Chosen From The Start

Finding God

I've always acknowledged the existence of God. Somehow I just knew he existed,

but knowing him personally and accepting Jesus as my savior didn't come until a bit

later, and that's mainly because I thought it took a lot to come to Jesus, I thought it had

to be this big public showcase at church, where I had to walk to the front of the church

and some guy had to lay hands on me, and as a young boy I was really shy and didn't

want to go through that, so I just said to myself "one of these days I'm going to get the

guts to walk up there". One Easter Sunday the church was handing out Easter goody

baskets like they always do, and this time my basket had a little Children's

Christian book inside. When I got home I took all the candy from the basket and left the

book, like any other kid would and just forgot about it.

Around the age of 12 my mother started to trust me to stay home alone with my

sister while she ran errands. Before she would leave she would give my sister

instruction to read at least one book, so my sister would pick a random book and ask to

read it to me. And this day was no different, she went and randomly chose a book and

asked to read to me, and I looked at the book and to my surprise it was the book from

my Easter basket some years ago. She began to read to me as normal, but this time

instead of just listening I wanted to see the pages as well, so I did.

The story ended but I noticed there was still another page left, so I turned the page

and what I read completely shocked me. The book had a salvation prayer at the end,

saying that I could be saved that day. All this time I thought coming to Christ required a

lot of bravery and people looking at me, but there I was in the comfort of my own home,

with just me and my sister in the house, and I was about to accept Jesus. So I said the

short prayer of salvation, and that set the course of my life.

After I got saved I had a strange hunger for God. I remember spending hours and

hours on the internet reading spiritual articles. One of the main questions I would search

for was how to hear the voice of God. For some reason I was always intrigued with hearing God's voice. I would read articles and cry my little heart out asking God to allow

me to hear his voice. After doing that for awhile I still hadn't heard God's voice, so I

gave up, thinking either God doesn't care that I want to hear him, or he just doesn't want

me to. But that didn't stop my quest for God; I was still reading articles and seeking his

face daily.

At the time I thought all my peers were doing the same thing, in fact I thought I was

a little behind everyone else. I found out I was wrong when I went to school, no one was

talking about God and most of the kids were doing things that went against his Word,

and since I didn't act like them and didn't want to do the things they were participating in