I Met God The Father And This Happened
I’ve never been a fan of performance-based relationships. You know, the ones where you have to act a certain way to be worthy of the other parties' love or consistency? Yup that one!
Perhaps this was what delayed my walk with Christ and knowledge or hunger for the things of God. Because I certainly didn't think I could match His standard of Holiness, so why try?
My first true understanding of God was from the church in secondary school. I think that's when everything people said about God started to sink in, it was definitely when I bought my first bible.
Every time I was preached to about God, it was from a place of how Great this being was, how untouchable, and how there were certain standards I had to live by as a Christian to attain his love.
As a 14-year-old, I couldn't phantom what people meant by occult powers, or how if I dared to eat in my dream it meant that I had been initiated into another world. I watched deliverance services in school that scared me and unknowingly built the foundation that became my knowledge of Christ.
Like many young people, I had to find christ on my own! My false understanding of God was a stronghold I had to overcome. My heart just couldn't connect with this God even though I still talked to him often because I was raised to do so.
But I got tired of running, my mistakes, brokenness, and sometimes outright foolishness had become too heavy for me to carry alone and that’s when I met God the Father.
I wonder why no one ever told me about God the Father. Why wasn't there a focus on God’s good nature, why weren't more preachers focusing on God’s love which is the foundation of Christianity?
A lot of people say God is good but do not truly believe it. How can you trust a God that you're afraid of? A God you can’t speak openly with about your fears and concerns? How can you trust someone when you do not think they have your best interest at heart?
This is what so many Christians are struggling with today. A performance-based relationship where you go to church and do everything but truly never leave your heart in God’s hands. Because sometimes we do not want to admit that even though we say we trust this God, we probably do not.
When I met God the Father, the first thing He asked of me was that I reveal my thoughts about Him to Him. Because if we were going to have a relationship I needed to be open about the bitterness I carried in my heart even towards Him. About the pain, betrayal, rejection and cycles, He let me go through when He could have used His mighty powers to stop me. How my moments of happiness didn't seem to last long, yet I was in a department in church! I had spent so many years not truly believing I was loved by God and thereby living like I was separated from this love.
It was in my moment of surrender that I truly realized that the worship of the heart and the worship of the hands tell two different stories.
In surrender, I realized that all those years of hurt would have never happened if the foundation was right. If I knew God as the good father that He is and not as this monster the teachers in school painted him out to be.
To think that all those years of performing meant nothing to him, that the only requirement was to have my heart set on him. That the love I so desperately sought was the foundation of his being.
God is love, God is faithful, God is good, God is kind, God is merciful, God is a healer, God is protector, A redefiner, An anchor.
I just wish sometimes we would focus on the knowledge of God’s nature which brings light to every darkness. Oh! the many mistakes we would avoid if we only knew this. God’s love is unconditional. Our perception of God will impact the next generation, if we do not see the good nature of God, we would spread fear as the core of the gospel which is against the nature of God. God truly understands our weaknesses, it's written everywhere in the bible.
As I continue to grow and experience life in different phases, God shows up in different forms. God the friend, God the advocate, God the provider, God the healer, God the deliverer, God the peacekeeper, God the strong one, God the ever-present One, God the good father!
