots of help. Lots of joy.

We can do all things (even obey!), through Christ who gives us strength. -Phillipians 4:13

Ang