Lindsay’s Story

Have you ever felt like all God seems to do is live up in the sky and watch everything you do, ticking off rights and wrongs and waiting for you to make a mistake?  Or maybe you wonder how, if God exists and is good, all of this suffering in your life and others’ makes Him someone worth following?  While I can’t say I never have those same feelings sometimes, I do know that having a personal relationship with the God I know has been the source of greatest fulfillment and joy in my life.

For a majority of my life I believed in a god that judged everything I did and could not care about someone like me.  I dealt with a difficult family life and watched my friends suffer through some terrible circumstances.  I simply could not see how an all-powerful god could stand by and watch me suffer so much.  I did not want anything to do with a god like that.  I was bitter, angry and in a lot of pain.  I decided that even if I believed God existed, He was not going to be a part of my life.

So when I came to college I made no effort to seek God.  I was not interested in church, reading The Bible or anything that had to do with what I would classify as “religious activities.”  I wanted a fresh start and I thought getting away from home and finally doing whatever I wanted to do would be the answer to all of my problems.  I did get that “fresh start,” just not in the way I had planned.

Through the encouragement of friends I joined a Christian group on campus and started attending a bible study in my dorm.  I found myself seeing the true nature of God for the first time.  Instead of this cruel, judgmental figure I had always pictured, the true God loved me so much He sent his son to die for me.  This wasn’t a God who watched me make mistakes that I would pay for later, this was a God that knew the awful things in my past and present and still wanted a relationship with me.  His sacrifice on the cross was the only way that the terrible things I had done and were done to me could be forgiven and transformed.  When I decided to follow Christ and accept the forgiveness provided by His death I gained a peace in my life that I had never experienced before.  I am accepted, freed from my past, and secure in my present.

Even with this new understanding of God, I don’t have all the answers.  I can’t tell you why bad things happen to good people.  I just know that there is a God and He desperately wants to know me.  He wants the best life possible for me and I know that I have it because I have a relationship with Him.

 

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