Anyway, as this young boy grew up he began to allow other people and situations to influence him and his relationship with God began to waver. The boy began to really question the motives of people’s hearts and actions when it came to following God: Why do people say they love God just on Sundays? Does God really love me? Do I really love God? What difference does loving God really make in my life? But in reality, what he was doing was questioning the motives and attitudes of his own heart.
As you can imagine, by allowing these questions to continue in his heart, the boy moved farther and farther away from his relationship with God. As a teenager, the boy tried to completely throw God out of his life. But no matter how hard he tried to disregard God and no matter what he did to fill his “God-shaped hole” with sex, drugs and alcohol, adventure, music, and indifference, God always remained, waiting with open arms for that time when the boy might come to his senses and return to his first love. It took 27 years for the boy to realize that he’d hit rock bottom and he’d done it all on his own.
Folks … there are signs of God’s love are all around us: the majesty of the Smokey Mountains, the peacefulness of Cummins Falls, the beauty of the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, and the splendor of a Colorado sunset. They are all part of God’s Creation, all expressions of His overflowing love for each of us … something that man has yet to duplicate or clone.
We are part of God’s creation. But we are set aside from everything else that God has created. God loves us so much that He’s given us the choice, the freewill, to love Him back. That’s how we’re different than anything else He’s created. But we, like Adam and Eve and every person in between, so often choose to ignore God rather than to have a relationship with him.
Just in case you didn’t know, God has a Covenant with Humanity. The Bible is the love story of His Covenant – a love story with humanity despite our sin and choice to ignore Him. And all He wants, His heart’s desire, is that you and I have a mutual love relationship with Him. God offers us this relationship: a relationship of based and built on grace. Through Jesus, God offers this transforming relationship with us. Jesus models a life transformed through relationship with God. It is something given freely yet not deserved or worked for. That is grace defined and it breaks down like this:
God offers a friendship based on grace.
God pursues us throughout our lives.
And God’s grace stems from God’s unconditional love – His grace through our faith.
Here’s the kicker:
We can never be too good or too bad for God’s grace.
And nothing can separate us from God’s love.
There are numerous reasons why the boy I’ve spoken about … and we … ignore God’s love. Ignorance is one reason. The boy didn’t quite understand the relationship that God was offering. All he saw was religion and from an early age he didn’t want religion, rules, or “cans and can’ts.” He was ignorant to how a relationship is totally different from a religion. His ignorance of relationship made his desire to be in control stronger.
If the boy didn’t give in to someone else’s “ideas” of how he should live his life or to whom he should give his life, he could be in control and make decisions based on his own truths. By being in control, he was neither accountable to nor responsible for anyone else, particularly, a God who he’d “never seen, spoken to, or heard from.”
Ignorance and his desire to be in control only led to more doubts about the reality of God and His existence. He’d ask questions like:
Was a loving God merely a figment of somebody’s imagination cause all I see through religion are fear, guilt, and shame?
God is only for weak people who need a crutch. Why do I need Him? Everything that I’ve ever accomplished in life has been because I’ve had to drive to accomplish the task.
And if God is so great, trustworthy, and cares so much about me, why does He let bad things happen to me?
What have I done to make God want to get even with me?
So the boy’s doubts eventually led him to fall under pressure from others who were ignorant as well. He went with the flow most times – spread his wings, sowed his wild oats. Sometimes he led others astray. Either way, he moved farther and farther from God. He allowed himself to be molded by his “friends and heroes” because choosing to follow God only made him feel less cool, out of touch, and restricted. Peer pressure can do deplorable things to a person when that person has decided to say yes to certain activities and no to God.
But there are definite results of ignoring God’s love. There are costs one will eventually have to pay. As I said before, the boy felt a deep-seated emptiness that he tried to fill with things: relationships, alcohol, drugs, sex, music, indifference but the more he tried to indulge, the less he felt fulfilled. No “feel-good” experience could truly make him feel good. Pain and guilt consumed him as he chose to live against God’s image in him.
He knew right from wrong his whole life. No question about it … but he continued to choose to go against the will of God. He continued to walk his own path at that point because it was in his comfort zone. It was what he knew but he knew no peace. As a result, he had a poor self-image, low self-esteem, and bad feelings about who he was engulfed him. Eventually he thought he was of no worth despite everything he did to make himself feel better. He even contemplated suicide and murder. He hated who he was and he hated others simply for existing in his world. And he hated God for creating him.
Thoughts of eliminating his problems were an everyday occurrence.
Fade to Black
“Life it seems to fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters no one else
I have lost the will to live
Simply nothing more to give
There is nothing more for me
Need the end to set me free”
(Metallica)
The Waiting
Would you think that I am crazy?
If I said I want to die?
Help me Jesus, can you save me?
Nothing here can make me cry
I’ve been thinking about leaving
I’ve been thinking hard and long
Every person that comes near me
Are reasons why I write my song
(Malcolm Rios)
But because certain men and women, who God had placed specifically in the boy’s life, lived what the Bible said, the boy began to see things differently. He was being drawn to accepting the love relationship God was offering him. He began by choosing to be open to God.
And I challenge you to live as though God is real. Be open to it. Believe He communicates and that He will communicate with you. Listen for His still, small voice. Listen to other Christians and what their experiences may offer you in the way of advice and encouragement in your own walk.
You’ve been given an awesome opportunity to hear, first hand, from a wide variety of people who’ve experienced God’s love and you’ll hear about the struggles they’ve faced with their own faiths. Believe that God is waiting for you to talk to Him and He’s eager to listen. Open up to Him. He has the greatest ears and heart in the universe.
I want you to close your eyes for the next few minutes and just listen and think on what I’ve got to say. Take a chance and trust that God has a great purpose for your life. Take a moment to think about all God’s blessings in your life. If you honestly assess them, you won’t be able to take just a moment. God has started something good in you and He will complete that good work!
Take a chance and receive the message being personally delivered to you right now: God wants a relationship with you. Take a chance and imagine what would be different if you were to accept God’s love right now. What would you hope to receive by accepting God’s love? What one thing would you be able to let go of by accepting God’s love?
Folks … the person or people who turned you onto this blog and my heart’s desire are for you to simply say yes to the love relationship God offers. Believe me when I say that saying yes to God is an act of faith. It’s a daily act of faith. We have to decide to offer our lives to God – to put our lives and futures in His hands – not as a religion but as a personal relationship that can be cultivated and developed over a lifetime.
Conversion begins the moment we say yes to God. And “conversion” is allowing God’s love and purpose to turn our lives around, to redirect us. And turning our lives around is a lifelong process but it’s a process we don’t have to go through alone. You can open your eyes now.
If you haven’t figured it out already, the boy in this story is me. At the time I accepted God’s offer of a love relationship, I was an empty, angry man who’d thought that serving in the military, going to college, and filling my body and mind with all sorts of experiences would fill the hole in my heart. None of it did.
A friend of mine knew that I was empty. He asked me, one day, if he could pray for me. My answer was yes but my thoughts were, “What the hell? It couldn’t hurt.” That was the smartest thing I’d done in my life. I was open to God at that point and a week later, I went to church for the first time in 15 years. At church, God, through the preacher, gave a simple salvation message just for me and as the talk ended, I raised my hand, went to the alter, and gave my life to God.
Has it been a walk in the park? To be honest with you … yeah, it’s been good. Sure, there have been some times when life has thrown curveballs at me but for the most part, God has blessed me far more than I deserve, much less, would have ever dreamed of. And you know what, with God; you can still hit a grand slam off a curveball.
I really believed I’d be in prison or dead by the time I was 25 but God has a bigger purpose for me. I never thought I’d find someone who’d share their life with me but last year, God, brought Amanda into my life and two absolutely beautiful children, Sophia and Angus. Tell me that isn’t a blessing.
I’ve done things, been places, met people, and had my life changed in more ways over the last 15 years because of my relationship with God. He has sustained me and there is no doubt … I say again, there is no doubt in my heart … that God is who He says He is and He loves me … He loves you … like He says He does.
In closing, I, like Adam and Eve, denied God for as long as I could. I hid from God, like them, naked, afraid, and ashamed. I knew I was separated from His love. Yet, God searched for Adam and Eve. He called their names, “Adam, Eve, where are you?” He did the same for me, “Malcolm, where are you? I want a relationship with you?” The same is true for all of you. God is seeing you out and He calls your names as well saying:
- “_________, where are you? I love you and want a relationship with you.”
- “_________, where are you? I love you and want a relationship with you.”
- “_________, where are you? I love you and want a relationship with you.”
God is inviting you to say yes to the offer of a relationship.
What will be your response?
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