JC and Me

These plain facts were not what grabbed my heart. No, it was the desire for a relationship. I don’t know if this is true for everyone. I do know that it was and is true for me. This desire, this need for relationship, was very strong. In my life, I did not have good relationships that I could believe in. I didn’t have a lot of close friends. If I had one very close friend at any point or time in my life, I was doing well.

My family relationships were not strong in my early years. My relationship with my father was not what I wanted it to be. It was not what I needed it to be. When I heard that salvation was a free gift, I liked that idea. When I realized that God was available to be a perfect Father through this gift, I was encouraged. This seemed to be exactly what I needed. I accepted this gift.

In Chapter 1, I spoke of a new energy that resided within me. My new relationship with my God was alive. Even though I was young in this relationship and didn’t understand much at the time, I had become a different person. I had become a new person in Jesus. I was alive! I want you to understand what this was like. I will try to put it into words, but it was my experience. Some of it may be common to other new Christians, but I think that most of it is unique to me. That is how God is. He is very personal.

As I think back, I remember some of my original experiences. My beginning was with the campus ministry at a local community college. It was great to have found a group of people who were nice to be around. They seemed to be so happy, so full of life. I wanted to experience what I was seeing. At the same time, I wanted to experience something that was uniquely my own. I didn’t want to be living through someone else’s experiences. So, I participated in the activities, but I was careful about being drawn into the relationships that others had with God. Not to say that their relationships were not good things, but they were their relationships. I wanted my own relationship with God. I wanted my own experience with God. I wanted this new energy within me to be directed by God, not by other people’s experiences of their new energy with God.