Lent: Day 19 of 40
Name: Daniel Choi
Lenten Commitment: Give up reselling.
“How’s business?”
This is a common question I get asked at school. Not because I am taking a business class, but because I am a part-time reseller.
But for this season of Lent, I decided to stop reselling because I believe living for God is more important than reselling shoes.
Being a reseller requires a lot of work. There are times that I do not sleep. Every time a new pair of Yeezy’s come out, I have to stay up until 9 a.m. in the morning! Right after Friday Night Service, I would come home and sit on the computer until they came out. But this experience of giving up reselling has definitely gotten me closer to God. Now I can envision the world without reselling.
That is not to say that this commitment has been easy for me. Selling shoes is very addictive. I started thinking, “What if I gave up on Lent and started to sell again?” Other times, I wanted to sell just one pair of shoes and give up.
That was when it hit me. I realized that I needed to close down my website. All of my sales were online and in order to stop myself from being tempted, shutting down the website was my best choice. Even though it took me a long time to get to the reputation I have today, I gave it up for a good reason. I wanted to dedicate myself to God. I want to emphasize this point because we cannot live by our selfish ways.
Life has changed since I stopped reselling. I am spending more time with God and doing my schoolwork. Before this commitment, I was on Twitter for most of my day. Twitter is the platform where I advertise my website and sell my shoes. I just stopped looking at Twitter. Now I spend more of my time on Snapchat and communicating with the people I enjoy being with.
Lent gives you a great change in your perspective with your relationship with Jesus. Quitting reselling shoes showed me that I have a weak relationship with Jesus because I ignore him and then I come back to him when I am in need. People need to put Jesus as the first priority. You cannot live without Him. I look at Him as my hero.
Without Lent, I would be reselling and not be humble to myself. I want to live for Jesus. I do not want to brag to others and say, “I got 70K worth of shoes in my inventory.” This is not how you should be to the Lord. I believe that if you humble yourself like Jesus did toward other people, we can be closer to God. Even though this Lent is only for a couple of weeks, I believe that there is hope in everything. There can be a huge change in every one of us. I cannot look back at what selfish jerk I was. I only cared about reselling and making money and supporting myself.
Lent shows what consistency and dedication can do to a person. I would recommend for everyone to do something for Lent! Even though it may be something as small as a mustard seed, I believe we can all be closer to Christ together.
By giving up my ways, I learned that I was a pretty big show-off. Everyone can change. Everyone has chances to change themselves. We can all change. Jesus gives us infinite chances to change. If we have infinite chances to change, why don’t we do it? We do not change because we are lazy and think we are perfect the way we are. I believe that limiting my time reselling has taught me a lot this Lent. I can limit the amount I resell every month so I can focus more on school and God.
Expectations are very flexible to everyone. I strictly have expectations to keep my prayers going on and being consistent with my quiet time readings. For those who have not done Lent, I seriously challenge you today to at least do it for one day. It can be something as small as a mustard seed, but God will take anything you do for Him. He appreciates anything you do for him. I hope every one of you reading will take something from this and try to apply it to your life. God is Boomin and working in you.
Dongsan Youth Group 