By: Quina Parchment

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in the world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world...probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing." – C.S. Lewis "Mere Christianity" pg. 120

I'm not made for this earth. If I was, then why is it that all it offers doesn’t satisfy me? I was made for something more.

I grew up in a fairly stable home in Orlando, FL with my mom, dad, and older sister. I was your average, come-home-with-my-clothes-dirty-from-playing-outside type of kid. I grew up very family-oriented, but I was also pretty shy. I broke out of this shyness the more I played sports throughout middle school and high school. In fact, the two arenas in which I socially gained worth were sports and academics. My identity was based on succeeding in these two aspects of life, and I hoped to find satisfaction in the status and relationships I achieved through all of it.

I grew up hearing about God from my school and church but always understood Him to be this old, mystical, far-off kind of guy who cared about me going to church and saying my prayers, but that’s about it. Religion was a part of life, just like going to school and to the dentist. However, as I reached my teenage years I began to seriously consider, “How can anyone be sure that any particular religion is ‘the right one’ anyway?” The answers I usually got were always along the lines of, “Well, you just gotta’ have faith.”

As I journeyed through high school I had the opportunity to hear about other people’s beliefs and philosophies about life, and much of what I heard sounded more practical and real to me than what I understood about the God in Christianity. However, my focus was on (you guessed it) academics and sports…and relationships…you know, the whole boyfriend deal. Although I didn’t say it outright, I was living for status and acceptance more than anything. And I was getting it the more I “succeeded” in what I did. The only problem was…I felt empty. Even after going to a party, or getting away with something exciting, or winning numerous awards, it was like it still seemed like life was…well, meaningless. I was never satisfied with more money, more status, or more anything.

Whenever people asked me what I believed I’d always tell them I was a Christian because I had been baptized and participated in my church growing up. I figured that I was most likely going to heaven because I considered myself to be a “good person” and I wasn’t selling drugs or having sex like some people I knew. However, I would often think about how messed up this world really is (the violence, the disease, the hatred) and wonder, “How can there be a God when life is so messed up?” Thinking too hard about things such as, “Who am I?” and, “What’s the meaning of life if we all just die in the end?” would freak me out because I didn’t really know the answers. So I would usually try to distract myself with the day’s tasks and whatever was next on my to-do list.

So fast forward to my junior year in high school during volleyball season… I started hanging out more with one of my teammates before games and at school. She was really cool and very athletic but her attitude was quite different than mine. She always had so much joy and I noticed she didn’t gossip with us or speak evil about other people like we did. One night when I slept over her house she shared her story with me. She had grown up in a Christian home and had “given her life to Christ” when she was very young but had truly began to understand what it meant to live for Him when she got to high school. She spoke about God as though she had just had coffee with Him that morning. All of her terminology was new to me, and I thought it was really interesting how she had Bible verses posted up throughout her bedroom. I didn’t think too much about it after that night though.

Two nights later I found myself alone in my bedroom having this mental/emotional breakdown because I was stressed out about different pressures from school, volleyball, and life in general. It turned out to be a different kind of “break down” because I couldn’t stop crying about this emptiness I still felt and the meaninglessness of life. Usually I’d have a good cry in my room by myself and be over with it, but not that night. That “emptiness” completely overwhelmed me and I could barely see because I was crying so hard. Although I had almost never read my Bible before, I found a dusty one on my bookshelf and just figured I’d look at it since nothing else was soothing me. I randomly opened it to Psalm 69 and was immediately astonished by the words I found:

“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God…”

“What?! That type of stuff is in the Bible?! This is exactly how I feel,” I thought. So I decided to write my teammate a note (which turned into a 2-page letter) to ask her to explain to me all that “God stuff” she was talking about the other day in her bedroom. I remember hoping she didn’t think I was the weirdest person in the world for writing her this long letter to ask her about God.

It turns out she was happy to share with me about what she knew. On our way to a volleyball game she sat down with me on the bus to explain to me the gospel message of Jesus Christ as explained in the Bible. It was the first time I heard about how God created me in His image to have an intimate relationship with Him and experience His love, peace, and freedom.  The bad news was that my sin (my innate refusal to go God’s way and instead to go my own way and do my own thing) separated me from even coming close to having a relationship with Him. Not only that, but my sinful nature that offends God’s perfect nature deserved death—spiritual separation from God for eternity, even after I physically died. I found out that all of my religious devotion, giving to charity, and “good” works were not enough to outweigh the infinite debt that I owed God because of my sin. That eternal separation from God is called hell and it’s exactly what I deserved because of my sinful nature. Then I heard the good news…God decided that He wouldn’t leave me hopeless. In His love for me He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to this earth. Jesus (a.k.a. “God in the flesh” because He was fully God and fully man) lived a perfect, sinless life. Even his enemies couldn’t find any fault in Him. Jesus made some serious claims to be on equal level with God and to be the only way for humans to get to God. He then took the punishment for my wrongdoings in His death through crucifixion. When He was beaten, torn, and hung on the cross, He offered Himself as a sacrifice for all of my past, present, and future sins. God the Father poured out all of His justified wrath for my sins on Jesus as though Jesus were me. Three days after Jesus’ grueling death, He rose from the dead and appeared to over 500 eye-witnesses before He returned to heaven.  His resurrection proved that God the Father was pleased with the sacrifice that Jesus made for my sins, that Jesus was truly all that He said He was, and that Jesus has the power to enable us to live eternally with God. My teammate also shared with me that hearing and intellectually knowing all of these truths found in the Bible are not enough for me to assume that I’m going to heaven. An emotional experience wouldn’t free me to receive eternal life from God. I couldn’t assume that I knew God just because I might have known people who knew Him or because I went to church all of my life. I found out that I had to individually respond to the truth about Jesus Christ by turning from my sins (repentance) and placing my faith (trust, dependence) in who Jesus is, that He paid for all of my sins when He died on the cross, and that He rose from the dead to grant me eternal life with God.

That night I placed my faith in Jesus Christ and as an expression of what my heart believed, I prayed a prayer very similar to this one:

Jesus Christ, I need you. I confess that I have sinned against you and have been running my own life and have sinned against You. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Please come into my life and forgive my sins and set me free. Begin directing my life. Change my destiny.  Make me into the person you created me to be. Thank you for answering my prayer by coming into my life and giving me eternal life. Amen.

My sins were forgiven because of Jesus Christ’s perfect sacrifice on the cross and I was now at peace with God. My eternal relationship with Him began.

Immediately, my teammate and I started having one-on-one Bible studies that took me through some of the basic foundations of Christian belief. It was amazing to me that one day I was such a skeptic to Christianity and so angry at this God I had heard of my whole life, and the next day I completely desired to learn more about Him. This was one of the first ways that God proved to me that I truly had received His Son into the throne of my heart.

I gradually became sick of sinning as I got a better grasp of how sin is a sickness. I fell in love with reading God’s Word (the Bible) and seeing how real and relevant it is to my life. I began to tell people I knew about this Jesus and how Christianity isn’t a religion but a relationship with God made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Most people shrugged my excitement off, even family and close friends. This grieved me, but I knew God wanted me to continue telling people about Him and to grow in my knowledge of Him as well.

Since then, I’ve been through some of the most challenging experiences I’ve had to deal with in my life (deaths of both a mentor and a friend within a 9 month span, family issues, and much more…). I don’t marvel at how all of these things happened to me right after asking Christ to come into my life, but I do marvel at how faithful and gracious God has been in comforting me, teaching me, building my character, and protecting me through all of these experiences.

I also still struggle with sinning, but I have found that God the Holy Spirit is constantly revealing my sin to me and reshaping my thoughts and actions to look more like God’s nature through the truth found in the Bible. When I think about how much He has changed me since the day I gave my life to Him, there’s no doubt in my mind that He is SO real and SO loving to me. My family in Christ (those who have also trusted in Jesus for their salvation) has been a MONUMENTAL factor in my growth in my relationship with God. I can’t even begin to explain how they have literally become Jesus’ arms that wrap around me in both the good and bad times. I have been growing in my understanding of what true love is, and I’ve found it to be defined by the very God who created me, saved me, and sustains me everyday.

Life here on earth is definitely not perfect, but I am forever loved and in love with a perfect God who has not just forgiven my sins, but traded my self-righteousness (which just equated to that of filthy rags) for His righteousness (perfection, holiness). I am continually growing, knowing that He is faithful to carry out the good work He started in me onto completion on the day that Jesus returns. It’s so evident to me that after accepting His free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ that, “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

I have found in myself a desire that no experience of this world can satisfy.  I know why now… earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing: Jesus Christ.