I didn't go to church for about 10 years. Now I haven't analyzed dates and times, could be 8 or 12 years but quite a long time in any case.
My wife and I had met at the youth club at the church or maybe at the youth group, it's all the same really. I was four years older than her. Still am I think. She was in her senior year and I was a guy who had dropped out of college after a tumultuous marriage and divorce, and was volunteering with the youth group. We had nothing in common but she was a tender ear and I was a broken soul who needed to talk.
We got married about the same time the youth pastor left, the head pastor changed, and all the connection we had to the church kinda evaporated. I'm oversimplifying and mashing some events together but eventually we ended up in no man's land. Somehow we just drifted off by ourselves with no one there to grab the rope and pull us back.
I think I've always been good at religion. Justice and order and rules make me feel safe. Everything has its place. Up to this point in life relationship was fairly foreign to me. We coexisted peacefully at home in my growing up years most of the time, but I wouldn't describe it as warm and loving. Relationship with God was just as alien a concept. 20 plus years I've been in church to this point and my view of God is very legalistic.
So now I'm in this desert. I've walked away from God. Failed so many times that the only thing left to do is quit. Maybe this was the sane decision. My life so far running the circle round growing then failing, growing and failing, was killing me. So I took the off ramp. This isn't the right answer but what is?
This was a temporary fix. A temporary hiatus that went on year after year. What else could I do? I can't find success following God, and I can't stand to fail again. I have no recourse except to quit. And quit I did. I didn't totally keep this to myself though. I began to talk to God. Eventually I made an impossible deal with God. I will come back to you when I know for sure it's a forever deal. Only if I know one hundred percent that there is no possibility of failure will I come back.
Over and over again the pangs of guilt would hit. Or, what if I die before I come back? Or the rapture? Or??? I knew the agreement I had made with God was something He could never fulfill. I knew it was impossible, yet what else could I do?
Though I lived thru it I'm not sure how I ended up coming to God. There was a void in my life that was eating me alive. And eat it did. Til there was almost no life left. There is a part of me that cannot live apart from Christ. Maybe not a part but the whole. But I didn't know. Maybe I was always in His hands but I didn't know it. Maybe I had to go through so much darkness to know I couldn't live without the light. Whatever the case I learned something priceless.
I learned relationship with Christ. In my hundreds and hundreds of talks with God relationship was born. Those talks were so honest. There was no religious mumbo-jumbo. I would tell Him I wasn't ready yet. He would sometimes reply it's ok. I couldn't accept that, I was in the wrong. Yet God said it was ok. So not only was relationship born but my religion was destroyed. This was the God of love. I was more important to Him than my disobedience.
He is no teacher standing in front of a class room expounding the virtues of being Christian. He knows me. Knows where I've been and where I'm going. In the middle of my disobedience He stepped in and showed me what a lifetime of church never could.
This is the God I serve. This is the God who continues to destroy all my notions of who He is. The more I come to know God the more I understand how little I know of Him.
So how has He affected your life? What ways has He worked that maybe even now you are struggling to wrap your head around? If you are truly honest do your experiences with God match up with the religion you have been taught? Do they exceed or have you been taught very well? Though we may see God many different ways, His character is perfectly spelled out in the love verses of I Corinthians 13.
Replacing the word love with God, because I John 1:8 says God is love, first Corinthians 13 verses 4-10 say: God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not self seeking, God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
This is an amazing God!
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