I
sat in the library for at least eight hours. I only succeeded in writing a handful of sentences.

The next day, I went to a different library for
several hours...same thing.

I
was stuck on the first page and a half of this stupid school assignment and I needed to write a lot more! I just couldn't do it.

The next morning, the due
date, I woke up before the sun,
having set my alarm for early o'clock, as I
have often do in order to complete important writing assignments.

I
was struggling to apply Modernization Theory to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests
in China and the recent 2011 pro-democracy protests in Egypt. I just couldn't figure out how to operationalize the theory's features in
order to test them in the two cases of protests. Without boring you, my
friends, with excessive and rather uninteresting political science jargon,
suffice it to say that I really didn't
know what I was going to write
about, and the paper, the paper which was worth a significant portion of my
grade in two different courses, the paper which could ruin my perfect track
record of making the Dean's List every quarter since I began my studies at the University of Washington, the paper...it
just wasn't getting done. I just couldn't do it, and the pressure was
starting to get to me.

Before I continue, I must admit
that dudes don't cry too often, and I'm
a dude, so I don't cry too often. My
friends might consider me a little more on the sensitive side of the male
gender, but c'mon, I'm not a wussy.
Or am I? (We'll see on this 8 month
trip...maybe y'all will see me cry). Wussy or not, the tears started to flow and I began to cry. Now my fellow manly
teammates, might start thinking, "Seriously, Joey? Over an essay?" And to that I say, "Yeah, bro, I was crying over an essay." I
was so frustrated, so unprepared, because I
hadn't planned ahead and sought adequate help on the assignment. I was so angry about this stupid essay
that I couldn't write.

I
was living at home at the time, and my mom walked by and immediately knew her
son, her little baby boy, was all bent out of shape. Resisting the urge to
coddle me like a little toddler, she treated me like a man and spoke words directly
at me that rang true and got right to the heart of the issue. She said, "Joey,
the devil is having a hay-day with you." Wait, what? Over an essay? She went on
to say that I should pray about it and finish the essay!

The thought hadn't really
occurred to me. I had been so
focused on my abilities. How I had
done well in school up until this point. And how I couldn't do this essay. But that's the problem, the failure,
right there...if you go back and reread (which you don't have to) the blog up
until this point, you'll see that I have typed the word "I" 31 times to talk
about my capabilities, what I did or didn't, and could or couldn't do. 31
times!! Me, me, me. I, I, I! But where
in this equation of me + work = success is Jesus? Where was I relying on
God? As Jesus asked His disciples in Luke 8:25 after they were freaking out at
the crazy storm that they found themselves in while sailing across the lake, I
had to ask myself, "Where is your faith?"
 

I took my mom's advice and
prayed, but because of the time I spent worrying, stressing, procrastinating, and
trusting in my own abilities, there was not enough time to complete the essay.  I braced for the impact of the unfinished
paper on my GPA for the quarter. Sure enough, I didn't make the coveted Dean's
List. My cumulative GPA dropped. I didn't measure up.

God used this paper, one of my many failures, to
show me that apart from Him I can do nothing.

And that's the whole point!
That's the whole reason we need a
Savior...We don't measure up. No matter how hard we try to do this or that, to
please God, or become a CEO of some company, or
successfully raise all the funds necessary to go on a mission trip, we can't do
anything without the grace of God. It is only by His power that I can think, be creative, or write. It's only by His power that I can use my brain to
figure out how to adequately explain the causation of the 1989 Tiananmen Square
protests. It's only by His power that
I, a proud-hearted sinner, can inherit eternal life. It's only by God's power, His love and grace as manifested in Jesus Christ's sacrificial
slaughter, that we can approach the throne of Grace with confidence, as Hebrews
4:16 describes, and stand before a Holy God without spot or blemish, even
though our hands have wrought such evil.

The optimist might say, "Don't
sweat the small stuff, like this paper or even your GPA for a quarter." But to that
optimist I say, "Don't sweat anything, and TRUST IN GOD, whether you are
writing a paper, preaching the gospel in a muddy street in Nicaragua, or
sitting with a loved who is on their death bed! In all things, both great and small, trust in God!"