1,000,000 Little Moments

Growing up as a Pastor's son most people would think that I would have it all figured out. But, that is so far from actuality. After I left home and got out on my own I struggled greatly with Addiction, Fear, Acceptance, and Depression because I had basically grown up living on my parent's relationship with God. I did not know God for myself.

During my early childhood, I was at church every time the doors were open but I had very little understanding about saturating in His presence and understanding how God truly looked at me. Instead, it was about organizational rules, regulations, and outward standards. Because of all the rules, regulations, and outwards standards that were imposed upon us through organization bylaws when I would stumble and fail I thought God was leaning over the walls of heaven waiting to punish me for my failures. Every hiccup in life I truly thought was punishment from God. This internal concept I created of God made me very bitter and angry towards God. What's the point of surrendering your life to someone that is always mad at you. I did not learn that God was good. I did not learn that God loved me just as I was. I did not learn how to build an intimate relationship of my own with Jesus. I did not understand that God wanted to get involved in my mess.

For many years I ran very hard and fast from God. I won't go into all the details as I do not want to give any glory to my lifestyle during that time, but if there was list defining a toxic lifestyle I checked most of the boxes. It was not until I was laying on an air mattress at my in-laws' loft in Nashville TN, did I accept that my life was a toxic mess. I was lonely, angry, and depressed. My addiction to alcohol and porn was out of control. My relationship with my wife was in trouble. I was miserable. Not only did I run from God but my wife ran with me, dragging our young son through our toxic mess with us.

As I lay there in that loft staring up into the darkness in silence tears started to run down my face and I began to sob. I said “God if you are there I can not live like this anymore. But to be honest God I can’t go back to all the rules and regulations either because living like that is worse than my current situation, so you need to show me who You are. You need to show me who I am. I just need something to change.” There was no great flash of light, or rolling thunder, nothing miraculous happened. In fact, I got up the next morning and felt exactly the same. However over the following weeks when I would talk to my Mom on the phone she started to remind me for no reason at all how good God had been to me and my family. For years previous during our conversations, I told both my parents not to talk to me about Church or God or I would just hang up the phone. Because I literally hated God and everything the church stood for. But after that night in the loft when Mom started talking about God’s love, I actually started to hear what she was saying which got me thinking about God. The more she talked to me the more I started to think about what she said and really tried to understand who God was for myself.

It was not a drastic change but more of a trickle. Slowly God began to reveal himself to me in small ways. Once I opened the door of my heart just a crack Jesus stopped knocking on my hearts door and began to slide little notes of His love and goodness through the crack I had opened. His love was not about condemning rules and regulations or condescending outward standards. Not one time did He ask me to change but instead began to show me His unconditional love and goodness. The more I started to feel His genuine love and began to see that He accepted me just as I was, the more of a relationship we started to build. As our relationship grew the more junk in my life I willingly let go of and gave to Him.

You see, one of the most important lessons I have learned and continue to learn through my journey is God never takes what we are not willing to give Him. The more I got to know Him, the more I fell in love with Him, not for what He could do for me but for who He was. My conversations transitioned from God please take my hurt, my loneliness, and my bitterness and became God I give you my hurt, my loneliness, and my bitterness. I started to see Him as a loving Father that was good and desired to spend time with me. The more I started to see Him as a loving Daddy the closer I got to Him. The closer I got to Him the more I allowed His love to change me. I did not do the changing; His love changed me. I fell in love with Jesus. When you are truly in love with someone you willingly lay down the things that will hurt the one you're in love with. You are willing to give up the things that pull you away from spending time with them.

So many times I was waiting on God to take my hurts, heartaches, and pain and I kept trudging through life wondering where God was. But God was asking me to quiet the noise in my life, stop trudging, be still, and simply rest in Him. In other words, He asking me for my complete surrender.

So many times I would give up and get discouraged when God did not show up in a big way with streaks of lightning or rolls of thunder. I thought He had abandoned me if I was not receiving constant words of prophecy telling me what I wanted to hear. I got mad and frustrated with God when He did not show up the way I thought He should. However, I needed to turn off my Americanized concept of God where I expected God to do everything on my timeline. My journey with God could not be categorized into my little life compartments, where I have a church me, a work me, a family me, a party me, and friend me. My whole life must be Jesus. Jesus has got to be my greatest love and the driving passion of my life. He loves me so completely, there are no words that can express the depth of His love He has for me. His love is like a prism every time I look at Him I see yet another way He loves me and I fall in love with Him all over again.

I would get so distracted thinking that if God did not show up in huge ways all the time that I had done something wrong so I failed to see the simple things all around me that gave me complete and satisfying joy. For instance, I was sitting out on the deck and looked over at my dog, Marley, and a big smile came on my face and in that moment I felt the love of Jesus. His presence surrounded me and I just began to thank Him for my wonderful dog. Yes, it’s just a dog but she brings my family and me so much Joy. The more I began to realize that God is good the more I started to see Him in all the little moments. Looking back on a 1,000,000 little moments and being able to see God's finger prints all over my life changes the way I see Him, it changes how I Love Him. Most importantly it changes the way I see myself. He is anxious and waiting for me to stop all my doing and be still and just get to know Him one moment at a time.