Bad Press, Hot Mess Express!

Did you hear a train whis­tle after you read that title? I sure did! Choo Choooo! đŸ˜†

I came to know about Jesus at a very young age. At around 8, one doesn’t under­stand pol­i­tics or the nature of peo­ple. It is more of an inno­cent time where one sees things more as they are and less of the extra that adult­hood can some­times put on things and con­cepts. I didn’t begin to study the bible until my mid 20s and I wasn’t a reg­u­lar atten­der of church until around my ear­ly 30s. What is inter­est­ing is that the more I got around “spir­i­tu­al” peo­ple, the more dif­fi­cult and mud­dled things attempt­ed to become. What I under­stood at 8 up until my mid 20s was sim­ple. I had a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with God through Jesus and He was always help­ing me. Help­ing me do the impos­si­ble, help­ing me through a dif­fi­cult child­hood and help­ing me nav­i­gate my inno­cence as a new adult in a world full of noise and sug­ges­tions. For exam­ple, how did I end up tak­ing  break from col­lege, liv­ing in Berlin with no job, not know­ing where I would stay or any­one in the area and a week lat­er, find that I had a flat, a job and a new friend who was like fam­i­ly? And my orig­i­nal plan was to go to France! I have found myself in a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions, many of them a mess. What’s amaz­ing is that I nev­er felt judge­ment or con­dem­na­tion from God. Nev­er. If you would like to know the var­i­ous adven­tures and mis­ad­ven­tures, let me know, it gets pret­ty seedy. Con­trary to pop­u­lar opin­ion know­ing God doesn’t mean I am per­fect or that I don’t and can’t par­ty, cel­e­brate and have a blast, it’s actu­al­ly the exact oppo­site. I’m def­i­nite­ly on the hot mess express, cel­e­brat­ing joys along the way and look­ing for my stop!

In each of these sit­u­a­tions, God was always there, remind­ing me He loved me and that He had bet­ter planned for me. He always blessed me and made me feel like His princess. This was the extent of my faith. Then I got more into social sit­u­a­tions where I spoke about my expe­ri­ences, I began to attend church and learn more about the bible. It was amaz­ing learn­ing about the bible and shar­ing my expe­ri­ences and crazy times. What was a sur­prise, was how many peo­ple had been hurt by their church­es and how many peo­ple had ideas about who God is based on hor­ror sto­ries involv­ing hyp­o­crit­i­cal peo­ple in their lives. Because my rela­tion­ship with God was very pri­vate for me at first, mean­ing my edu­ca­tion came direct­ly from God, I hadn’t expe­ri­enced anoth­er per­son with­in my faith yet. I got an ear and eye full of peo­ple upset and hurt at God. Angry at all the nasty and quite force­ful his­tor­i­cal back­ground of Chris­tian­i­ty. As it turns out Jesus has some bad press due to the actions of many who claimed to rep­re­sent Him and His ideas. What if some­one had the gift, abil­i­ty, and had been com­mis­sioned to cre­ate more truth­ful press around who Jesus is and what it is to be Team Jesus. Put your­self in His shoes. What if you had a bunch of peo­ple doing things you didn’t agree with and putting you on blast as the orig­i­na­tor and you weren’t phys­i­cal­ly present to refute the claims and blame? Most peo­ple would hire an advo­cate to speak for them, to set the record straight.

Just some­thing to think about…

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Bad Press, Hot Mess Express!
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