Knock-Knock!

"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock."

-Revelation 3:20

I always try to keep it real and as personal as I can with all of my BOSS’s despite the judgment that may come along with it. I wasn’t always a fan of God. #YeahIsaidIt. At one point in my life, I actually thought I was an atheist. Then I realized it wasn’t that I was an atheist because I believe God existed. However, I just didn’t want to choose Him. This stage was around 9^th grade for me.

What most people don’t know is that I went to 9^th grade twice. I went through a school transfer and at the time I could care less about my grade so if I remember correctly, I failed about two classes. With the transferring of schools, the school I was going to wasn’t having it and I had to repeat the entire grade over again. Not my proudest moment because I’m hard on myself and I was always an A+/B student growing up. However, I was so frustrated with God that I could have cared less where my life was taking me because it’s not like He was anywhere to be found (or so I believed at the time).

One of my main challenges at the time was that I had an ego and didn’t know about it. God? So people wanted me to believe that this man they never saw had so much power that He created ME and knows MY beginning and end before I do? All these continuous bad things that occur in my life…if God was real then why would any of these negative things happen? Most of all, what was His point in creating me, just to have me live on this earth unhappy? Even on the days that I did feel happy I thought it was because of an accomplishment based on myself, not because He had anything to do with it. I started getting bullied about my weight, about my hair because no one wanted to believe it was real. I had girls threaten me, wanting to fight me without even knowing my name. Where was God then?

My parents spent a lot of my childhood at church. From when I was a baby they were ministering across the country and helping to change people’s lives. However, I didn’t see people’s lives changing for the better at the time, just mine not mattering to others. I grew resentful. I didn’t just only grow resentful towards my parents; I especially grew resentful towards God. My parents were so hung up on Him that I felt forgotten about. So why would I choose Him? Shoot, I was thinking…what has He done for me lately?

I started carrying a switchblade. I even thought about joining the Bloods simply because I wanted to belong. Now for those of you who know me personally, I can only imagine your faces right now. But yes, this is how deep it was. I lost myself in trying to create who I thought I wanted to be. I’m not even really sure what made me give in. It could have honestly been prayers from other people (because I know my mother was interceding every day). I even remember having an argument with my mother in our kitchen and I said, “Why do you always talk about God? This is why I don’t talk to you because not everything has to be about Him”. I could tell it genuinely hurt her feelings because she probably never realized she related most things to Him. However, that’s all she knew. I didn’t understand that then but I most definitely do now. But anyway, back to my breakthrough…

Like I said, I don’t exactly know what it was but there’s one day I remember like yesterday. I got caught sneaking out to go to a basketball game after my parents told me not to but they went to church that night. I took it upon myself, even though I just beat having a fever, to walk outside at night, by myself, to go to the game anyway. When they got home and they found out (my sister snitched) they let me have it! I was fed up because who were they to tell me what to do when they weren’t there for me when I needed them. Now don’t get me wrong my parents would tell me they loved me everyday and if they could they would lay the world at my feet. I knew that but I didn’t see that so I made myself believe otherwise. You know how people in their hearts know God is real but don’t want to believe that so they make themselves believe otherwise? Yeah, it was exactly like that.

I didn’t really know much about God and religion and how to pray. But I listened to other people well enough that I pretty much had the gist. Most people ended there prayers “In Jesus’ name” and I vaguely remembered my mom saying something in reference to a scripture that “if we ask in His name, we will receive” [John 14:13]. So I came to God on what I thought was my last straw and said “look Sir apparently you created me and want what’s best for me or at least that’s what I’m told so with all due respect, if you could just prove that somehow that would be great because I can’t see you and I sure don’t feel you…in Jesus’ name I guess, Amen.” I didn’t have the confidence to know He heard me but I asked in His name so all I could do was what I knew. I truly didn’t even know the full context of the verse yet but I figured let’s give God a shot since I felt I had nothing to lose anyway.

There were chains on my heart I didn’t understand or even realize at first. They were chains of bitterness, lack of forgiveness, anger, and I could go on but my point is these chains were keeping me from opening up to anyone better yet a man I didn’t see. You may have seen in another post of mine that I said my mother tried to convince me to start writing [to God]. Again, my ego got in the way because I didn’t like just talking out loud, I felt stupid. I didn’t even take up writing at first because it didn’t make sense on how God would “hear” what I’m “writing” and it made me feel stupid again. Until…I started realizing it wasn’t going null and void.

It’s not like I saw the clouds break and a huge light was shining up me. People expect all types of physical changes like that because that’s how “religion” is made out to look. However, the changes I noticed were small. I started to enjoy my time writing to God because at least even if I wasn’t sure if he saw/heard any of it, at least I was getting it out of my system. Slowly it changed that when my mom spoke about God, I didn’t get as angry as much. I started seeing my parents as humans doing the best they could and began to appreciate them for it. I realized these chains started breaking slowly but surely, and I wasn’t mad at it.

I was already happy with the changes God was making in my life from my simple prayers, that I started yearning for His comfort. I didn’t have to physically see Him there to know that he was paying attention because He was showing me. I decided to make Him the Lord & Savior of my life and He continued to prove to me that it was the best decision of my life. I started becoming myself with Him through being able to write comfortably and it gave me the confidence to start speaking to Him out loud without feeling dumb. My relationship with Him became the most valuable because as I spoke, He proved that He was listening through His actions in my life. I never had to give Him an ultimatum or threaten Him to grant my wishes because He wanted to the whole time. I just had to ask Him to come into my life and make His presence known because He was present the whole time, I just never made the choice to acknowledge Him.

So I say all this to say- 

Don’t hate Him because He’ not there, accept Him because He is!