So Glad He Never Gave Up On Me

On this wonderful month of July, 31 years ago, God created one of his favorite and most successful creations outside of Christ himself…….ME. Okay, stop laughing……no seriously stop…it can’t be that funny. As my birthday swept to and fro, I couldn’t help but to process an examination of what the last 31 yrs of my life has looked like. It’s been a crazy roller coaster ride of good and bad memories, decisions I’m happy I made, others I wish I could re-do again, and some that still haunt me today. What always astonishes me is the thought that we are all hand picked and created from God himself. Life isn’t accidental, nor is it by chance. That become the major subject of this thought process.

We all have a past, and I have made many….many…..many mistakes throughout my life. I have caused pain in the lives of others, and to be honest I wouldn’t say my life’s resume is anything to brag about. As I meditated on a lot of my life choices I really began to appreciate the love that God shows when a child is born. Think about it, we are all born innocent and tend to take the lives we have been given and decide to go all kamikaze with them. Then we grow up at some point between 30 and 65yrs of age and calm down. Yet, God still blesses us with the opportunity to live in hopes that we will choose to follow him and develop that father / child relationship he created us for.

God isn’t prejudice of what we could turn out like, yet he still chooses to create us and gives us free reign over our lives….knowing most will choose to break his heart through our refusal to love him, or even grow up to deny his very existence. Now that is love. I want you to look over the decisions you have made throughout your life, pain you may have caused, choices you have made, yet God created you out of love because he believes in you. He really never gives up on us, even if we have given up on ourselves. What if we had a choice whether to create life based on the end result of what they do with it, how many people on this earth would have never been given the chance to live? Would you have been created? If I were to list the good and bad of my life on two sides of a paper I believe the bad would’ve out weighed the good, for only the last couple years of my life have been semi-applaudable. If mankind had a choice would I have been created?

I thank God all the time that he chose to bless me with the breath of life, knowing the paths I would take throughout life. It took me 29 years to realize who he was, and for some it will be the last minutes of their life before they really decide to hand their heart over to God. What blows my mind is how he will create that person and wait their whole life for those couple minutes of one on one affection, so he can hold their hand for all of eternity in his heavenly house. When I think back in life I can see all the different times God continuously reached out to introduce himself to me whether it was through friends, family, strangers, experiences, hardships, times of happiness, and so on. Yet with every smack of his hand he patiently waited to meet the son he gave life to 31 yrs ago. He lovingly waited 28 straight years watching me make decisions that caused him pain, walking down paths he tried so hard for me to avoid, choosing actions he wished I didn’t. In the end he never gave up on me and never stopped extending his hand for me to grab.

I thank you God for you have changed my life. There were times I chose to hold the hand of your enemy, and pretend like you weren’t there and yet you never gave up on me. You created me knowing my imperfections and loved me anyway. You have blessed me with a life I don’t deserve and have pulled me out of the hands of your enemy and a life of destruction that only leads to death. You have changed my heart and continue to make me a better man, husband, and father. It is because of you my children will grow up with your name tattooed on their hearts. It’s because of you that their morals with be strengthened, and it’s through you that my wife and I will be together until death do us part. I look forward to many more years together and the lessons you will put at my feet, and I pray that I will never let you down. Amen