I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know God, talk to Him, or sense He had a plan for my life; but I also held a mistaken belief that if I spoke and acted “rightly”, I could earn God’s love. Jesus wasn’t my Savior - He was my “meal ticket.” I believed God would reward me if I had the right answers in Sunday school, obeyed my parents and played nicely with my sister.
My belief was broken by two events: my parents’ divorce when I was eight and my mother’s remarriage five years later. My family’s breakdown had not been part of my plan. I began to resent the God I had been striving to please. When I was sixteen, I told God I wanted Him to leave me alone.
For two years I rebelled, trying to lose my pain in alcohol and drugs. Two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, I had a close call with death. I awakened in my room, when I probably shouldn’t have. My Bible, which had sat untouched on a bookshelf for months, was lying open on the floor. Curiously, I skimmed the page, and my eyes rested on a verse - Psalm 118:18, “I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord.” I felt God say to me, “Why are you wasting your life?”
For the first time, I could see my sin, and helplessness to save myself. Yet my Father had not allowed me to die in my sin. Instead, He had poured out His grace and mercy, reconciling me to Himself. Finally, I could see God’s plan for my life. How different it was from my plan! The Father’s plan had me dependant on His grace and devoted to His service.
The last six years have been so joyful! They haven’t been easy. They’ve been far from perfect, but I’ve come to understand that the Father doesn’t promise to give us “perfect” lives. He promises instead to make us perfectly conformed to the image of Jesus, using the hard things in our lives to shape and grow us into more beautiful and Christ-like followers.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into the grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:1, 2
