During my time of living on a college campus, I lived with the same roommate. It was a great experience and I know that God clearly had a plan when He put us together. She and I got very close and I considered her a sister. We came from different worlds, yet by God’s design, we learned from each other about so many things. We sure had our ups and downs. There are many things that I wish I hadn’t said or done, but we were there for each other during some tough times and some good times. If you are in college and have a great roommate, let them know and remind yourself that you are blessed!
Here is where things always got a little murky with our friendship. We both came from different church backgrounds. She was the first person who ever really made me stop and think about other perspectives of the Bible. I come from a reformed, Calvinist background. She came from the opposite side of the spectrum with her background in more Arminian, charismatic beliefs.
We had many interesting conversations. We both have a tendency to be stubborn, thus our passionate hopes for the other to see what and where the other was coming from. When we first dove into the challenging waters, I do not think we knew what would lie ahead. From the first conversation about spiritual gifts, I knew that I had to convince her that what she believed was probably crazy. I had Scripture to back up what I was saying, but she too had Scripture to back up what she was saying. There came a lot of frustration and slight animosity that eventually found its way into our daily life.
For me, to know that someone didn’t see the Bible the way I saw it and so “blatantly” was ignoring the Scripture was just beyond anything I could think. I grew up around other believers who had other opposing thoughts on the way my parents saw Scripture, but it wasn’t until my late teens/early twenties that I really began to stop and seek out what I should believe for my own understanding and interaction with others.
Here I was trying to defend my beliefs on truth and a little thing called pride stepped in alongside me as I argued my side. She so passionately believed in what she was saying that we both would find ourselves at a point where even reading a simple passage in the Bible would strike up some kind of controversy. God was working through this situation to humble me, as I saw much later. We did, however, come to the understanding that God was using our situation to sharpen us. “As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.” – Proverbs 27:17
Tomorrow I will share what God has been doing in my life to show me how the pride that I clung to became a giant that kept me from seeing others for who they are.
