Friday, October 23, 2009

When All Love Seems Dead and You Can't Sleep

Okay, see if you can relate to this: As a child, you had a whole lot of friends. You hung out with them every day at Recess, ate lunch with them, spent the night at their houses. You felt like you were going to be friends forever.

But then, things change. You become interested in different things, and you really get into what you're doing. Suddenly, people start insulting you, and before you know it you're the butt of every joke in class. You can't seem to find anyone who likes the same stuff you do, so you wind up in your own little shell, refusing to come out.

The longer you stay in this shell, the less you seem to care for friendship with anyone local. You spend a good chunk of time on the Internet, talking on forums with friends who have the same quirks and hobbies you do. When you're not online, you're either playing video games, drawing, reading, or something of the sort... sometimes you do things that are much worse and harder to explain to others, and then you feel it's impossible to open up to anyone because you'll just get made fun of again.

At this point, you really, really don't care to get close to anyone. You won't admit it, and you may not even realize it, but deep down you're terrified of getting hurt. You don't really seem to think much of yourself, then, either. You assume yourself to be some sort of alien in this world, and that for whatever reason you deserve to face ridicule and pain.

What happens to you, then? Where do you turn when all love seems dead and you can't sleep? Some might kill themselves. Some might turn to homosexuality, some might turn to zoophilia. Who knows, maybe some even become serial murderers. The point is, when it boils down to it, you don't know what else to do besides escape even further.

I'm begging you, before you run away any further,

STOP.

I may not know exactly where you've been, or what you've done, or whether or not you're even still running. But I'm begging you, from one sufferer to another, I would give all I had to make you see that there's more to life than running! To make you see that people DO care about you, despite how different you might be... and even if you don't believe that, hear me and know that you haven't suffered alone, and better still, that you can rise above this! You're worth so much more than you realize right now!

God doesn't care what you've done. He doesn't care if you've killed someone, he doesn't care who you slept with, he doesn't care if you've cut yourself, he doesn't care if you worshiped the devil, or whatever. No matter what you've done, He still loves you, and it is to His good pleasure that he would forgive you for it all, and more still, forget you ever did it! (Micah 7:19)

Not only does He love you and want to forgive you, He promises that he can make you a brand new person (2 Corinthians 5:17). He can show you what love is, and greater still, fill you with so much of it that you can't help but share it with everyone you know!

God knew, at the dawn of time, that he was gonna make you. He knew how many hairs were gonna be on your head (Matthew 10:30), he knew what emotions you would feel and when, what sins you would commit... God knew, and knows it all. Yet, despite all that, despite all the horrible things you did, he came and made himself nothing (Philippians 2:7), and gave you everything; an everything that lasts until the end of time and beyond.

I don't know if this means any less because they're words on a blog... but I promise you before God Himself, I would allow myself to be struck dead if you came to understand what I'm telling you now!!!

Forget all the Church dogma... the legalism... the televangelists and hateful Christians waving hateful signs in their yards...

Come to know a God that, despite all you've done, is running to you, asking you to jump into His arms so that he can look into your eyes and say...

"Son, do you know I still love you?"