Finding God

I was 19 when I really started looking for God. It was after my freshman year of college and I was feeling burnt out and depressed from too much partying and living for the moment.

It was out of desperation that I looked around my apartment to find my old childhood Bible. At random, I flipped it open and started reading the book of Ecclesiastes. It was one of the first times in my life that I'd actually read the Bible myself. As I read, I was hoping for some encouraging message or direction from God. But instead, what I found was this:

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

I shut the Bible, confused and discouraged. What was I supposed to get out of a passage like that? Of course, I hadn't read to the very end of the book where King Solomon concludes that without God, all life's pursuits are empty.

Although I didn't immediately understand the message, it stuck with me. As I've grown as a Christian, the truth remains that without God as the focus of my life, it loses meaning and can become a chasing after the wind.

"I have seen all the things that are done under the sun;
all of them are meaningless,
a chasing after the wind. "

Ten years later, I continually relearn the same lessons. What strikes me most about the life of King Solomon, a man who traveled the world, ate the best food, wore the best clothes, and possessed unsurpassed wisdom and influence, is that he still struggled with sin, lonliness and emptiness.

Solomon wrote several books of the Bible and is described as the 'wisest man who ever lived.' But that same Solomon also strayed from the God who'd blessed him so much. In his later years, he disobeyed God and built pagan shrines.

And I do the same thing. Not literally, in the sense that I've constructed an Asherah pole or shrine to Baal in my backyard, but I sin. I struggle. I find myself chasing after the wind.

Unlike Solomon, I'm definitely not the wisest, most powerful, or richest person, but through Jesus, God has freely forgiven me of all my sins. He has given me his Holy Spirit as a counselor and guide.

And still . . . . the whistling wind tempts me. I chase. I fall. He pulls me up again.

Maybe you're like me. You struggle. You fail. You get caught up in trivial things. You worry about things you shouldn't. You get grumpy. You get lazy. You fill in the blank.

If you're like me - a stumbler who needs God's forgiveness - there's good news.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but to save the world through him."

If your life seems meaningless and empty - a chasing after the wind - come to the only one who can ever fill the void. If you're convinced you're beyond God's reach or you've done too many bad things to ever be forgiven, you haven't.

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
the old has gone, the new has come!"

This verse from 2 Corinthians was so encouraging to me when I first came to really know God. In the beginning, I struggled a lot with feeling guilty and ashamed. Studying the bible and believing the truth has set me free from so much baggage. Galatians is probably my favorite book in the Bible because it all about how we can't earn God's love, it's a free gift through his son's sacrifice for us.

I pray that if you don't know the Lord today, that you would get to know him. Let him change your life forever. He did mine.