ALI'S JOURNEY

Hey guysss, it’s been a minute!!! 

Hope each and every one of you is keeping well & staying safe. I miss yas to bits! <3 

I’m going to tell you a lil bit about my journey as a Christian. So I am extremely thankful to have grown up in a Christian family. It’s safe to say we attended every church service and kids meeting under the sun, but of course, growing up in a Christian home didn’t make me a Christian. That’s not quite how it works. For every person who grows up in a Christian home, there comes a point where you branch off from your family faith onto your own personal journey of faith, choosing either to reject Christ or to follow Him. 

From when I began to explore Christianity for myself, 

I would categorise my journey into 3 stages: 

Stage 1 - Understanding the weight of His love. 

Stage 2 - Understanding the weight of His Word. 

Stage 3 - Understanding the weight of His life. 

His love

I always believed there was a God. And I knew in my head that He loved me because I had been told so countless times. But I wasn’t sure why He loved me,  and so in my heart I found this difficult to believe. I remember reading a quote by C.S. Lewis which helped me to better understand God’s love for me. It said that ‘Jesus did not die to save men, He died to save each man. If you were the only person on earth, He would have done no less.’ Let that sink in. If you were the only person on earth, He would have done no less. Hold on a minute, Jesus still would have died the most agonising death in history for ME, so that I might live?!? Suddenly something I regarded as universal became so deeply personal, and the weightiness of John 3:16 became so real. These were no longer just words on a page, this was Truth. And so I made the decision that I wanted to follow Jesus in response to what He had done for me. 

His Word

I often considered the Bible as a book of rules, something that could potentially interfere with the way I wanted to live my life, but boy did I have the wrong perception! Don’t hate on me for the analogy I’m about to use, but this is what helped me to understand the weight of God’s Word. I remember imagining that I had got a new piece of furniture for my bedroom that needed assembling. I used this piece of furniture to represent life, and the instruction manual that comes with it to represent the Bible. I remember thinking how absurd it would be to attempt to construct the furniture without using the instructions. This is bound to make the process much more difficult (unless you’re some sort of wizard), right!? After all, the instructions are made by the one who knows the product best. They accompany you and guide you through the building process. The same way the Bible is made by the One who knows and understands life best. God’s Word is the primary way God speaks to us, accompanying us and guiding us through the journey of life. 

His Life

As I grew older & more mature, I realised that following Jesus did not just consist of attending church on a Sunday and a few other church related meetings during the week. Yes, this perhaps made me look like a Christian, but virtually anybody can attend Church - it’s not an automatic indication of following Jesus. I realised that following Jesus goes hand in hand with adopting His lifestyle. We are called to live in Christ-likeness. Therefore, to be a Christian in its simplest form is to become more like Jesus, embodying His character and conveying that to a broken world. And so I started to spend more time with Him, because what better way is there to become like someone than indulging yourself in their presence?! Studying the Gospels, which track the life of Jesus on earth, helped me to understand the weight of His life. It is a template for Christians, demonstrating so clearly what it is to love, forgive and be present with people in a complicated world. 

Have a crackin’ summer. I canny wait to see all your lovely wee faces again soon :) 

‘The Lord bless you and keep you, 

The Lord make his face shine upon you

and be gracious to you, 

The Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.’ Numbers 6:24-26

All the love, 

Ali x