I have to believe that there are people around the world who are actually looking for God with all their hearts. I don’t know exactly why they are looking for Him, but the reasons might be many: they need answers to their questions, they need help… I don’t know. Probably there is something that prompts them to believe in the superiority of that divine being.

I was NOT one of those people. I surrendered my life to Christ, saw the light, accepted Jesus in my heart (or whatever you wanna call it) without actively looking for it. All the phrases I mentioned are ways a Christian describe the moment they are born again. So yes, I am a born-again person. I guess as the blog progresses, I will have more opportunities to explain what that means personally in my life – as a woman, wife and mother.

I do not like calling myself a Christian, though. The reasons behind that are too many. Eventually I’ll talk about it, too. But technically I am a Christian. Around eight years ago I believed for the first time in my life that God loved me for who I was. I heard a message of hope, and the message was clear: You are exhausted of trying to figure life out on your own. Come to me, and I will help you. 

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

– Matthew 11:28-30 

I always heard about Jesus. Always. I was raised in a Mexican Catholic family. But I only bore the name Christian. That’s as far as I went. I never went to church. I prayed, but rarely. Then in college, as I was doing my BSc in Chemistry and Biology, I just refused to believe in the existence of a God who created everything around me. Science was my god. It didn’t solve my pain, but it was amazing to research life, analyze theories, and read papers trying to explain many academic affairs.

I like asking questions. I like wondering about the what ifs of situations. I am an over thinker. That’s who I am. And using my brain can be counterproductive many times because then I have a difficult time sleeping, but I actually enjoy doing it – thinking. At times I build up so many spider webs in my head regarding different issues that I literally get headaches. And so, I guess that is the reason I write.

Writing has become a way of letting go of the built up pressure. When I write, it feels like I channel the energy from my brain to my words. If I am able to get people to understand what I try to convey, then I have de-tangled the spider webs. I have clarity. Communicating my thoughts effectively, whether people agree or not with what I said, is a battle I have won. I have won because the pressure in my head is gone.

So let me be perfectly loud and clear: Eight years ago I accepted de deity of Christ on FAITH ALONE. I believed that I could have a relationship with God in heaven – the God of Israel, the God of the Jewish Nation – if only I repented from my sin, asked for His forgiveness and asked Him to come into my life. He had come to rescue me. This God loved me so much He had died for me. He himself had paid the price for my sin.

He was a Holy God. I was separated from Him. I felt separated from Him. I won’t go right now into heaven and hell and what Christians believe (of course I will go there later). But whatever I heard about heaven and hell did not really matter to me. Islam has eternal hell for non-Muslims. Judaism has temporary Sheol for the unrighteous – pretty much everybody. Christianity has its concept, too. But I didn’t care about hell. I was probably going to go there anyway, and I knew it.

Fear of hell was not my motivation for following the God of Israel. It was the love that the God of Israel had for me what made me love him back. He loved me first. And that kind of unconditional love was only understood by me when I heard about Jesus.

I was desolate. But if the Kingdom of God that Jesus taught was real, I wanted in. I wanted that kind of love. I was in desperate need of that unconditional love.

The hope that I was given in Jesus was better than all the hopes I had heard of. But to say that now seems unfair because the truth is that I had never been given any other kind of hope. Nor I had heard other possible explanations to the TRUTH – whatever the truth was. I had never heard of Islam or what it teaches, or Hinduism, or whatever else were options for having God answering my prayers or make sense of my life.

But things are different now. Things have changed… I am not in the Christian bubble I was before, and I have befriended Muslims and Hindus. They are awesome people. All the people I have met are basically good people. I talk about these things, not with everybody, but I do talk. And I think a lot. I think about whether the Bible is corrupted, or if the apostle Paul made up the divinity of Jesus. I wonder whether Jesus was only a man, a great prophet – but not God – like Islam portrays him. Or maybe he was actually a false prophet since he didn’t fulfill all the Messianic prophesies the Jews were expecting – like Judaism portrays him.

Did Jesus existed at all? There are Jews who claim he never existed. Other Jewish sources claimed he was actually hung. The Quran denies all this. The Bible warns against false prophets who come after Jesus. Islam proclaims Muhammad as the ultimate Prophet and proclaims God’s rejection of the Jews and the Christians.

And here I am reading all this and saying, “Whaaat the heck is happening, people?!”

These are the things that my brain drools over. I cannot deny the fact that Jesus is  a very touchy subject among people, and for the past six months I have read a lot. And I have spent hours researching websites, watching YouTube debates, gathering a lot of information… But seriously, my brain wants a break. I only think, and think, and think, but I haven’t written about it.

I am questioning Jesus lately, like, a lot. I guess this blog is my way of sharing with the world what I have been studying. Seriously, not all the people care about spiritual issues, but I believe that the people who might care deserve an organized version of my thoughts. My friends might want to know what I’ve been learning, and one day I would like to go back and read this again.

There are people looking actively for God. I remember a guy who came to church one day as we were leading an Alpha Course that explained the basics of Christianity. He said he knew he needed God in his life. He was exploring different faiths, and was willing to commit to one. He wanted to hear the Christians out. I tell you, there are people actively looking for answers.

I consider this a trial in my life. I enjoy thinking. I also dread it. Thinking constantly about my faith and other faiths is making me question my own beliefs. But I know who God is. I have experienced His love. I have experienced freedom. I have experienced fellowship with God. And that might sound like a very Christian thing to say, and maybe it is, but it is real. It has changed my life. God is my ALL.

Some people think that faith is believing something that you know is not true. But I think that faith means believing in something that has a lot of evidence to back it up even tough you cannot prove it scientifically.

– Jeff Wilcox