Hope for Even Me
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
HOPE FOR EVEN ME 1 Loving God Without All The Answers: Hope for Even Me By John Stewart Hill 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (NIV) Copyright 2014 John Stewart Hill All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author. The author has used real names for many of the people represented in the book. The names of a few other individuals have been changed to protect their privacy. 2 Table of Contents Prologue Part 1 - Life on a Roller Coaster 1 - How It All Started 2 - My Walk with God 3 - The Path of Least Resistance 4 - Marital Bliss 5 - God Speaks 6 - My Haunting Mistake 7 - The Devil's Revenge 8 - Have a Little Faith 9 - Freed from My Captors 10 - Not Exactly a Fairytale Ending 11 - A Second Chance at Marriage 12 - A Punch from Left Field 13 - Ask and You Shall Receive 14 - A Missing Piece 15 - The Cycle Continues 16 - The Final Missing Piece 17 - Try, Try Again 18 - Too Little Too Late 19 - Meeting of the Ex-es 20 - Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places 21 - Striking Gold 22 - The Cycle Ends and Life Begins Part 2 - A Life with Purpose 23 - Broke, and Broken 24 - My Path to the Desert 25 - I Had a Dream 26 - Living Out the Dream 27 - Moses and Me 28 - Obedience and the Unforeseen Path 29 - Two Questions No One Could Answer 30 - Inspired by God 31 - The Idea that Changed My Life 3 32 - The Good Contractors List 33 - Bring in the Smart Guys 34 - Wearing Someone Else's Armor 35 - David and Goliath 36 - The Answers to the Tough Questions 37 – The Gospel 38 - Our Real Purpose 39 - Request #1: Be Remembered for Doing Something Good 40 - Request #2: Live Every Day, Not Just Be Alive 41 - Request #3: Touch as Many Lives as Possible 42 – Where Am I Now Epilogue 4 Prologue For as long as I can remember, I felt like God had a purpose for my life. I loved all people and wanted nothing more than to see them happy. I was the kid with a big smile on his face who went the extra mile to help someone in need. It was in my character to do good things for people. However, as I grew older, I felt the pain of being bullied by kids in school. I realized that there were really mean people in the world and soon I was trying to protect myself from those who found it amusing to humiliate me or physically hurt me. Even through the bullying, I loved them, though. I wanted them to love me, and I never felt the need to retaliate. My desire to feel people’s love and share my love was deep. I spent most of my life trying to fit in, prove my value, live up to everyone’s standards, and do what I thought would make everyone happy. As a result, I eventually found myself hating life. I went through one failure after another and lost sight of who I was as a person and lost sight of the purpose that I thought God might have for me. I imagine that I am not the only person in the world who has lost sight of who they are. If so, I pray that my struggles and realizations will help anyone who is reading this book. The one consistent thing in my life was knowing there was a God. The God I knew in my heart was always there, even when I wasn’t living my life the way I thought I should be living it. Although I was confident that God existed and that Jesus loved me, I ran from God for many years because I didn’t think I could live up to the person I was “supposed” to be. Raised in a Pentecostal church, I heard hundreds of sermons and teachings about hell, sin, and eternal life. It became obvious to me that I would never live up to the perfection that was required of me to make it to heaven and I gave up. I believed that Jesus was my savior, but based on what I knew from church, I was “backslidden” and was bound for hell if I didn’t change my ways or remove my doubts. I would find myself over the years going back and forth between trying to be a Christian and getting as far away from Christianity as I could possibly get when I realized I was failing. One of the most difficult places a person can find themselves in life is to want a relationship with God, but to also be confused about who God is and to feel unworthy 5 of His love. Sometimes situations happen that will cause a person to doubt what they have been told about God. They will give up a relationship with God, because of things that has nothing to do with Him. They may have been offended by a person who claims to be a Christian and subsequently chooses to stay away from all Christians. They may realize that no matter how hard they try, they can’t be a “good” Christian. They may have questions about the Bible or Christian beliefs that would make them come to the conclusion that they could never be a Christian. When a person is struggling in this way, it is really difficult for them to ever find their way back to Jesus. Christianity itself keeps them from Christ. There are many people in the world that easily accept everything they have learned in church and would never allow themselves to question anything. They believe that any question that would bring about a doubt in what they have learned can only come from the devil. They choose to be confident in what they believe and will not be moved. For those people, parts of this book may not leave a warm and fuzzy feeling, but I encourage you to read it to the end and have mercy on those that lack in confidence. Confident Christians are typically “black and white” about the Bible. They will say things like “You either believe the Bible or you don’t”, insinuating that if you don’t believe the entire Bible, then you are not a Christian. This blanket statement is a great stumbling block for people who do not easily believe everything someone tells them. What happens to the person who just can’t understand something? What about the person who decides to give up and just avoids Jesus altogether, because they think they will never believe like the confident Christian? What happens to them? It is for these people that feel rejected and lost, because of their lack of understanding, that I have the deepest burden. It is for them that I have written this book and my hope is that by the end of this book they will find that they can have a relationship with Jesus and an amazing life in spite of their questions and doubts. My roller coaster life became a life of purpose when I realized that there is hope for even me. I pray that everyone who reads this book will see that they have a purpose, no matter how many times they have failed God or how little or how much they think they know. 6 Part 1 Life on a Roller Coaster 7 1 How It All Started My story began in a small town in Texas, where a scared sixteen-year-old girl found herself pregnant after her first and only indiscretion. She was the daughter of an American soldier and a traditional Japanese woman still entrenched in the old ways of propriety and honor, which made it difficult for the girl to share her dishonorable condition. She knew that if she told her mother about her pregnancy, she would be told to abort the baby. So began my first moments, being protected from death and loved for the life that I would bring to the world. This young girl hid the life growing inside her for as long as she could, but the day came when she could no longer hide her pregnancy from her mother. The news did not go well with her parents. At first her mother wanted to send her to Japan, where it was still possible to obtain an abortion, but that was not an option for the young girl who valued the life growing inside of her and was willing to fight to see that her baby have a chance to live. For a time June was estranged from her parents and moved into a halfway house for unwed mothers where she took care of the other girls and did odd jobs to pay for her room and board. Scared and alone, she chose to put her baby up for adoption, believing that the life someone else could provide would be better than what would be in store if she tried to raise her baby.