How I Met God

Lately, one of my favourite shows has been "How I Met Your Mother". It's a story of a man, Ted, in the future, telling his kids the story of how he met their mother. Only, he starts all the way at the beginning, many years & many girlfriends prior to their mum. Because it's all part of the story...

Stories are important. Where we come from influences who we are & what we become.
So here's the story of how I met God: where I was when he found me, how he found me & life since.

 I grew up in a Christian home. My mum and dad were followers of God & took my sister and I to church. Every week, I'd hear the speaker say, 'To be right with God, don't steal', or 'don't hurt others' or 'don't lie'. I'd try really hard to stop doing it & be good, but no matter how hard I tried, within a few days, I always failed. I got really frustrated. I just couldn't do it. It was too hard.
I looked around me, but no one else seemed to have as much trouble as I did. So I did what any sane teenager would do - I pushed it to the far reaches of my mind & focused on other things - money, possessions, love, friendship.. But no matter what I tried, nothing could satisfy me. Some things gave me temporary happiness, but nothing was permanent. I couldn't shake this feeling that something was wrong. It just got harder and harder to ignore it.

When I was 15, I was living in Dubai, and my sister was in Melbourne. She was involved in a Christian group at her university and annoyingly, she used to send me links to all kinds of talks and websites. And I ignored most of them. Out of curiosity, one day, I opened one.. and this is what it said - 'Jesus didn't come and die for those who were perfect, who had it all together. Jesus came for the bad, for the sick and the broken - those who never had any chance of being good enough for themselves. He came to make them right with God.'

Wait a minute... that's me... Jesus came for me?

All along, what I needed the most was not to discover a secret way of being good - it was to accept Jesus and what he'd done for me by dying on the cross, in my place. The reason everyone around me were able o be good was because of Jesus, not the other way around.

It has been nearly eight years since I became a follower of Jesus & I still get a lot of things wrong. I'm definitely not perfect. But I know that because of Jesus, I am right with God. And now, I try to do things that please Him, not because I want to win brownie points, but because of His friendship with me.

What about you? Are you right with God?