My Father

Your Father Too......He Never Stops Drawing Us To Himself

Beautiful Exchange by Hillsong Worship ft Joel Houston

There’s someone I want to talk to you about. I love Him so much and I get stuck in my head too many times figuring out how best to tell the world about him and it finally hit me today. Write about Him.

This isn’t my first time writing about Him, but I think this is my first time talking about who He really is to me.

You know, where it started from.

I don’t know all the details, so, consider this the first of a series He will continue with me.

My best friend. My first love. The only One who has truly seen me and still does. The only One who has been there for me, with me, all my life till this day. The only One I am confident will be with me even forevermore.

You see, I’m beginning to accept that I’m actually a romantic, and I have always fantasized about life and what I want out of it. I prefer to live in my head, that is, my imaginations, and it’s one way I have coped with living in this world. And so, I used to have this bubble,(it’s undergoing a reinvention). It was a safe space. My safe space. I would always run to it when the world wasn’t playing to the script I had written in my head. Or when I felt uncomfortable, or out of place. I would run to it when people weren’t acting or being the way I wanted them to act or be. I would also run to it to just be by myself and be in my own company.

I grew up Christian. A believer. I had come to the faith as a child and I had confessed Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, and with my childlike heart, believed strongly about what I had confessed. That is, who Jesus Christ is, and what He did for me. I was limited in what I knew at that early age, but I had materials growing up that helped to make sense of it as much as they could for my reality,

being a child,

and a believer.

What that meant for me.

How I was supposed to love, and act, and speak, and who I had now become, someone new, someone different. (I struggled with it a lot though).

What I want to point out from this though, is that I had invited the Holy Spirit through that genuine acceptance, and I didn’t understand the reality of that at the time. I had even started speaking in tongues, although I was very doubtful of what I was saying and not very confident He was the one speaking through me and not me performing for my parents sake. (It may very well have started like that, but truly, only God knows).

The fact remains though that God was present with me. The scripture that talks about Timothy knowing the scriptures from childhood is my testimony too (2 Timothy 3:15), (although, in my own opinion, I struggled with being wise, unlike Timothy.)

Anyway, when I would retreat into myself, disappear into my safety bubble, I never did so alone. And so, my Father, being who He is, pushed me to develop this habit of talking out loud, as if I was having a conversation with someone, but physically no one was there.

I would retreat.

He would meet me there.

Then He would help me talk to Him.

I am very picky with toilets, and I would not use any toilet outside my home for the longest time when I was younger, no matter how pressed I was. I would literally be dying, and I am saying this recalling a particularly disastrous incident, and I would wait till I got home. You can’t blame me, toilets outside can’t be trusted.

So, I would wait till I was home, race my siblings to the toilet, and once settled in, start walking through my day, out loud. I would have my parents and siblings walk by and ask me who I was speaking with and I would say no one, so as not to be found crazy. But what I didn’t know, but somehow felt, from time to time because I just didn’t have enough knowledge to accept it, dismissing it every chance it came up,....

God was meeting with me, every time, every single day.

We would have conversations about my day.

What I did.

What I didn’t do.

What I said.

What I didn’t say.

How I acted.

How I didn’t act.

And then it would transcend the bathroom to random spots I started making mine in the house.

Places I would run to when I am frustrated, crying, sad, angry, whatever it may be, even times I was excited about something.

I would just talk out loud.

And I was talking to Jesus,

It wasn’t a religious-type-prayer-format, but it was still prayer.

I was conversing with my Father.

Now that I am older, and the Holy Spirit is bringing many more instances of how He met with me and I with Him and how He has helped us grow in our relationship and intimacy, it makes a lot of sense, and I have now come to realize that God meets everyone in their own unique way. He has at some point in every human being’s life, drawn them to Himself, but we don’t recognize it, for so many different reasons.

How do I know it was God? How sure am I that it was Him?

Apart from the fact that I only realized it years later, because I was intentionally seeking Him out and not as a result of being a Christian because of my parents, and even when I realized it, He was showing it to me. He was practically pointing Himself out to me and it was too clear to doubt.

From growing in my knowledge and understanding of God and His scriptures, it became clearer to me what it truly means to be born again and it hit me. I had the Holy Spirit at a very young age, and I had praying parents too, who were constantly, prayerfully guarding my siblings and I, so there was no place for the devil to come in, unless I gave him room to.

Even then, I was still a child, drinking milk, so the Kingdom was responsible for me, I was covered. Protected. Preserved. Cocooned in God in a way only a Sovereign God could do.

And through all the times we spent together, I was becoming unknowingly familiar with how my Heavenly Father spoke to me. Just like how we are with our earthly parents. Plus, my conscience was another tool He used. Entrenched deeply in what was right and what was wrong from the conversations and the materials I was reading, on what it meant to be a Christian, I would know instantly when I had done something wrong, and I would feel it deeply.

It’s the same compass we all possess.

Mine had become so deeply infused, that I would have Him take over my thoughts and I would find myself with reasons I could never come up with, on why that wrong thing was wrong.

I would cry out my version of that fight I had with my mum and somehow would start to see her point of view, and it would suddenly become clear how wrong I was and how right she was.

And I promise you, I hated it.

But I could not for the life of me pretend I didn’t know and act contrary. Because He was teaching me to be good, and I wanted to be good for Him. I really did. And for my parents, and for my siblings, and people around me. And to be good means knowing that you are wrong and repenting.

In the middle of an argument, I would have the Holy Spirit tell me I am overreacting, or I have said the wrong thing. He would tell me to apologise and there would be a war between my spirit, that easily obeys the voice of the Spirit that created it, and my flesh, easily prone to rebellion. And with time, some things became easier. Other things needed more time though. I have come to learn they needed more knowledge, more growth and maturity. But I was becoming, with God, my Father, and all because He was intentionally drawing me to Him, and I was succumbing, like a baby falling asleep in his mother’s arms easily, because they know they are safe.

You see, recently, I saw a scripture that I wrote about in one of my other pieces (God Draws Us To Himself!), John 6:44, and the first part talks about God drawing people to Himself. That the result of the fall of man in Genesis 3 created a huge distance between us and God. The bridge we had to God, through our spirits, was destroyed, because at the fall, our spirits died. And so, because we had lost that original connection we had with God, it’s harder to pick it when He reaches out to us. It doesn’t feel normal, as it should anymore, and then there usually is no logical way to explain it so we dismiss it, so we don’t think ourselves crazy, or we try to find an explanation for it, usually we say it’s ourselves. Instinct. Intuition. And sometimes it is these things, but other times, it really is God, reaching out to us, calling out to us.

And the devil will try to drown out the voice of God, or distract us from properly investigating when God reaches out to us. He is the father of lies, so he would use that. He would also try distractions, another tactic of his, and it manifests in numerous forms, just to keep us in the darkness and on the path to destruction with him. He also uses other religions. Other expressions of spirituality that seem like the Real One but aren’t. Religions that do not point to the One True Way, God Himself created, and not man. Not through encounters men had, or gushers they thought they hit, but God’s decided way to Him.

As long as it keeps us from truly finding God, the devil will use it.

And it’s funny because it then becomes an argument about which ‘religion’ is right or true, but I dare to say, only God can create a way back to Him, and any other religion that points to us doing anything, in our fallen state, to be reconciled to Him, should be thoroughly investigated, because only God could repair that bridge and that’s what He did. That’s what Jesus Christ (God, come down as man), did.

And this God, Jesus Christ, who is the only One to have defeated the grave and death, is right now, having made it easier for us to be drawn to God, to be reconciled to Him, calling out to people, with God, to get them back to their full state. No void. Nothing missing.

Therefore, I implore everyone who gets to read this, to look back at your life, carefully, thoroughly, and try your best to not allow yourself to come up with any explanations or responses, but instead, allow God to show you, Himself, how He has been drawing you to Him, every instance. And finally, allow Him to draw you to Him.

He is known to be a consistent character of love and faithfulness especially to His creations. Therefore, He is always pursuing us and chasing after us. He sees us no matter how high He sits. He finds the areas His light can pierce through and He begins to chase away the darkness. Debunk the lies, and tear down the walls. All with the mission to help us find Him.

Why?

Because when we find Him, then the world makes sense. Every question in our heart about life itself, the world, people, our present and our future, especially what happens when the curtains close on our lives, have their answers in Him, and He alone. The right answers. The only TRUE answers. They all come from Him. He starts to answer our questions. He begins to make sense of this dark world for us.

Everyone has that question about the essence of life and living and there are many variations of what that answer may be, but in Him lies the only True Answer. He tells us the truth about life, how it started and how it ends.

Another crazy revelation, He usually starts His work right from the moment we are conceived. Science tells us that a race happens every time a man and a woman come together intimately, and it’s the semen that successfully fertilizes an egg that wins that race. That fertilized egg becomes a foetus that eventually becomes a baby. From that successful race, God starts to intentionally form a child that He has already created.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you [and approved of you as My chosen instrument], And before you were born I consecrated you [to Myself as My own]; I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” - Jeremiah 1:5

These words God told Jeremiah the prophet, and just looking at how God never makes a mistake, or creates any human being by accident, He has an intentional plan for each and every individual born into this world. Everyone. Including YOU! And with this intentional plan, you are formed.

Then guess what, He stayed with me all those months, keeping me, waiting with me to come out into this scary world. He did the same with you, and with every child conceived, and whether or not they made it out or not, He had plans for them and knowing God, nothing happens for nothing.

I don’t know you or your life and all that has happened but I know for a fact that He watches over all things and sees all things and is able to be present in every individual life, and He is definitely with you.

“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you…..” - James 4:8.

And there is a how, through Jesus Christ, and only through Him.

Be honest with yourself. Do you really know these?

Who are you? And I mean the original plan God had for you from conception.

What intentions did He have for you before He started the weaving process in your mother’s womb? Why were you born?

In what ways has God been trying to draw you to Him, reach out to you, find you?

Reflect deeply and be honest, because I know for a fact, unless you choose otherwise, He has tried to find you. Yes, YOU!

Don’t you think it’s high time to answer His call? Even if just to know. And finally accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, because through Him your access to the Father is restored.

It wasn’t an easy journey having God be present in my life that early. We’ll explore that next.