One really interesting thing about my journey to where I am today, having a personal relationship with God and a deeper understanding of life, is that it was always right in front of me but I still couldn´t see it.
I remember once when I was in church and a pastor said that there is nothing in the world that is more offensive than when you talk about Jesus. You can talk to people about meditation, reincarnation, love, destiny or whatever but when you mention the word "Jesus" people will cringe (unless they already believe in him). The Bible explains that the reason for this is that there is two powers at work in the world. One power is good and the other is everything but good. That other power will always do anything it can to keep you away from Jesus, to keep you away from anything that is good.
Jesus once said "I am the way and the truth and the life." (John 14:6 NIV) I´ve wondered many times how it was possible that I grew up in a Christian country, that has the cross on it´s national flag and everything, and I still had absolutely no clue about who Jesus was. After I started to believe in God I realized that I had always sensed the presence of God in my life, but I had called it something else. I didn´t like to talk about God, that word made me uncomfortable. Instead I would say things like: "I believe in destiny, but I don´t believe in God." Today I know that it was God all along that I believed in, but without knowing it.
Sometimes it seems like people look in all the wrong places, they search for meaning and happiness and fullfillment in everything in life except in God. This made me wonder how it´s possible to be on the search for truth and still not find it? I don´t think this would be possible unless there is a second power in the world, another power than God, an opposing power that keeps pulling us in the other direction. This power pulls us away from God and away from everything that is good, true and right. You notice this every time you try to do the right thing, it´s difficult. It´s always easier to do the wrong thing. There is a power struggle.
The Bible describes the situation like this: "Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?" (Mark 8:18 NIV) This is really interesting. The Bible goes on to say that nobody comes to faith in God unless God himself pulls the person toward himself. It´s only when God opens up our eyes and ears that we can understand truth, truth that might have been right infront of us the whole time but we never looked closer at it.
When I turned twenty I started to feel like the most important thing in life was to figure out what "the point" with life is. I felt like I couldn´t make the big decisions in life that I needed to make before I had figured out what life is all about. What am I here for? This was the first time in life that I was truly open to anything, no matter what the truth was I wanted to know it.
I searched through many different religions and philosophies but none of them seemed to have it all figured out. There were big parts of each religion that just didn´t make sense, that allowed violence and seemed to lack love. I looked at every single religion I could find information about, except Christianity. The reason I thought there was no point in taking a closer look at Christianity was that I thought I knew everything there was to know about this religion and I didn´t like it. I really didn´t like this Jesus guy, I thought it was so weird that he "had to" die on a cross and that this was celebrated. I also thought going to a Christian church was one of the most boring experiences ever. I was very sure in my own mind that Christianity was wrong about life, so there was no point in looking in that direction.
At age 22 I wanted to travel and work abroad so I took the first job I could find and ended up in a place I would never have picked myself, Cincinnati,USA. My first thought was: "where in the world is that, I´ve never heard of this place before." This was the first time in life that I really let destiny lead me to wherever I was supposed to be. Long story short, one year later I came back to Scandinavia having found "the point" with life. I had found God and it turned out Jesus was the most amazing person who ever lived because he was God himself walking on earth. It still took me many years to figure out the details of what this meant for my life, but I was finally on the right track. Sometime around age 20 God probably decided to start pulling me toward himself and at age 22 I had discovered the truth. God had opened my eyes and opened my ears.
Today I still have a ton of questions about why God does certain things and about his timing, but I know what I need to know. I know what my purpose is, I know the meaning of life and I know what I´m called to do. I feel more excited than ever to get to spend the rest of my life answering that call. I know I exist to love God, to love myself and to love other people with all of my heart. I also know that God loves me, more than any human ever will in this life.
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