So let's talk about Jesus!
At my home church, Northridge, we are all about waking the world up to Jesus and taking our next steps in our walk with God. I have never formally written a blog post about this before and I think that is my next step and I also think it's a great way to wake the world up to Jesus. I also decided to turn this post into a journal excerpt. That being said, let's have this talk.
I was 7 years old when I accepted Christ as my Savior for the first time, I didn't really know what that entailed. I was raised in the church, specifically a Bible church. My mom listened to Christian music, my dad spoke at our church some weekends, and my grammy read me Bible stories and always told me how much God loved me. Life was pretty great. 7 year old me thought that being saved meant that nothing bad could ever happen to me, but oh boy was I wrong. At 10 years old, disaster struck for the first time. I lost my beloved grammy to pancreatic cancer. I was so angry. I remember asking myself things like, "How could God do this to me?" and "God doesn't love me as much as I thought he did" and "Why would God take a lady who loved him so much in the way he did?" I remember falling away from God and not really saying my prayers or reading my Bible. I don't deal well with loss and I know that now. All of my anxiety revolves around loss and how I deal with it. Anyways, the next year disaster struck again. My Nonni was diagnosed with Lymphoma of the brain and oh boy was I angry. I would cry myself to sleep and scream at God in the shower. I yelled at him all the time, "Why do you hate me?" and "What did I ever do to deserve this?" and "Why do you want to take both of my grandmothers away from me?" 4 years went by of her going into remission and the cancer coming back and me breaking over and over again. My Nonni's cancer had become terminal and all treatment stopped and I just kept breaking. At some point in the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, I told my mom that I needed to go to church. I was so broken, I didn't think that anything could fix me. And I went back to church and all of Brad's talks were God's words to me. God was telling me that he put these walls in my life so that I would seek Him more, so that I would come back to him, so that he could fix me. I remember one night as I cried myself to sleep, I just prayed to Him. I renewed my faith in him and prayed, "Jesus, I can't do this without you. I need you to help me. I accept you as my Savior and as my Father. Please Lord, help me through this. Lord, I want to grow closer to you. Lord, please take away my sins and make me new again. Amen." A weight had instantly been taken away and I felt God's presence for first time in my life. I knew that he was there and I knew that he loved me so much. That winter was so hard for my family, but I knew God was there and I knew he was going to help me through it. January 1st came around, it was the last day that I saw my Nonni alive. And I prayed that night with my cousin that God would take away her pain and take her to his kingdom. That next morning, my Nonni took her last breath and I thanked God for helping her. As much as I was broken and destroyed beyond repair, I knew that God would fix me and he sure did. God uses broken people. God uses me everyday. As much as I miss my grandmas, I am thankful that God showed me who he was in the middle of all the pain. The summer of my junior year, at 17 years old, I was baptized for the first time in my life. I remember being submersed in the water and coming up with tears in my eyes. I was reborn in Christ, all my sins were washed away. I remembering the feeling of God's presence in that moment. I hugged the pastor that baptized me and walked out of that water as a new person. Jesus saved me.
We all have a story, we are all broken people. It is okay to be broken and to be hurting because God is cheering you on, He is on your side. The good news is that God wants you in his kingdom, He sent His son to die on the cross for YOUR sin, God did that for YOU. That being said, stop worrying about tomorrow because God is going to handle it all for you, he's going to help you pull through!
I will be the first to admit that I struggle, walking with Jesus doesn't mean your life is always going to be easy. I struggle with stress and anxiety. I struggle with being lonely. I struggle with finding time to be alone with the Lord. I struggle just as much as you, but Jesus makes it a lot easier to get through my struggles. I have questions and thoughts, but I know that one day God will answer them.
If you want to have a talk about this, a real talk. Please add me on facebook, follow me on twitter, add me on snapchat (auburnrider206, I am also going to be posting random but relevant Bible verses, so that's another reason to add me). Literally add me anywhere! I don't need more followers or friends (but I want to be your friend so...), I want to have this conversation with YOU, Jesus wants you to have this conversation with someone.
"So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's troubles are enough for today." Matthew 6:34
I love you and more importantly, Jesus loves you!
God bless,
Aubs
