My Spiritual Life in a Nutshell (Well, not completely)

"My Spiritual Life in a Nutshell"

What was, now seems to not have been; what seems to have been now seems was not. I see now that life has become something other than what we try to make it. Life is a reality that we never see completely. It's so odd. To find that life is not what you think, and that your view will never completely be right. It's this idea that God is impossible to label. Nothing seems big enough to contain Him, yet somehow I find ways to box Him in.
When I was little, my sight of God was quite simple. Jesus was this guy who you gave all your negative feelings and told all the bad things that happened to you and asked for stuff you needed. Basically, He was a toy; a machine. A slot machine that I asked for stuff, hoping that I might win the jackpot this time around. If you prayed enough, God might make things the way you want them to be. It was still all about me. Our faith always becomes about us. The me factor is so great that most Christians know the theology, yet don't go deeper. We get so caught up in what is going on with us and with our faith that we miss out on what God's doing and showing us.
My whole life has been about faith. I really haven't had a time I can remember where I didn't believe in God and His authority. But somehow I can get so lost without even running away. I turned 12. I went to seventh grade. My life became about school and sports and friends and stuff and not doing drugs and not joining gangs and being a Christian. I suddenly found myself proclaiming all these labels that I couldn't even define.
We were made to serve and to love serving. It shows in how we always serve someone. It might be yourself, or sex, or drugs, or money, or stuff, or a gang. But we still are serving. I found myself caught in this whirlwind of serving things that I didn't want to serve. Yet I found myself being drawn to serve them more and more. Innocence is so precious. Yet we lose it so freely. My school became overrun with a spirit of violence and hate. I don't know how, but my class suddenly toughened over the summer between sixth and seventh grade. I found myself cussing. Not to fit in, but because it flowed out like butter. It was fun. I cussed. I fought. I was tough. I learned to hate so quickly, I can't know how it overtook me. It seems almost that our first conception of sin being plausible, we have already sinned. I found myself secretly thinking that I was like Adam. Finding the knowledge of good and evil was powerful and enticing. It was all about me, my labels, and people knowing about me the way I wanted them to. I didn't end up doing something horrible. I didn't shoot some other kid and never told anyone or had sex in middle school or anything. But the contemplation of sin as okay, acceptable, was the worst sin I committed. I enveloped myself in darkness. That was to the truly evil piece. Not the cussing or the fighting. It was letting in the evil, knowing it as such, and abiding with it. Understanding the hypocrisy and enjoying it.
My life has always been one spent in the spiritual realm. I know only a few others who can do the same. But it can be fatal, even in small intensity and for a short time, to your ability to see. I would say that you cannot truly know your salvation as amazing as it is without understanding how bad your sin has grown up into. The sin grows. Creepy. Sin grows and intensifies and pulls harder and harder until suddenly you find yourself so far away that you don't want to stop and you want to go back at the same time. Your desire becomes more and more intense, yet your fulfillment and enjoyment decreases and diminishes until you are an empty shell of a person.
The sad thing is, most people don't see their gossip and bickering and open sexuality and lying to their loved ones as evil. Sure, it might be somewhat wrong, but its not all bad. Not all the way bad. Only a little bad. Something I learned in those two years was that darkness at every level still lacks light. That light, being lacking becomes worthless because you still cannot see as well, though you may be able to see some. If we can't see all the way, what then is the point of seeing?!
When I finally saw this, I remembered, out of the blue, that Jesus was the way out. That God will always set you free and clean you and make you entirely new. So I went to my room. I don't remember how, but a bible was sitting next to my bed when I went in my room that night. Strange how those things happen just when God seems like He's not there. So Jesus filled me up, probably for the first time where it meant something more than me. It meant resurrection. It meant death. It hurt. I cried. But Jesus felt my pain. He understood that grief all too well.
Ever since, I have been able at times to find Jesus and physically experience Him when I worship Him. This is where my story gets good. Suddenly, my life changed like crazy. It seems my life hasn't stopped being crazy and changing drastically ever since. My Dad got remarried over the summer in between middle and high school. I received 4 new sisters and a new mom and family to go with it all. We got a new house and a suburban to fit us all in. But God wasn't done. Alice, my step mom, got involved in Inner Healing. I didn't really get it or know why I needed it, but understood what she said about it to be true. But God wasn't done. He put me a new school after my freshman year. It was crazy.
I had never felt God say, Go to another High School to be a soldier for me, before. But now I had. I didn't have some crazy encounter or something hear about on the 700 Club; I just knew I had to go to this new school. But God wasn't done.