Photo by Mark Mabry (http://www.reflectionsofchrist.org/index.php)
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My name is Chase, I’m 23 and live in Salt Lake City. I grew up in the ‘bible belt’ of
eastern New Mexico. My family folk
were very frequent church goers while I was growing up, so the concept of God
was something always familiar to me.
Early in my youth we spent our Sundays at an Assembly of God church, and
then we kind of transitioned into going to different kinds of churches. We spent a lot of time in churches that
would probably be uncomfortable for a great deal of people, ‘speaking in
tongues’ and ‘being slain in the spirit’ type things. I remember being fairly confused at that age
about the whole church experience.
But there was one evening where I was really sick, and my mom had some
kind of anointing oil that the church had given out to whoever wanted some, and
she wiped some of that on my forehead and said a prayer. It was a pretty bizarre experience, but
one of the first moments I remember being pretty wowed by a supernatural type
thing because I didn’t feel sick anymore, and I remember playing a baseball
game the next day feeling one hundred percent. Whenever I got into high school we went to a different part
of New Mexico, up near the four corners and my parents started going to a more
conservative type non-denominational church.
When I got my first car, I went to a church that was a
little less about the mystical side of Christianity and more about the teaching
of the bible and learning about the life of Jesus and the whole concept of
creation all together. I think
this is where I first started to experience life from a perspective of
fellowship and what it might mean to be a follower of Christ. My prayers began to be less about fear
of missing the rapture and not being good enough, and more about being thankful
about the grace that God has extended to the people on earth and asking Him how
I could be a better servant to Him.
Nowadays I go to a couple different churches in Salt Lake
City and I’m very humbled at how good God has been to me. I think one of the themes that I have
been pondering in my experience with God is how consistent and faithful He is
in bringing us all back to Him. I
think a lot about the idea of our human experience and how we kind of have this
puzzle somewhere in the DNA of our souls that is searching for something or
missing something. We try to fit
in a lot of different pieces that never quite complete us or make us want we
want to be whether that is money, or vanity, or status or some other factor x
that makes us feel complete and validated. I think that missing puzzle got lost through Adam and Eve,
who disobeyed God and instead took actions that broke our connection to the
Creator.
From that moment on it was inevitable that everything would
die and be disconnected. In the
time following that, humanity began to try and figure out how to mend that
leaking gap of the absence of life.
People created their own gods and fought defending those gods, they
built temples up to appease those gods.
Even today, we are still fighting and destroying ourselves in pursuit of
trying to fix that thing missing in our spiritual DNA.
About two thousand years ago however, we received that
missing link through Jesus. He
came to our earth in a humble fashion born to poor people in a rough part of
town. He grew up and astounded
religious leaders and was infinitely graceful to people who had fallen short of
doing things the right way. He
lived a sinless life and traveled around with a bunch of guys telling the world
who He was. And, at the end of His
life, He was murdered, and by some mysterious way His death took the place of
what we would otherwise be put under.
It’s difficult to try and sum up the gospel in such a short
writing, but I guess what makes Jesus real to me is that I feel like somebody
is listening when I pray. The way
the church spread following His death is pretty wild. This one person has influenced the world over the course of
a millennium. Even our structure
of time is centered on when He was here.
I think God is present with us in every moment, and He is continuously
bringing His creation back to Himself and His glory.
I’m very thankful to God and His infinite love that He has
for us that is demonstrated through grace and the faith He gives us that there
is something much better after all of this. Every one of us has messed up in some way or another but we
are forgiven through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I think it’s something very beautiful
and something very real.
- Chase
Note: The postings from "The 25 Days of Christ" are thoughts shared by guest posters and may not directly reflect the perspective of the blog's main author, Cocoshirley. Any pictures added have been added by Cocoshirley and not by the guest author.
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