Over the last few days, I've attended an event at a church that has made me look over my life and realize some of how God has been working in my life and how He still is. I want to say that I get it now, and it's a great feeling.
You see, I've always believed in God. Call me brainwashed, but I grew up in church and all of that. All my life I've sat through church services being lectured about how I need to get Saved so I could go to Heaven and listening to old men talk, in those low-toned church voices that weren't the ones they used everywhere else, about how they were so grateful that Jesus had saved them from Hell and listening to how all of us were sinners and an angry God would send us al lto Hell if we didn't come foward and say this prayer and all of that. And please, please, don't get me wrong, I'm infinitely grateful that Jesus died for my sins and everyone else's, but hearing nothing but "you need to" "you better" "you oughta" "you're gonna rot in Hell if you don't" scared me away, and even at a young age, it made me think aboujt how shallow and selfish it all seemed. It was all about getting to Heaven, for a lot of us it was for our own sakes and not for the sake of others or because it was what God wanted but because we were just scared we'd go to Hell when we died. Like I said, even at a young age, I felt conflicted about that. I wanted to be close to Go, but no one was giving me any reason other than for my own good.
Again, don't get me wrong, people I went to church with when I was younger were truly fiathful and just as filled with the Holy Spirit as anyone else, but they were older and I wasn't getting the whole picture. I have plenty of fond memories of church and the people there, but there was something missing for me at least. That's all right, because now I can look back and see that God was still working on me. He stil is now.
Over these last few years, as I got into my teens, my family stopped going to church regularly. I still went to Vacation Bible School and Sunday School and Sunday Service every now and then, but we didn't go every Sunday because of time issues and stuff. When I look back now I think it was God's way of softening my heart to Him (because all the confusion from my early church days made me more afraid of Him than anything else)while not separating me completely from people who knew Him. When I was about fifteen, I don't remember why or when, but I figured out why I had sinned and asked Jesus to come into my heart and forgive me or them and save me. I did it in the private, not in church, because I was very shy, but all the same, I did it.
However, I had been told all my life that once you accepted Jesus like, He would start to change you for the better, but I didn't feel changed. That made me wonder if I had truly been saved, because all my life in church, I had assumed there was a difnitive way of knowing whether you had been saved or not. I didn't know what it was, but all those people talked about how they knew they had been saved and forgiven and everything. It scared me. I wondered if I meant it enough, because I thought I had but also thought maybe I had missed the boat how to know you meant it too. So, for about a week, I prayed asking God if it had been real, because for some reason I needed to be reassured and knew that He alone could tell me. I remember once even asking for a clear sign. Soon after that, I had a dream. Believe me when I say I've never been one of those people who tries to figure out the meaning of their dreams, and, for fear of being called crazy, I don't usually tell people about this one. Call me crazy if you want, but this dream was literally an answer to my prayers. In it, I was walking in an field and suddenly the ground disappeared. It wasn't that I fell in a hole or anything, the ground just disappeared, forever in all directions. The sky was still above me, but the ground was replaced by fire. Nothing was on fire,just flames, infinitely wide and infinitely deep, and I was falling into them. It was like when you fall in your dream and you can feel the physical sensation of falling, except I didn't wake up like you usually do when you feel that in dreams. Instead, I felt the sensation of being caught in someone's arms,without seeing anyone in my dream, and that's when I started ascending back towards the sky. That's when I woke up, still in the middle of the night and for no other reason than that my dream had ended. I feel a little "out there" saying this, but I still truly beleive that it was God's way of saying "of course."
So what about the changes made in my life? Well, they've been slow, but God has definitely been at work in my life. I can only see that now when I look back on the last few years. Little by little, I've gotten even closer to God, now that I look back on it. I've learned more about Him, little by little, and each time it excited me to get those revelations. He's been my only comfort through a lot of family and medical problems that have happened over the last few years. He's been my strength to get to where I am in school and work. I've always been worried, and still am I little, about those things, but I've also always prayed and always clung to the fact that God had a plan for everything.
Now I see what the plan is, and in doing so, I see the point of accpeting Jesus, beyond getting to Heaven. Like I said, I'm infinitely grateful that I'll be spending etertinity with God in paradise, but I see that there is something larger than that. I see that Jesus is the plan for my life. When I say that, I mean that he is everythig good. I don't have to worry about what I should and shouldn't do, because Jesus lives in me. He is everything good, everything, so by having Him in my heart, how could my life go wrong? His love is infinite. His goodness is infinite. His power is infinite. It boggles my mind to think about just how good He is. It amazes me to no end that He loves me his much to do have done all this is my life and that He's not finished! And He loves everyone that much! He's not finished! That's so exciting, I can't even explain it. I want everyone to know this and realize how much He loves them, because it really is amazing. Jesus is in me, so I'm going to do my best to let His love in me overflow into my love for others so that they can see it too and let their lives be so much better. I know God will work all the details of my life out now, like how I'm going to do in school, what I'm going to do for a living, where I'm going to live, if/when/who I'm going to marry, whether or not I'll have children and how many, who'll come into my life and so on. And all along, I'll get to share the love and goodness of God, just like Jesus did when He was here on Earth. I'm still young--19 next month--so I feel so blessed to have that security in my life this early. I can't wait to see where God is going to take the rest of my life, if He doesn't happen to call me Home sooner than expected. And honestly, it makes me sad to think that people here would miss me and be hurt, but whenever God wants me to come to Heaven with Him, it'll be all right.
Now, I know I'm going to stray from this and worry and not be as loving and friendly to others, because that is the nature of Man. God is everything good, and we were made in His image, but we screw that up. Adam and Eve screwed it up in the Garden of Eden and we still let our sin separate from the love and goodness that is God. God doesn't punish us, He challeneges us to shape us and make us better, but He doesn't punish us. We punish ourselves by staying away from Him. He gave us free will so we could truly come back to Him, and we don't choose to, we end up away from Him for eternity, in Hell. But=, anyway, I know I'll stray a little, but I'll try my best and God'll do the rest. He lives in me, and He is infinitely powerful. Best of all, He loves me enough to interupt me when I'm worng. It's just another thing that boggles my mind about the goodness of God.
My greatest hope and prayer in life is that everyone on Earth will know God, an in doing so, know the epitome and source of all love ("God is love" 1 John 4:8). Imagine a world where everyone had love in their hearts instead of anger, bitterness and hatred.
So, I get it now, and...WOW, just wow.
God bless you all!
