Where are you?

In the churches I grew up in it was like an unsaid rule, there were certain things…

anything that wasn’t “good” or “christ like” or “uplifting”

you didn’t talk about!

Sure they had the youth meetings and they would talk about sex or they would occasionally throw in a message about porn or partying but thats about as far as it went. Sure you knew what people in the youth group REALLY did on the weekends, and you knew that no matter how much the preacher preached about “Not gossiping” most of the adults ran their mouths. But as long as you didn’t act that way at church, as long as you didn’t talk about those things there, as long as you could cover up gossip with “It’s a prayer request!” as long as you were “fooling God” it was all O.K.

Everyone was playing a game trying to impress and even trick God.

and the people who had just started the game…

learned quick!

Because it seemed as if their eternity, not to mention their social status depended on it.

It was always said that works wouldn’t get you into heaven or make God love you more but BOY did it seem like it.

I remember about 7th grade I started to observe…

every year students in the youth group would graduate and then I wouldn’t see 3/4 of them again.

Every year we would have our annual “True Love Waits” banquet and every year I knew of people sitting in the room who had already screwed up…and it seemed hopeless for them. As if they were garbage that no one would ever want and God couldn’t love…

I remember hearing the speeches “Don’t have sex before marriage!” “Stay pure!” and then they would go on and on about how horrible it was, the emotional problems it causes, the physical dangers, and the fact that it wasn’t Gods plan…which are all very true things and important to remind people…

but inside I was screaming “WHAT ABOUT ALL MY FRIENDS THAT HAVE MADE MISTAKES?? WHERE IS THE HOPE? WHAT ARE THEY SUPPOSE TO DO?”

I remember one year a girl in the youth group brought a friend to our True Love Waits Banquet and about half way through she started to cry…not big tears….just little ones falling down her face.

She was trying to hide them, and no one really noticed, it seemed…except for me.

She sat their and just looked down…in my head I see her looking the way the prostitute did when the “religious” people brought her to Jesus.

When she looked up her eyes looked hopeless….as if someone had just told her she would never be loved.

Then she got up and walked out.

I wanted so badly to go after this girl. To go talk to her. I knew! I knew what she was thinking and I wanted to tell her there was HOPE, and I wanted to tell her she was loved…

But then it hit me…was there hope…could God love someone who didn’t have it all together??? Could God love someone who was honest and admitted their mistakes? Could he really handle all of the problems this broken girl was facing?

and if you asked me to “be real” I would tell you that night my answer to all of those questions was “No.”

Not the God I knew!

Not the big man in the sky who was trying to sneak up on us and catch us doing something bad.

Not the one who held our lives in His hands and like to play with them someone times…

The God who chooses some people to have crappy lives and others to have good ones.

When I thought of God this is “really” what I thought of!

I asked my friend later on what her friend thought and if she was o.k. and she said “yeah, she just isn’t really into the whole church thing!”

and I knew why…because I didn’t think I was either.

I remembering walking in to church…for the fourth time that week…

and thinking if I had to smile at one person, or say “I’m doing great!“, or over hear one more conversation that just involved ripping someone apart…I was going to lose it and give up on this crap!

I came to a breaking point in my own little world there were more questions then I could even begin to explain…there were so many fears…yet there was a voice….

a voice that I could hear when I listened…

it said

“This is not the way I planned!”

“THIS IS NOT ME!”

and finally the voice could not be pushed out so I responded….

WHERE ARE YOU?

TO BE CONTINUED…