It had been many years since I’d even attended a church service. I didn’t like to step into a church for funerals or weddings. Leading up to my first visit to Jordan’s church, I remember feeling a pit in my stomach. What would I wear? How should I act? What should I say? How MUCH should I say?
From the outside looking in, church had never seemed like a safe place for the broken, a refuge for the weary, or a soft place to land. It wasn’t a welcoming place for doubting, messy sinners like me. It was a social club for the holy, for the (seemingly) perfect, for the ones who pretended to have it all together and gossiped about those who didn’t. To me, the church had always been represented by judgmental people who only loved people that looked and believed like they did.
As for God? I hadn’t tried to pray in at least a decade. To some degree, I had always acknowledged and believed that God existed. I also believed that God couldn’t love a person like me. For so many years, I pushed away any thoughts about God because I wanted to go unnoticed… almost like thinking and asking questions about faith-related matters would be inviting God’s judgment and punishment into my life. I remember saying a lot of the following during that period of time:
“I can’t go to church until I work on myself and get my life on a better track.”
“If I go to church, people will find out who I really am and who I’ve been. I don’t want to be judged or gossiped about.”
“I can’t go to church. I don’t look like a church person. I don’t know how to speak like someone who goes to church. I don’t know very much at all about the Bible. I won’t know any of the songs or when I should stand or how to pray. What if someone asks me a question that I don’t know how to answer? What if they find out I’m not a Christian? What will people who know me and know my past think if they hear about me going to church? I just can’t go to church.”
But… I did go to church.
And I’m not going to lie, it was weird and awkward and intimidating. But… I went back another time. And then another. And another. Every week, I would stand in the congregation, surrounded by people singing about God and raising their hands up high in the air, feeling completely out of place and hoping that no one would try to talk to me.
I began to realize that for as much as I was afraid of being judged by everyone around me, I had also been judging them. I had assumed the worst out of people that I didn’t even know. I began to allow myself to open up and let people in, little by little. I began to allow the words of the worship songs in, rather than rolling my eyes and shutting them out. I began to absorb the words of the sermons, even if they didn’t totally make sense to me at the time.
I was still a mess, sure – my life was still a total wreck. But God met me there. I didn’t have to do anything but step out in faith. I didn’t have to clean myself up, make myself more presentable, recite all the books of the Bible. I just had to admit that I was done. No more running from God, no more avoiding the hard conversations or the work that I knew I needed to step aside and allow God to do in my life. When I prayed to accept Christ as my savior, it wasn’t preplanned or perfectly worded. I didn’t look, speak or live like a “good Christian girl.” I was weak, hopeless, full of nonstop anxiety. I simply prayed what was on my heart. “God, I believe that you are real. I believe that Jesus died for me. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to live for you but I want to. I’m done running. I’m giving it all to you. My heart is a mess but it’s yours, if you’ll have me. I want to trust you with my life.”
And after I prayed, I did feel like something had changed within me. My life didn’t change right away – many things took years to change. But I had changed. My heart had finally found something – Jesus, the only one worthy – to anchor hope in. I didn’t need to fix things or change by my own power. I simply needed to set aside my pride and my fear and allow the Lord to come into my heart and transform it. I didn’t need to fight all of the battles on my own or come up with all of the answers. I needed to learn to rest in God’s promises and trust Him to fight for me.
Kristen Stewart, Writer 