I PUSHED JESUS AWAY
To many people, God is someone to turn to in times of trouble or need. To some He does not exist, they say, “it’s all made up.” And to a few of us He is everything. Until a few years ago, for me, Jesus was useful when I had exams but at other times I blamed Him for everything that was going wrong in the world. I used to question Him, saying, if He was loving and caring and a God of peace then why was there so much hatred in the world, and why so much fighting and war? Why were there so many broken families? It didn’t make any sense and so I pushed Jesus away from me.
THE WATER OF LIFE
But four years ago, my thoughts on God began to change and I started to think that maybe things would improve if Jesus became part of my worthless and troubled life. I realised that I needed a drink of that water of life that Jesus promised to the woman at the well, “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give, will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) I had also read in Revelation 21:6, “To the thirsty, I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life” and I started to thirst for more of Jesus in my life. From that time, slowly my attitude towards people, my negative personality and my sinful life started to change. I stopped blaming Jesus for everything that was happening in the world and I realised that most of the world’s problems are caused because we humans are selfish. At the end of the day, Jesus taught us in Mark 12:31 that the solution was to love our neighbour as ourselves.
EVERYTHING CHANGED
Slowly I accepted Jesus as my brother, my lover, my friend and He became everything for me. From that time, I experienced His true passionate love for me and my worthless life started to have hope. In fact everything in my life changed. The hatred that I had towards my family and myself was replaced by God’s love. He poured his unconditional love into my heart and taught me to love everyone no matter what they had done to me. He clothed me with a new life, not taking my sins into consideration. What more can we ask from such a forgiving and soft hearted God, who gave His only son to show his love for us.
INVITE HIM INTO YOUR LIFE
I wasted the first eighteen years of my life pushing God away. How many years have you wasted? Every day Jesus is waiting for us to stop chasing the sugar coated traps of Satan and turn back to Him. And when we do He will never complain about the years that He has waited for us but He will rejoice that we have returned. I think that when we start pushing Jesus away then we lose the relationship that He wants to have with us. Is it wrong to consider Jesus as our own brother? Not at all, He is waiting for us to call out to him. Jesus spends more time with us than any of our family but we just fail to recognise it. Everything I have written is what I have experienced with Jesus. I urge you to invite Jesus more into your life and start seeing the changes. He won’t disappoint you.
Written by Priya Thomas