A+ Christian meets Party Personality
It’s Thursday night after practice and you’re heading out to a party with your girlfriends. The boy that has clearly been showing interest in you will be there, so you can’t pass up the invitation. As the night progresses, you find yourself totally consumed by the party scene. You’ve drank so much alcohol that you can hardly control yourself. You’re dancing and flirting with nearly every guy. You’re showing off and taking risks you never thought you would. But, you’re having so much fun and enjoying the attention.
Friday at school, all the guys from the party are commenting about last night’s behavior. You just give them a flirtatious smile. Then, one of them asks if you’ll be at the party tonight. You didn’t know there was a party tonight, but after last night, how could you miss it! “Yes,” you say with great enthusiasm. After school, you can hardly contain your enthusiasm as you prepare for tonight’s gathering. At the party, you find yourself pushing your boundaries further and further. It feels so freeing.
Saturday arrives, it’s a normal day hanging out with your friends. You feel like you’ve finally made it. Week after week, this becomes your new norm. Party, drinking and flirting consumes your weekend evenings. You continue to push your limits: drinking more than what makes you feel comfortable, playing games that cause you to reveal a little more than you should and hooking-up with boys who make you feel so attractive but leave you longing for more.
True Identity
Then the weekend ends with Sunday School, Church and Youth Group. You love the Lord and you do enjoy learning more about Him. You know He wants what’s best for you, and that seems so contradictory to what your life currently looks like. Throughout the week, you continue to be a star player on your team, you do all your homework assignments perfectly to maintain your 4.0 GPA and you strive to be a school and community leader.
Over time you realize you’re living a double life. You’re one person on Sunday’s and throughout the week, but that identity totally changes once the keg is tapped. You love both sides of you, but you’ve lost track of your true identity. You notice you’re not the only one who acts like this. Lots of your friends are the same, so it doesn’t seem wrong or bad. But, you’re starting to feel rather lost and fake.
One night, after Bible Study, you pull your leader aside and ask her opinion on the situation. She shares that she actually had the same struggle at one point in her life and asked if you two could meet regularly to figure out what God wanted for you. Meeting with her is awesome, you don’t feel guilty or ashamed. Instead, you genuinely realize that God doesn’t want you to live a double life. He doesn’t want you to compromise your character or beauty for earthly attention. He sees you as greater than you’re willing to see yourself.
It only becomes natural to pull back on your party behavior. You still attend every weekend, but you start to scale back on your drinking and wild behavior. Soon, you find yourself only going to one party a week, and sometimes you’re even more selective than that. As you go about your week, you recall how you felt at one time about the party scene and realize that knowing who you are and acting in confidence of your identity is actually way more freeing than letting loose at any party.
A couple weeks pass by and you haven’t attended a single party. You don’t miss it, nor do you miss the double life. Sometimes you sense that people are talking about you, which makes you feel uncomfortable. One day, that cute boy that’s been pursuing you this whole time comments in the hall that he misses seeing you. Casually you comment, “I’m still around, just not into the party scene. I guess I felt like I was getting too lost.” He looks at you funny. Then asks, “What do you mean lost.” You proceed to tell him how you felt like you were living a double life and wanted to discover who you really were. He asks you right then and there if he can take you out to dinner on a date. “Yes,” you respond gleefully.
At dinner, right away, he expresses interest in talking about the double standard life and mentions how he feels the same way. You sit at the table for hours talking about how God has really been changing your heart and you’re finding true freedom. This honesty opens his eyes and establishes a strong foundation for the incredibly deep relationship you’ll develop with him over time.
You look back and realize it’s been a long journey, but you love being able to be who God created you to be. You realize you’re getting more attention now then you were at the parties, but the attention is totally different. Everything you were longing for back then, you’re receiving now. God has blessed you abundantly because you took a turn toward Him and asked Him to help you walk away from the double life that didn’t seem to honor you or Him.
