My "Grace Story"

I became a Christian when I was 6 years old.  I know....sounds so dumb, right?  Are you old enough to make decisions like that when you're only six years old, or are you just kind of rolling with whatever your parents believe?   Well for me, I'd say "both", and I'll go on to describe what I mean in a bit.  Anyway, when I was 6, the church that we were members of at the time put on this big children's event with music and plays and speakers, in an attempt to present the gospel to us in a kid-friendly way.

So I remember hearing the message, mostly understanding it, knowing that it was something my parents believed and had accepted, knowing that hell certainly sounded scary, and that was no place I wanted to go, and deciding, "Guess I'd better do this".  Luckily, my parents and my church knew that the decision warranted more thought and consideration than that, even if you were only six, and so I went through a short class at the church, that basically laid out the gospel message in terms that a six year old could understand.  Wanna hear the Gospel Message for Six Year Olds?  Ironically, it's the exact same thing as the Gospel Message for Thirty Year Olds:

- There's God, and He's perfect (He has no sin)
- There's us, and we're not (we're full of sin)
- God can't be around sin
- God loves us and DESIRES to be around us
- The sin's gotta go in order for that to happen
- We can't get rid of it ourselves
- Uh Oh...sounds like a problem
- Actually, it's not, because God sent Jesus to take the sin AWAY from us, so that we can still have a relationship with Him, DESPITE our sin
- We have to believe that and accept that
- Problem Solved

Anyway, that all made sense to me.  It made perfect sense, in fact. So I made the decision to accept Jesus as my savior.

And then after that, not a lot happened for a while.

Then when I was probably 14 or so, I started questioning EVERYTHING about what I believed.  I wasn't sure at all anymore if God was real, if Jesus was real, if the Bible was real, if Heaven or Hell was real...all of it seemed a bit hokey for a while.  I was really scared that I was "believing" something that was all a lie.  I was also really scared though to NOT believe it, in case it was true.   So I spent a whole summer pouring over books...reading anything and everything I could get my hands on that presented evidence...both philisophical and physical...of why it wasn't crazy to believe what I believed.  Why it, in fact, was very well-founded, and rational.  That was kind of a weird, difficult, and draining summer for me, but at the end of it, I felt like I could truly say that my faith was my own, and not just my parents.

And then after that, not a lot happened for a while.

I went to high school.  I drank beer and went to parties.  No one would really ever have any reason to "suspect" that I may be a Christ-follower.

Then, I went to college, and Nason stayed home in Austin, and pretty much NONE of my friends came with me to A&M, and I knew NO one, so for the first month or so, I felt a little lonely, and lost, and suddenly very aware of how dependent I was on PEOPLE (specifically Nason, and my parents) to make me feel happy, secure, and content.  I had a renewed desire to kind of "get to know" God again.  I started attending a Bible study at A&M, and really began to grow a lot in my relationship with Him.  I learned a lot that semester about what it meant to depend on HIM, and not on other people, to make me whole.

AND then....I drank some more beer, and went to some more parties, and kind of forgot about God for a while.

Don't hear me wrong by the way...if you're in college, and of age, by all means, drink some beer and go to some parties.  It'll be ok.  Of much graver concern than the beer and parties, was the fact that nothing in me was seeking God whatsoever during that time...figuring out what He wanted from me, DOING it, becoming more like Him, telling others about Him...those were the furthest things from my mind.

Then Nason and I decided it was time to quit being lukewarm...either we WERE people who followed Jesus, or we weren't.  We decided that we were, and that our new priority was going to be to live for Him.  So we did, and we do, and in the last 8 years, I have continued to backslide here and there....going through periods where God is really really growing me, and changing me, and showing me new things every day, and then going through periods where I am just so spiritually lazy, and so caught up in day to day life, that I forget about God for a while.

And that's it.

Which is why sometimes I feel like my "grace story" sucks.  I hear about people all the time who were addicted to crack..well ok I guess I don't really hear about people ALL the time that were addicted to CRACK...but I hear about people who had drug addictions, alchohol addictions, crazy horrible lives...and then they accepted Jesus and their lives were turned around 180 degrees.  They have these awesome stories where it is SO obvious how Jesus changed their lives, and I sometimes feel like I don't have that.

BUT...

I've come to two really important realizations, and if you didn't pay attention to anything else, I hope you pay attention to this:

- Sin is sin, and it's what keeps us from God.  Maybe I was never a prostitute living in a crack den, but I may as well have been.  In God's eyes, no sin is better or worse than another, and by continuously turning my back on Him, continuously finding other things that were/are more worthy of my time and attention than Him, by continuously making MY priorities more important than HIS priorities, by losing my temper, by gossiping, by being greedy and stingy with my time and money, I'm offending God, and therefore I too need/needed someone to take my sin away from me.  Jesus did.  THAT's grace.  

- God loves me too much to leave me the way I am, so when I think back over my life, every time I've gone through periods where I'm oblivious to God, he has ALWAYS reeled me back in. He has ALWAYS continued to grow and shape me. He has ALWAYS met me where I'm at, and then shown me how to go from there, to where HE wants me to go.  Every day, He works on making me more and more like Him.   THAT'S grace.

And that, folks, is my "Grace Story".