Why do I believe in God?

When I was little my mum took me to church every Sunday so from a young age I grew up believing in God. I learnt all the bible stories and knew all the songs. You don’t question an awful lot when you’re under ten. It wasn’t until I got a bit older when I started to form my own opinions about church. I remember thinking, “Actually, this is really boring and not really relevant to me!” I still went with my mum because it was important to her and it was just what we did on a Sunday, but I lost interest in the concept of God. It didn’t affect my life so I didn’t give it much thought.  I started to focus on the more obvious things in my life like my friends and guys that I liked. They became the most important things to me. And the first year or two I didn’t have much to stress about. It was all good. Fast forward a couple more years though and school started getting a bit harder. Yes because the pressure to succeed grew more intense but also because people got more unashamedly opinionated about each other. I can honestly say -now being safely on the other side of it – that school is tough! I don’t just mean one particular school. I mean school in general. It’s so cliquey and exclusive and everyone is trying to impress someone just to keep a good reputation. I’ve noticed these days that young people can be really harsh and mean to each other and the crazy hormones are real and together you have the perfect recipe for a teenager who is full of insecurities.

And that was me. An insecure kid with zero confidence who cared very much about what people thought  and accepted their opinions as truth. I was labelled – even by my friends – as a loud, annoying attention seeker and I truly believed that was who I was. Because you can ignore the little, quiet comments. But over time as their voices get louder and their opinions get stronger, eventually those words are all you can hear. And I let those words become my label, my truth. Become who I was.

Everyone cares
The truth is, to some level, every single one of us has felt that way. Some more than others. But even the most unexpected, confident people have cared about what people think of them at some point. Even they are affected by what people say. Sometimes you have to care about being what people think if you want to succeed in life and the second people say something negative, it affects you. ‘Popular’ people are concerned with what people think about them too. They don’t escape it either because the way to be popular is to make people like you and keep it that way. Unfortunately, school isn’t the only place full of opinions. Lots of people can receive pressure and negativity in the work place. At home. It’s all over social media, the TV and in magazines. Gossip, arguing, putting each other down. There is a certain standard for how we should look or act. It’s no wonder really why we are all worried about what everyone thinks of us.

I definitely did. All I believed was that I had a personality people didn’t like and as I had based my self-esteem on them, I got quite low for a while. Then one year I got invited to go to a Christian festival with my youth group called, ‘Soul Survivor.’  And I remember this one particular night we were all meeting in the main tent and I felt so low that I broke down. I wanted people in the youth group to come over and ask me if I was alright. To just care. But they didn’t come. And it was at that point where I felt God speak to me. It wasn’t a voice I could hear audibly. In fact the best way I can describe it is it is as if someone else was putting thoughts in my head that weren’t my thoughts. They weren’t coming from me. And I felt like God say that he created me exactly the way I am and he loved me for it. He loved me as his daughter. In that moment, everything changed for me. Suddenly I wasn’t focused on everyone else around me.

In the bible it says that God created  the entire universe. That he is the King of creation. When you think about how tall the mountains stand, how deep the sea goes,  how massive planets are and how the universe just seems endless, and you then think that God created all of that, is bigger than all of that, it throws everything back into perspective. He isn’t just some old guy who lives in the clouds in some nice picture books. He is the God that created the universe. He is the God that started everything with a word and could end it all with a word. And it was this God that came to me in that moment and told me, “Tiffany, I love you.” The very fact I exist is because amongst all the incredible things he created, he then thought about me. He created me because he wanted me to be a part of it all! Suddenly all the people I knew looked tiny. Their opinions were meaningless. Because if the King of creation told me he loved me as I am, then that was the only opinion that mattered.

Who is God really?
Unfortunately I think that too many people have heard different versions of what God is like. I physically cringe when I see men and women on the street shouting at people on the street, telling them God is angry at them and calling them sinners because it paints a picture that God is judgemental. It was true that you had to be perfect to make it to heaven and it was true that we probably weren’t going to make it there. It was true that we turned our backs on him and didn’t deserve to go. But God knew this and did something about it! He wasn’t an angry King who wanted to punish us, and he wasn’t a silent King who was just going to leave us to our fate. When Jesus came to this world, he showed us exactly who God really is. A Good King who loved his creation so much that he was willing to give his own life to spare ours. He took the punishment for anything we have ever done or ever will do in order to make us completely innocent because he wanted us. So now we can go to heaven because he’s given us a clean slate. This is the God I know. He loved us so much he made a way back to him and he was powerful enough to defeat death itself . He’s alive today and he wants us to know him and have a relationship with him and be there for us in our lives. It’s not about earning it or deserving it anymore. It’s not a religion. It’s a relationship.

I had fully turned by back on him and yet when it all came back to smack me in the face, he was still there loving me because it was never conditional with him. I didn’t have to do anything or be anything other than myself. I didn’t have to earn his love. He loved me regardless. And do you know what, that kind of truth changes you. It gives you a security and a confidence in yourself when you know that the King thinks you’re worth dying for. You become braver and stronger with only one label to wear. I wasn’t annoying. I was loved. I wasn’t too loud. I was loved. I wasn’t attention seeking. I didn’t need to be, because I was loved. From that point I gradually stopped seeking people’s approval because I had Gods without even trying. And he started doing wonderful things for me. Church became amazing and actually completely relevant. It was actually a place where you not only learnt about who God is, but where you could get encouraged to follow your dreams and be the best version of yourself, where you could get sound advice and wisdom for your life and on top of that, make some amazing friendships. I want to very quickly highlight that no one in any church is perfect. You do have to find the right church for you, but even that one won’t be perfect. Someone once said that if you find the perfect church, don’t join it or you’ll make it imperfect. We all do make mistakes and let each other down at times. But I can honestly say that people here do have something different because they actively try to love like Jesus! They try to forgive like him and live selflessly like him, putting others first.
To this day, I am in such a better place than where I was then. I do have an amazing group of friends and an incredible family who I love very much now, but my self-esteem isn’t based on them. And I’m sure there are definitely still people who say a lot of negative stuff about me, but it doesn’t really affect me anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I still have days where sometimes I let people get to me, but then I realise that it’s usually when I’m not spending time with God and listening to him. And what I mean by spending time is when I take time out to read the bible, pray or sing worship. God is with us all the time, but just like anyone in your life, you get to know someone better when you spend quality time with them. My husband Jonny tells me that he can actually see the difference in me when I am spending time with God and when I’m not not. When I’m not, I become a bit more insecure again. The second I spend time with him and tune into what he’s saying, I get my confidence and joy back. I get my identity back. God did that. People say God doesn’t do anything in this day and age but God did that. God changed me.

So why do I believe in God?
There is a story in the bible that sums up my point perfectly. There were two men who decided to build themselves a house. One man built his house on the sand and the other one built his house on the rock. When the storm came, the house on the sand crashed down instantly. But the house on the rock stood firm. The houses in the story are a representation of our lives, and the sand and rock are the foundations on what we choose to build our lives on. When we choose to base our happiness and self-esteem on what other people think or say like I did, we are like the man who built his house on the sand. People’s opinions change all the time. Sometimes people are for you and sometimes they are against you. Even the people that really love you can let you down because people just aren’t perfect. They can’t be there for you all day every day every time you need them because that’s just not possible or healthy. It isn’t a foundation to build your security or identity on. Because when storms come crashing into your life – break ups, exams, redundancy, being fired, bullying, betrayal, loss, illness-  then your house, your life just comes crashing down. Through my life I have learnt it is God who represents the rock – the foundation to build our lives on because he is constantly there for us, constantly in our corner because his love has always been unconditional. We’ve have never had to earn it. He just does because we are his creation. I know I can trust him because his opinion of me is never going to change. There is absolutely nothing we can do that could ever stop God from loving us. No matter how many times we mess up. No matter how many times we give up on God, he doesn’t give up on us. And when the storms come, we can still be standing.

To answer the question of the heading, I believe in God because to start with he’s changed my life! I’ve learnt who he really is and who I am to him but also because I’ve seen him move in too many people’s lives to not believe. This is why I wanted to write this post. I live my life for him not because I have to, but because I want to show him I love him as well, and I wanted people to know the God I know. God didn’t shove himself on me and I don’t think he wants us to shove him on other people.  I wanted people to have a choice to read or not because that’s what it is. A choice.  But to speak for myself, he is the best choice I ever made.