Seeking

Along my journey, I came to a point of wanting more, not more success, money, material things, or popularity. I wanted to know more about God and the truth about who He really is. So, I began the lifelong journey of seeking Him and what I found was beyond my expectations.

My favorite part of mass, in the Catholic church I grew up in, was the homily. For those of you who may not be familiar with this term, it is a part of the mass immediately following the reading of the gospel. During this time, the priest just talks plainly about what the gospel is about or an everyday life experience that relates to the message of the gospel reading. I think this part of the mass drew me in because it was more of a conversation from the priest to us in his own words. It didn’t seem as scripted or formal as the other parts of the mass. I was able to get glimpses into the messages of the gospel. It was broken down, making it easier to understand and use in my everyday life outside of church.

The only problem was that the homily was usually only a few minutes long. It was the part of the mass where I felt I could get a better understanding into what God was saying in the scripture. Obviously, this left me wanting more of this time. For me personally, it felt like I would go to church, go through the usual steps of the mass and get only a few minutes of biblical wisdom. I went through these motions for many years.

At one point, my wife and I had a discussion that we both had been feeling the same way about the mass for some time. We would go pretty much every Sunday, but we started to feel like it just wasn’t enough. By this point, I had been reading the Bible on my own for a while now and a hunger was growing inside of me to hear more from it’s pages explained and discussed in everyday terms. To me, it seemed like we would only hear some of the details from the Bible, usually the main stories that most people have already heard. My wife and I found ourselves missing mass more and more, until we just stopped going altogether.

But, I wanted to dig deeper into the pages of the Bible and hear everything about God, not just the bits and pieces I was being given. We would watch pastors on television discuss the Bible in ways that we had never heard before. I remember listening to pastor Charles Stanley and thinking, ‘wow, I never knew that before.’ It was relevant and refreshing. It was broken down and explained in everyday words. To me, the Bible began to come alive. It was becoming much more than just a holy book. It gave me direct access to the actual words of God himself. It showed His character, His wrath, His mercy, and His love.

Now, I had some hesitation about just taking someone else’s word about what the Bible was saying. So, I always found myself going in the scriptures and reviewing them for myself. This is why it is so critical that you study the Bible for yourself and learn what it says, so that you will be able to decipher what is biblical teaching and what is false. In the following verse, Paul is instructing the church at Thessalonica not to ignore or immediately dismiss prophets, but to test or compare what they are saying to what they know of God and the scriptures.

1 Thessalonians 5:20-21   — ²⁰ Do not scoff at prophecies, ²¹ but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. 

We knew that we needed to start attending a church again at some point, but we just felt like going back to our same church would not satisfy this growing love for learning the intricacies of the Word of God. At the same time, we were nervous about switching to a whole different kind of church. I knew there were churches where the pastor would simply discuss parts of the bible in detail and ways to apply the teachings to everyday life. This sounded amazing to me in theory and was exactly what we were looking for from a church, but making a switch like this was not a simple thing.

Leaving what I grew up in and spent all my youth learning about was a scary thing and a big step for my wife and I both. The Catholic church was all my family had known up until that point and leaving was not an easy decision to make. Not only would it affect us personally, but our kids and family members. If our kids don’t attend religion classes, then they won’t be able to receive communion or have a traditional Catholic wedding like we had. Are we hurting them, by not letting them go through the process like we did? What will our parents or other family members think about us leaving the Catholic church? Is this really what God would want us to do? These thoughts and questions seemed to haunt us every Sunday.

We had one church in mind that we had been curious about trying. We listened to a couple sermons online to see what it was about. We kept saying we would go try it out one day, but this went on for months and we always found an excuse not to go. My wife and I were dealing with stresses in our relationship and we knew we needed help. Up until this point in my life, there may have been a few instances where I felt like God was speaking personally to me, but I heard Him loud and very clear one Sunday morning. I had this sudden urge that I needed to go to that church TODAY. I told my wife about it and said that I was going and that I hoped she would come too. She seemed shocked that the idea just came out of no where, but she came without question.

We walked in the doors of Living Word Church, still nervous about this big change, but I knew I had to be there. There were a few songs and then the pastor, Pastor Renee, started speaking. What he said stunned us both. He said that ‘there are couples here today with walls between them, in Jesus’ name, those walls will come down.’ My wife and I both just grabbed each other’s hand and I think we both were emotional and knew in that moment that God brought us to the church where we belonged. Now after church, my skeptical mind started thinking that maybe this pastor says this at every service and this wasn’t anything special on this occasion. I can tell you now, after attending for over 4 years, that he has never opened a service with those words since.

So, when I set out to seek more about God, I never expected to change churches, change my kids’ upbringing and education in the church, or to completely shatter the ideas of who I thought God was. God is not just in a building or in religious traditions or people with holy titles. He is all around us and in us through Jesus Christ. He wants to be in your marriage, in raising your kids, in your job, and in all areas of your life. If you feel like you want to know more about who God is, I hope you decide to take that first step and open the Bible for yourself and begin reading. Pray that Jesus will reveal the meanings behind the words you read and that you can grow to understand how truly BOUNDLESS God is.

Thanks for reading and keep faith.