Thinking About God

Thinking About God…..

When I was young my family went to church a few times that I can remember… I just now remembered going to a Vacation Bible School once… I think I cried the whole time…. It didn’t make sense to me…. I think I went to church with my grandparents a few times and maybe a time or two with friends…. But going to church was kind of an event that I never really understood… I knew that it had something to do with the bible because I heard some of the old bible stories….. I also knew that it had something to do with God…. I can remember hearing some of the men at church praying in a different language (King James English)… I didn’t understand why they prayed differently than they talked normally… It always reminded me of some of the old movies that we would sometimes watch…. I remember us kids saying a prayer before before we ate some meals… It was the GodisGreatGodisGoodletus thankhimforthefoodamen lets eat! kind of prayer…. I didn’t know what it meant but we said it, sometimes…. I never remember hearing my parents pray…. I guess they didn’t know hot to speak King James english…. Nobody seemed to really believe in God…. It was just something that we did…. That was when I was really young before my parents divorced…..

After the divorce some of our neighbor friends took us to some Christian concerts…. I liked the music but I didn’t care for the guy who talked after the music…. I thought he was talking about God but in my mind if there was a God then he really hated me and my family…. So I just didn’t listen or I would just walk out and smoke a cigarette outside….. All of that was just a way for us to get away from the house at night…. I wasn’t angry…. I was just indifferent or jaded by the circumstances of life…. All I heard from the “Christians” that I knew, was how we were supposed to live our lives…. Away from church or the people who went to church everyone acted just like me…. When the were around church people they acted differently…. I never tried, because I didn’t think I measured up in the first place…. I don’t think they thought I was as good as them…. I knew that I wasn’t as good as them…..
I spent a lot of years not thinking about God…. Most of the church going folks that I knew were judgmental and condemning of people that were not like them….. And, of course I was not like them…. I remember my wife trying to go to church a few times when my oldest son was a baby…. I gave her a really hard time because I didn’t want her to give away my money and I didn’t want her to start looking down on me more than she already did….. She finally quit going to church….. We just went about our life the way it had always been….. Life had always been hard and it was getting harder as we got a little older…. The circumstances of life were getting really difficult…. Our marriage was spiraling out of control in-spite of the fact that I was determined to not put my sons through I went through when my parents got divorced…. We stayed together but I really messed it up by my stupidity….. It was hard…. The only bright spots in our life was our sons…. They were the only place where we felt and gave unconditional love….. And, we didn’t want to mess that up….. The rest was chaos……

Generally speaking I didn’t like church folks…. However, when I was coaching my son’s t-ball team, we noticed that some of the church people were really nicer that the folks that didn’t go to church…. And the most important thing that we noticed was that there kids seemed to be better kids… The church kids were polite friendly where some of the kids that didn’t go to church were always getting into trouble and they would not listen.. Our sons were very good kids but I was worried that they would turn out like me….. That is when I thought that maybe we should take our sons to church….. I definitely didn’t trust church people enough to send them there without us making sure that they weren’t mistreated… I was mistreated a lot as a kid and I was’t going to let that happen to my sons…. Us going to church didn’t have anything to do with God….. We just needed help raising our sons because we were doing to blow it by ourselves….

I guess in the back of my mind maybe there was a God because that many people said that they believed in God…. I didn’t think that all of them believed in God because I didn’t see any evidence that there was really a god in their life…..

I was hoping that there wasn’t a God because I was going to be in real trouble if there was….. I had done a lot of really bad stuff….. I had thought a lot of even worse stuff… We finally got the nerve start looking for a church to attend….. There was just one stipulation to our search… I didn’t want to go to a Baptist church…. It seemed like the worse hypocrites that I knew went to baptist churches…. They had always been the most judgmental people that I knew….. My oldest son had gone to a baptist church a few times and he wanted us to try there…. My wife talked me into going there first… I said ok but we were going to try a lot of different church until we found the right one…..

It was really strange because when we attended the church that first Sunday of 1991, we felt a sense of peace there…. There were a few genuinely really nice folks there…. I think I was expecting all of them to be like me….. Most of them were just like me and I was okay with that…. I would never let someone talk down to me or my family so I wasn’t worried about that….. But I wasn’t expecting to meet those few people who seemed to really love me and my family…. I still didn’t think about God having anything to do with us….. It wasn’t about God to me…. It was about my sons…… We liked it when people loved our sons…. We kept going to the Baptist church…. We didn’t have any loyalties to the baptist church that is just where we ended up…. We liked the people there…. I didn’t trust them but I liked them…. I knew that the church was about God and the bible, I just connect them to me…..

My first real God thought came while reading the bible to find our how to act at church and what those folks at church knew…… I didn’t get it… The bible was the most confusing book that I had ever tried to read… I didn’t understand any of it…. Most of the people at church didn’t seem to know much about the bible either….. Most of them knew the old bible stories pretty good but they didn’t seem to get it either…. Most of them were trying to find out how to act at church just like I was… But I don’t think they were really reading the bible much… I think they were trying to be like everyone else at church…. And It was working for the most part because a lot of them acted the same…. But some of them were really different…I couldn’t put my finger on what the difference was….

I kept reading the bible trying to figure it out, but it didn’t work… That is until I finally asked that if God was real that He would have to help me understand the bible….. At that moment, everything changed for me….. God somehow touched my mind and I understood what the bible was about….. It was about God…. It wasn’t about me knowing how to act or live my life…. The bible was about knowing the God of the bible…. And, I now knew this really big God experientially….. It was really disturbing for about a minute….. Then I realized that this really big God didn’t clobber me….. I knew in that moment that God loved me and He had always loved me….. I’m sure that I had a few thoughts about God before that but I don’t remember any of them…. All I could think about that moment was God and His love for me….. All I can do is think about God after that…..

The only thing that I really like to talk about now is my family and the God of the bible…. I knew from the moment that I met God that I would follow His anywhere…. I didn’t know how I was going to do that but I was going to give it my best shot…. Things got really good after I understood that Jesus Christ was that same God that I met while reading the Old Testament….. I fell so deeply in love with Jesus Christ when I understood that He died for the forgiveness of my sin(s)…. The really strange thing was that I started to love the people that Christ loved and died for….. I started to love my sons and my wife even more after I understood that I was loved by me God…. He is all I think about…. Even if I have some unholy thoughts God’s love pops back into my thoughts and those other thoughts just fade away….

Philippians 3 Chapter 3 The Priceless Value of Knowing Christ
1 Whatever happens, my dear brothers and sisters,* rejoice in the Lord. I never get tired of telling you these things, and I do it to safeguard your faith.
2 Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved. 3 For we who worship by the Spirit of God* are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort, 4 though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!
5 I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. 6 I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.
7 I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. 8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ 9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.* For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!
Pressing toward the Goal
12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. 13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,* but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
15 Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. 16 But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.
17 Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine, and learn from those who follow our example. 18 For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows they are really enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 They are headed for destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth. 20 But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. 21 He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.

Psalms 34:1-8
I will praise the Lord at all times.
I will constantly speak his praises.
2 I will boast only in the Lord;
let all who are helpless take heart.
3 Come, let us tell of the Lord’s greatness;
let us exalt his name together.
4 I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me.
He freed me from all my fears.
5 Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
no shadow of shame will darken their faces.
6 In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened;
he saved me from all my troubles.
7 For the angel of the Lord is a guard;
he surrounds and defends all who fear him.
8 Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!