In Search of God

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

(John 1:1-5, New International Version)

You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

(Matthew 7:16, New Living Translation)

Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other."

(John 13:34-35 The Message Bible)

Discernment and prayer go hand-in-hand with the search for God. A lot of us walk around blindly in search for the “perfect religion.” We stumble around in the darkness, trying on things, believing that the Truth is a set of rules and laws to follow. We look for perfection in the lives of the religion’s adherents, and we try to see if they “walk the talk.”

The things of the Spirit, however, are discerned by the Spirit.

The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can't receive the gifts of God's Spirit. There's no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God's Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God's Spirit is doing, and can't be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah's question, "Is there anyone around who knows God's Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?" has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ's Spirit.

(1 Corinthians 2:14, The Message Bible)

As a seeker, I had gone through just a bit in my search for Life and God. While others have “been there, tried that,” running the gamut of religion from Orthodox Christianity down to Polytheism, or even the lack of God in the concept of Nirvana, I was fortunate to have gone through just one false religion that had allowed me to see that getting to know God isn’t all about doctrine or religious structure.

The religion I had gone through, the Baha’i Faith, is a religion that believes that all religions are just progressive steps leading to one God. That “all roads lead to God”.

What I noted there, though, was that everything they did felt dead. I was longing for Life, but it wasn’t there. I had been wanting and needing the kind of Life I had tasted, while praising and worshiping Him in YFC’s* Youth Camp. I had longed for Jesus. I could not believe in their “prophet,” because I had seen one of his letters, which was addressed to the “Son of the Wolf.” For me, a person who had to denounce and slander his enemies isn’t like the Jesus I had known.

But before we get to my epiphany and reconciliation to Jesus, I’d like to talk about how I had lost faith in Him.

My teenage mind was wondering why there were so many religions, and I wondered which one was right. I knew that Life had to be there somewhere.. But where is it? Where is it among all those differently-shaped churches? Who was the true Messiah? Jesus? Mohammed? Was the Pope really of Jesus? Why did the Jews forsake Jesus? Did that mean He was not the true God?

In my search I would have wanted to try the Jewish religion; I wondered which “Christian” church had the true Jesus in it; I wondered if Jesus really was the Son of God.

Though I was fortunate that God already had a safety net for me before I reached my teens and my personal hell began: I was raised on a steady T.V. diet of The Flying House and Superbook, plus He had given me opportunities to read the Children’s Bibles on my own, and He had allowed a teacher in my school to minister to me, I still needed to find out for myself who God really is.

So my search led me to reading up on Wicca, on other religions, on cults, and though I never cast a spell, because I was scared to, I did nearly try to get my future predicted by a friend of mine who practiced Wicca. The meeting never happened.

Then the Baha’i Faith happened in my life. While I was there, I kept crying out to God that this religion seemed so dead! With childish praise songs and weird rituals, no concept of sin, and an all-embracing “faith” which allows people to worship Jesus with everyone else, I got more and more confused. I cried out to God more, asking Him to show me whether their “prophet” really was “the essence of Jesus come back to guide again for our age.”

Of course, since the dead man, Mirza Hussein Ali, was NOT the Son of God, God had to lead me back to His own Son, Jesus Christ.

What I learned from the experience is that:

1. God is not found in religion. He is a Person, and He wants to show you His love.
2. While He is not in religion, He is found in His people.
3. Walking with Him is a walk of faith: not of doctrine or of works.
4. You will know Life when you experience it.
5. When you ask for Faith, or for a knowledge of who He truly is, He will answer your cry.
6. God is revealed in the Bible, first and foremost, because the Bible is the Word, and the Word IS Jesus. (John 1:1-5)
7. Being desperate for Him and for freedom would always be answered by God.

When you truly are seeking for God, don’t ask for signs and wonders; ask for the Truth, ask for Faith to believe, ask for your eyes to be opened, and He will answer your call.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

(Matthew 5:6)

*Youth for Christ, a Catholic Charismatic Youth Organization