 Hey guys what's up it's Isaac and today as you can see from the title I'm gonna talk a little bit about my journey as a young Christian and talk about some of the areas that I was really wrong about God and had some wrong perspectives and kind of talk through some of those things and hopefully give you some encouragement and some perspective maybe if you are dealing with these lies that come in or wrong perspectives of God so growing up I had become a Christian sometimes around of 10 11 that's that that's the point where I definitely knew I was a Christian when I was like six years old I prayed a prayer and maybe you can call it at that point 11 10 I rededicated my life to Christ but at that point I was I was a Christian and it was one of those things where and I think to give you a little bit of a backstory on my personality I'm a people pleaser so I really like making people happy and I'll do things I'll go to my way to make people like me and that's really important to me just just my personality and maybe maybe you experienced something like that too so I think when I became a Christian at that early age and I wouldn't have been able to identify like that people pleasing nature in me maybe other people around me saw that but but I think I brought that over to my relationship with God and when I became a Christian yeah I knew yeah God died for me I had committed you know sins and and I needed to be saved from those things and Jesus died on the cross and he rose again from the dead and he was able to forgive me of my sins and now I can you know I'll go to heaven when I die and so that was I knew that but also I don't know this tendency to look at God and just say and think to myself like how do you feel about me God like what thinking about how I could make God like me more and love me more in a way and so I would try to think up things like oh I want to make sure I read my Bible every day and I want to you know pray and so I would go go to the extent of that at that point I would open my Bible and I wouldn't really read because I couldn't really read because I'm dyslexic at ten eleven years old I wasn't that good at reading and so I just kind of leave it open and I just I don't know what I thought but I thought even just having it open was giving me some sort of brown brownie points with God like God was looking down and he was like yeah okay I like you Isaac you know and this kind of feeling and not that there's anything wrong with reading your Bible or praying or anything like that obviously but it's all about the heart behind it and that's what I want to get into but I think this kind of feeling like I needed to earn God's love or make God proud of me worked in tandem with this overall feeling like God didn't like me like God didn't wasn't proud of me that he was disappointed in me that I was a failure that I that I was really nothing so encounter to that and counter that overall feeling I really worked hard at trying to get God to like me and love me in a way I couldn't have put it into words like that then but that was a lot of my relationship with God at that age and for me I was raised in a Christian household and the Gospel was talked about God was talked about we would read the Bible together and from an early age I remember hearing a lot about hey God God loves you God loves you God loves you but I can just just thinking back I had no idea what that meant I had no idea what that meant I guess in some ways that I thought look God coming to die for me that was nice of him but now it's my job to make him love me he did this for me now I have to come back with you know serving him and honoring him in order for him to really like me and accept me it was like an obligation in a way a duty that because now God saved me now I have to impress God and make God proud of me I think it's easy to get lost especially when you've grown up in a Christian household or Christian culture to let some of these things that like God loves you and just let them I don't know just become words and not really understand what they truly mean and the implications they have on your life because even now to this day in my 20s I'm still thinking about the implications that God does love me and I think it really wasn't until and I'm still learning to this day but until I was 17 I'm thinking 17 18 when I I had a moment where the speaker was talking about when he truly understood that God loved him despite all his mistakes despite all the things where where he had been selfish or he'd gone wrong or all the things that had happened in his life God loved him and for me I have a hard time with that I have a hard time really if somebody says they love me I have a hard time believing that because I feel like I need to prove it to them until I feel like I've sufficiently proven myself to be lovable then I can't believe somebody who says they love me or accept me if I feel like for me it's like I need to be really awesome a really awesome person and then you can love me but the amazing thing about God and what I learned throughout my teen years and it was a long process is that the amazing thing about God and the amazing thing about you know people in our lives or close family or friends if you're fortunate enough to have those people in your life that love you despite the things that you do the despite the fact that look yeah you do make mistakes and despite the fact that look you can't be perfect and and God says you know come come to me my child I think of the prodigal son the story of the prodigal son and we've gone off and we've done what we wanted to do and you know when he comes back when the prodigal son comes back the father accepts him he doesn't pass judgment he doesn't scold him he celebrates and he celebrates him he celebrates him and he doesn't deserve it he doesn't deserve to be forgiven he doesn't deserve he deserves to work and for me when I read that story and when I did read that story it it made more sense to me when the son would come back he would work for the father to earn that to earn that forgiveness because he did all that stuff because he's it he he wasted the money of course he's gonna come back and he's gonna work for the father to earn that that forgiveness that that spot in his house to be loved by the father again but he wasn't he was accepted back he was accepted back based on the mercy and the grace of the father and for me there's not a day that goes by that that is not powerful to me that's not there's not a day that goes by that that doesn't speak that doesn't speak into my soul where I can see God saying look I know I know what you've done in your life but I want you I want you it's not like he's accepting you out of obligation no he chose you he chose you and for me I was wrong about God I thought he just wanted what I could offer him I thought I needed to earn his love and make him proud of me but God already loves me and accepts me and that's something that I still struggle with because we can look around on this earth for so much you know we can look for that acceptance and love from so many places because we crave it that's where our hearts are at and for some of us that's a real the biggest piece of her life some maybe some others it might not be as front and center but for me that love and acceptance that was so that was so at core to who I am and even now I can identify that in my life being able to see that I can be fully known that God can know everything about me that God can know every single place I've made a mistake that he can see the places where I fall short and yet he loves me if I were to tell you about a person like that you would say wow what a person but you would know I wasn't telling the whole story because no person can love perfectly like that nobody can be known fully and yet love perfectly but God can know us and he does know us and we can know him and he can love us and he does love us fully God has saved us and he accepts us and he loves us that is who God is that's his character he is merciful he is gracious and yes he is just and that's the beauty of the gospel is the fact that he has yes he has saved us from our sins but he's not left us there and he's not angrily scolded us but he's accepted us and adopted us as children children of God and now we can step into that new identity