The Greatest Love Ever

I’ve lived the best life I’ve ever lived since I decided to accept Jesus four months ago.  I’ve been warmly welcomed into a community of strangers whom I know consider my brothers and sisters.  I’ve learned to listen to God, and felt that He was calling me to take an enormous step and trust Him to send me to Bangladesh for a month, and I accepted that challenge.  This weekend I was privileged enough to attend WinterCon13, where I felt probably more love than I’ve ever felt cumulatively over my whole life.  I’m so absolutely thankful for the people who have brought me to this point and spiritually enriched me over the years—for God for choosing them to minister to me and for these people who have allowed God to use them to soften my heart and open my mind to this new way of living with Him. 

I was raised in a “Christian” home. Although we went to church every Sunday and were very involved in the church both on Sunday and on other days of the week, church was never really talked about outside of the church.  Community existed at church, but as soon as church was over it was back to the grind, and the community was gone.  Grace was said at the dinner table, but it had become a routine of my parents (purposefully) singing in atonal harmonies as my brother and I hung our heads in shame and prayed for it to be over.  We were kind to our neighbours—when we saw them…and felt like talking to them.  I tried to read the Bible on my own once when I was about 10, but what drive did I have to try and decipher what was going on at that age by myself?  I was a good kid, and I knew I wasn’t going to go to hell because I went to church.  There were so many holes. 

Every couple of years I would go through a Jesus-loving phase when I would start to pray regularly, but it faded out as quickly as it came.  As I became older, I thought of the church as a corrupt organization that would bend over backwards, sacrificing all integrity just to get another body in the door.  I was just going through the motions.  God wasn’t alive in me and I wasn’t alive.

As a spiritually lost nineteen-year-old, I felt unloved.  I didn’t matter to my friends, my family, or myself.  This sort of complex is not uncommon in the teenage years.  Add a mental illness to the mix, and you get one walking miserable disaster.  It wasn’t until almost a year after that diagnosis that I found Jesus.

Faith has finally become real to me over these last few months.  I knew at the start that this time it wasn’t just a “phase”.  This time was different.  I needed to change.

Anyway, when the opportunity to go to this conference came up, I didn’t really question whether or not I should go.  I was so eager and excited to learn more and listen to the word of God with my peers.

I have never felt so much love and acceptance and such a sense of community from anyone—let alone from a large group of people who were mostly perfect strangers.  I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and support from people when they found out that I was going to Bangladesh.  It left me kind of confused—I really hadn’t done anything yet, and I was too new to this whole “devoted-to-Jesus” thing to really understand how big of a step it was to trust God enough to let Him bring me to a completely foreign land.

This outpouring of love felt completely surreal and almost unjustified.  Six months ago I was living day-to-day in fear as a depressed nobody.  Then I said yes to Jesus and I was the apple of God’s eye, and He showed me that through every person I interacted with this weekend.  It was the most invigorating, wholesome, profound experience of my life.  I am so excited to see what else He’s going to reveal to me in the weeks and months ahead as I prepare to go to Bangladesh and beyond as I prepare to meet more brothers and sisters and share the awesome news that Jesus is alive, and the grace of God is so amazing.