Through the past month, I have had so many miracles happen in my life. I know what I believe better than I ever had in my life. It was like the best possible situation God could've put me in. As everyone who read my blog post from last month knows, I was seriously struggling with knowing what I believed. It couldn't have came at a better time. With my school year ending, I started to have the time to research everything I believed and looking at opposing viewpoints and being able to defend what I believe from those opposing viewpoints. I was struggling with being nowhere where I wanted to be, so I ended up getting depressed. I wasn't where I wanted to be academically, physically, and most importantly spiritually. The situations God put me in a position where I was required to continually learn more about his word and what he wants for my life. I have believed and have been ridiculed for my faith not only from strangers, but also some of my closest friends. It hurt, but I wouldn't show them how much it hurt me for them to ridicule the most important in my life. But as I went through high school, this happened less and less. I wasn't upset by it. In fact I had been so distracted from God, I hadn't even noticed, but God put me in a situation that made me realize how far I had went from God. I was working on Rube Goldberg, one of my closest friends asked me if I truly believed that God love all of us with another one of my friends around. When I answered, "yes," the other friend said she had forgotten that I was religious. It made me stop for a second in shock. One of my closest friends had forgotten I even believed in God, much less was a Christian, if I could've called myself that. I was reading my Bible only a couple times a week. I wasn't listening to God ever. I would only think about God when I was at church. I was neglecting to worship God wherever I was. It was a wake up call. It has stuck with me for a really long time. It made me realize how much I was missing in my spiritual walk.
For months leading up to that moment, I had prayed for guidance in my spiritual walk and to help me find what he wanted me to do. I prayed for a sign that I was on the right track and that I was doing what he wanted me to do. Well, I never saw a sign and never thought about what that meant for my life. I had finally prayed for God to guide me and he has taken me on a journey since then. He had surrounded me with people who have made me a better person. It has always amazed me how God uses everyone for different purposes and in most cases it's never where you would expect him to. The Bible tells us that God uses the most unlikely of people. One of the examples of this and the most important is the birth of Christ. God could've chosen to have had Jesus born in a castle to the queen, but instead, he chose Mary to give birth to him in the manger. Even this was full persecution for how Mary was treated and what she went through, but God protected her, just as God protects all of us if it is part of his greater plan.
When Jesus was on the earth, he was persecuted and ridiculed. I have talked about how Christians are to fight against the world. If you consider yourself a Christian and are not ridiculed for your faith, you are FOOLING yourself. There's no way around it. I was not being ridiculed for my faith and people around me were forgetting that I even went to church. I believe God is around us everyday, everywhere, but it is up to us to recognize his presence. The people that God used to show me that I was on the wrong trail were not the ones I would've expected him to use, but it definitely caught my attention.
The Upper Room Cafe in Osgood, IN is owned and operated by Ken MacPhee. He has travelled across the country talking about Jesus Christ. Though his time traveling, every member of his family and himself have been attacked for what he believes just because of what he teaches. If we aren't being either verbally persecuted or physically persecuted for our faith, we aren't fighting against the world, which we are commanded to do. Our God is good. He is powerful and just to forgive us our sins, but that is not to say sin should be belittled and not be something to avoid. You don't get to heaven on works. If you are doing things you believe to be Godly just to get to heaven you are fooling yourself again, because you aren't going to get there. It is something deeper than that. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." This tells us that we can't get to the Father through our own works, but through the forgiveness that we are given through Jesus Christ. All we have to do is accept his forgiveness through a desire to avoid sin and prayerfully asking God for his forgiveness. We should also ask for forgiveness for our sins. We deny God's forgiveness through dwelling on our sins that he has already forgiven us for and through continuing in our ways of the sin of the world, so we should have the desire not to sin, so that we will be able to one day join Christ in heaven.
Thanks,
Seth Pohle