At one point my faith was more artificial. It was manufactured. It centered around performance. It had a lot of sound, but not much muscle.
I think I was always looking for something—it wasn’t quite conscious, but subconsciously I knew something was missing, and I was always looking for it, but not finding it.
Early on, I thought it was all about answers. If I really, really knew my Bible. If I really understood theology and philosophy and apologetics, then I would be complete. Of course, it’s good to learn, but I found that learning more and more didn’t make me any more complete.
For a long time, I thought the answer was found in obedience. I found all kinds of obscure ways in which I wasn’t quite lining up with perfection, and worked hard to eradicate them. Hmm. It’s good to obey, but I didn’t find what I was looking for here.
I saw people around me who had supernatural experiences and gifts of various types. They stomped around like they owned the place, and for a while, I was impressed. But after a time, those things lost their glitter, and I realized this wasn’t what I was looking for.
I think the beginning of a turnaround for me was discovering that God likes me, that God likes hanging out with me. It took me a whole year just to take that in. That made it possible for me to invite Jesus into my real world where I lived every day. As I did that, I experienced something I didn’t expect: emotional healing, spiritual growth, personal transformation, new perspectives all rolled up into one.
I didn’t know it was a package deal. I never would have guessed that.
What about you? What does your journey look like?
A Spiritual Self Defense thought
Bible trivia:
Answer from last time: Elisha
New question: What happened to Elisha’s servant Gehazi when he accepted a gift from Naaman?
