My entire life I have known about Jesus. My family has always been very dedicated to Christianity, and I literally grew up in the church. I have known most all of the basic stories of our religion from the Creation all the way to the Revelation. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being real to me. It stopped being my saving grace, and turned into a fairy tale. The Jesus that I knew growing up was not at all the Jesus that I would come to give my life to.
Growing up, my Jesus was very hard to please. My Jesus was difficult to understand. The Jesus of my childhood needed me to work as hard as I could possibly work to earn grace and favor. This Jesus was weak and pretty. He never became angry, was always happy, and would grant every prayer I prayed, if I only prayed and worked hard enough. This Jesus that I came to know quite obviously HATED me. I know that this may sound ridiculous to some, but this is what I knew at the time. See the thing is, I never felt forgiven. I never felt like I could do enough to please Him. I had a very challenging home life, and prayed my heart out for so many things, but never even felt the peace or comfort that I was promised by my family members. I must have been bad and committed some foreign sin that I didn't even know was a sin. I would beg God to forgive me for whatever this sin was, but to just please hear me! I looked around my church and saw people with no problems, and who were quite possibly the most perfect people ever. I saw people that God was blessing with abundance and who were so happy. I wondered what I was doing wrong. Christianity to me was being the perfect person who could not possibly even think about committing a sin. For some reason, no matter how hard I tried, I could not NOT commit sin.
So I quit trying.
I started to realize that the "perfect" people I went to church with were not perfect, and had terrible flaws and horrible problems behind their pretty facade. I quit going to church, and pretty much turned into a person that I did not recognize. Without going into the gory details, I gave up on this Jesus because I thought I would go to hell anyway, so what was the point of trying so hard. I definitely did not want to be one of the people in my church that lived their lives how they wanted during the week and then got "holy" on Sunday.
I got married and moved as far away from my comfort zone as you can imagine. A new town where the only people I knew were my husband and his handful of family members. We had our first child a little over a year later and I sunk into a deep post-partum depression. When my baby turned two, and I was still so depressed that I did not want to function, I decided that I needed to find a church to fill the hole that was in me. After visiting several, and not finding one that I felt okay with, I quit trying. Then one day, a new friend invited us to church to hear her new pastor. It took me a few weeks, but finally I did.
This is where I finally heard about the real Jesus. A Jesus that I had never heard of. This Jesus said that in this life I would have troubles, but that he would get me through them. This Jesus knew that I could never live the perfect life, so He lived it for me. This Jesus knew that I could never work hard enough to be forgiven for my sins, so He died for me.
What a revelation! It has changed me forever. This Jesus is so real.
I realized that I did not know the Jesus the pastor was talking about. Of course, I always believed that Jesus came to earth as a baby and died for my sins. But this Jesus was funny and could be sarcastic. He got angry. He felt deep sympathy and compassion. He hung out with people of questionable reputations. This Jesus was relatable! I looked at my life and knew that this Jesus may not make my life perfect in every way, and that I was going to have problems, but I was going to get through it all if I would just dedicate my life to Christ.
That's just a (very) brief summary of my wonderful testimony, but I want to share this Jesus with others. In this blog I plan to share the story of Jesus a little at a time through Bible study. I hope that you will join me. Feel free to comment and join in on the study!
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