Have you ever felt the deep longing to fill the void of something you can't quite explain? Have you ever felt a pain so deep, that would have done anything to take it away? Have you ever looked in the mirror and were scared of what you saw and wondered how you or anyone could ever truly love you if they truly knew who you were?

If not, congratulations, awesome, now is your cue to move on to the next post...

But if in some way these questions articulate a place you have been before; that means you are not alone. But more importantly In fact, it most likely means you are human.

But here's another question, have you ever been promised that to live a happy, fulfilling, comfortable life all you have to do is believe in God? And the is the answer to all your confusion, pain and discomfort is accepting him? Then upon following the numbered instructions of "accepting God" (like a business deal) the confusion, pain, and discomfort persisted? Me too...

So what now?

Like the adage goes "There's a God shaped hold in all our hearts" and the things we have done to fill that hole, has left a wasteland of broken people... So what do we do? We keep on looking. And some of us actually find God- but so often even when we do, we find that all along we were really more interested with trying to fill the "God shaped hole" with stuff we want, that wasn't all that "God-ish". We find all of the sudden that this God that fits in our hearts, actually doesn't especially care that we get what we want, but rather cares that we get Him; what we need.

We like God and all, but we maybe thought that when He said he would "fill the void in our heart" it would be with funner stuff, that would make life easy... This is the point, where many of us look straight into the face of our creator and say "Thanks, but no thanks." and go on living our life as if He wasn't the answer, and all of these things we would rather have will do the trick.

It's a scary feeling coming to the realization that nothing in this world will give us what we thought we wanted... Not even God.

We like the idea of God but have found God isn't all that marketable and doesn't come with the "swag" we thought he would... SO, we (I) begin to sell God... Sell to ourselves and others. We sell God, like the rest of the world sells drugs, sex, money. Promising (convincing) ourselves and others, that God will make us "all better", take away all our pain, and make us happy...

But those who have followed Jesus can tell you, this is simply not true. Though its a PR nightmare, the answer to your problems (Jesus/God) is not going, to make you happy, take away all the "hard" stuff, or give you everything you think you want... Instead He is going to give you Himself.

While this is a hard pill to swallow for some, the reality we come to when we let go of our expectations- is that when we enter in a relationship with our very creator, we actually get more than all of our "wants" could ever begin to conjure up.

We begin to realize that...

When we wanted to have our pain taken away... God gives us the strength to walk through it.

When we wanted a whole new story... God give us the chance to redeem the one we're in.

When we wanted to have our scares disappear... God gives us the chance to turn them into something beautiful.

Jesus, didn't come and live a comfortable life, pain, discomfort, and worry free, he lived a life of hurt, and pain, struggle and ultimately sacrifice. Jesus didn't model for us an easy life, but a beautiful one.

Beautiful is always harder, but always better.

Jesus, does not simply numb, or take our pain away, like that of any drug can promise... But instead Jesus walks with us through our pain and turns it into something beautiful. He takes broken, hurt, discombobulated us and turns us into something beautiful.

-Nathan

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