Day 18 - Your beliefs. (part 1)

First things first: I am a Christian, if that isn't obvious enough for some of you who knows me.

Being a Christian means I believe that Jesus is God :)
I think in this post, I'll just talk about the chronological journey of the person of Jesus I know.
You can read a more comprehensive post about this here.


1. One of the gods.

My first impression of Jesus is that He is just one of a few gods that rule in this world. As a kid, I grew up in an environment where the people around me worship different gods.

In elementary school, I had a Catholic religion class. It gave me a shock when my teacher told me that there is only one God. And He's a triune God. Which makes it very confusing. But that changed my mindset on how many God we are supposed to worship, which in my case was one.


2. The Textbook Jesus.

So I know more about this Jesus guy when I moved to Petra, a Christian elementary school. They talk more of Him during religion classes. I came to know legalistic stuff like the 10 commandments, the apostles, the kings in the Old Testament, the famous characters a Christian is supposed to know.


3. The First Encounter.

That night when I was on my 5th or 6th grade (which makes me around 10 or 11), and my dad just scolded me. And he beat me up when he gets angry so it was pretty bad. Back then, whenever my dad scolded me, I would always remember by birth mom who was already dead. It always made me feel worse (like duh). I remember that night I was crying myself to bed, feeling so lonely and sad and full of self pity.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I remembered this textbook Jesus. The textbooks said that He loves me, and that He's a father. That night, what has always been words on a textbook became so real. Words couldn't explain, but I know that He really does love me. He suddenly became so real! I felt loved by God, and that made me cry even more. I never forgot that night, how for the first time in my life, God became God. That night, I knew that eventhough my earthly father hates me (which he obviously doesn't, but my young mind didn't understand that at that point), I have another Father which doesn't.

That night, my life changed. God is real.


4. The Distance.

So I know Jesus is alive. But I didn't know that we can have a relationship. I didn't read my Bible, I didn't go to church, I have no community. Slowly, the closeness I felt with Jesus during "The First Encounter" faded away, and I came back to the place of insecurity and negativity.

I was a negative person to begin with. Like, my mind tends to think negatively when viewing a situation. With puberty and entering the supposedly "the best time of your life" teenage years, where popularity matters and boyfriends suddenly became important, insecurity rises. And having a stepmom being so perfectly beautiful and loved and popular didn't make things any easier for the teenage me.

I battled all this without God. I know He is always behind the scenes, it's just that I never run to Him. So I always felt that I was battling this alone.


5. The Second Encounter.

During secondary 1 (I was 12), I have a classmate named Gisella. She's Gisel Idol, if you know her. Now she's a rising celebrity in Indonesia :) She goes to this church: Gereja Mawar Sharon. One day, they were having this mini crusade and she invited me, so I came.

That was my first time knowing the charismatic environment. The whole room was speaking in tongues! I've never heard anyone speak in tongues before, that was my first time hearing the "tongue" language. But somehow I know that those alien vocabs were them speaking in tongues. Must be the Holy Spirit telling me, now that I think of it.

There, I remembered the Jesus I encountered two years back. And I want Him again! I want to feel His love again! It's like a fire has been lit again inside me! So I started coming to church with Gisella every week. Sunday school.

But it only lasted 2 or 3 weeks. First, because the kids were unfriendly, didn't really made friends with anyone. Second, Gisella suddenly got angry with me without any reason that I know of. She stopped talking to me, and that will make it very awkward if I attend sunday school where I know nobody but her. So, I stopped coming, and "The Distance" phase slowly happened all over again.



Tired so this will continue into Part 2!!

Good night people!