I want you to imagine your life as a laptop for a moment. You are complex. You have a great design and can be used for wonderful things. Now let's say you take your life into your own hands and you think to yourself "Hmm this is a cool frisbee" and you throw your laptop as far as you can. What would happen? You would probably break.
You see our lives are made with a design and a purpose to do great things. God created us in amazing ways but when we take our amazing laptops and cheapen them to be thrown around like a frisbee, our lives become broken with temporary and fleeting happiness.
My story starts with the simple gospel. The simple gospel is this: God is holy and perfect. Our sin separates us from God. This is bad news because going back to our computer analogy our life’s hardware was designed to be in constant relationship with God. When we are separated from HIM, we can’t live the way HE designed us to live. We start looking for what God designed to be a relationship with HIM, in other things. But in the end, we become like the frisbee: crushed and broken.
From a young age, I started to understand deep truths. When I was three I told a lie. Even one lie was enough to separate me from God. When I told my six-year-old sister that I had told a lie she said "Erin, don't you know that that's a sin! That's what Jesus died for!" That's when I first realized that Christ didn't just die for sins in general but that he died for My sins.
A couple of years later I was staring up at the stars. I remember crying and thinking "I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is up there beyond all that I can see and I want to be a Christian". I didn't know it then but looking back on it I believe that it was the Holy Spirit convicting me.
I've had ups and downs in my life but through it all, I've learned that the best life lived is a life lived with God.
How exactly do you live life with God? I don't have a formula for that. Oh, how I wished I did! But it comes most when I remember HIM and look for ways to spend time with HIM. Maybe in reading the bible or singing songs or just taking in HIS creation.
I want to end by telling you a story. Maybe you've heard it before. It's the story of the Prodigal Son.
There was a wealthy man who had two sons. The youngest son decided that he didn't want to have anything to with his family anymore and wanted to go live his own life. He told his father that he wanted his inheritance now. So the father gave him his inheritance and the son went on his way. Now in a short amount of time the youngest son had spent all his money and was living in a pig pen trying to get the scraps that were thrown to the pigs. The son thought to himself "Even my father's servants live better than this. Maybe I'll go back and see if my father will let me work for him”.
When he was approaching the house his father saw him coming in the distance and ran to meet him. The father hugged him and told his servants to dress him in the best clothes and to prepare a feast!
When the older son heard of this he was angry. He stayed out in the field and would not come to the party. The father came out to him and asked why he wouldn't come in. The older son said "I've stayed here and worked for you all this time. But, when have you ever dressed me in your finest or thrown me a party? The father replied "you have been with me all this time and all that I have is yours. "
Both of the sons represent how we can be towards God.
For the younger son, it was all about what he could get from God. But the older son had the wrong perspective too. He was focused on what he could do for God. But notice what the father said. He said, "you have been here with me."
We can never do enough for God and yet HE wants the very best for us. So when He designed our lives to be built around a relationship with HIM, it was out of love for us. It’s only when we are living life with God that we can have the joy that HE designed for all of us to have, including HIS very best.
My prayer is that you would understand what joy and freedom this brings. And that you would be inspired to draw closer to God. If you have any questions about God please reach out to me! I would love to talk!
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