"God's not dead, he's surely alive. He's living on the inside, roaring like a lion."

Song: God's Not Dead

Artist: The Newsboys

I'm currently listening to this song on repeat after reading my daily devotion. While listening to this, I can clearly remember all those times that God take part in my life even though I take Him for granted and even disregarded Him.

I think I have mentioned in my past articles that I suffered from depression way back in high school. In those times, I felt no one can understand what I'm suffering and I used to think that they were all just feigning their concern towards me. It made me feel worse like I regret living and don't want to continue living anymore. I refused all the support and help that is offered to me. I refused everything even God and secluded myself from the world.

While I was in that state, I met someone on the internet. He is an IT student in Cavite. He also likes rock music like I did. We share the same ideas. We easily clicked. We talked about anything. From music, studies, personalities, foods, circle of friends, family issues, and even religion.

We mostly tackled topics about religion. I discovered that he is a Deist. It is a person who believes that a creator had created the universe but doesn't intervene on Earth and this kind of belief is called Deism.

This is a Deism logo.

Photo credits: Link source.

Being the cynic that I am back then, I'm slowly drawn into those realizations that maybe I am a Deist, too. The reason that I have such thoughts like this was ever since I was a child I don't believe in Saints. For the consecutive failures that I have experienced, I have thought that God abandoned me or he is not paying attention to me at all. Prayers didn't come true, so when I think about that idea of Deism, I thought that maybe those prayers that came true are just pure coincidence.

These thoughts continued to circulate in my mind until one day I fully accepted this theory and proclaimed myself as a Deist. I even joined many online debates just to defend this belief. I won a lot and then joined a group on Facebook. I was too drawn to that feeling of finally being able to fit in and didn't realize what was really missing in my life.

Some of the people who know me turn their backs on me when they heard about this. I still can remember what my closest friend had secretly written in my journal when she heard about my beliefs.

She says,

"He is always there when you're in pain and in vain, but how come did you forget His name?"

She is a devoted Christian and I can see how she was hurt by my confession at that time. After leaving that note in my journal. She rarely talks to me until such time that I lost them. I'm on my own then, fighting my own battle, fending for myself until I graduated.

A lot of things had happened after that. I experienced a series of disappointments, sufferings, mistakes, and failures. I didn't realize that it's a warning for me to repent and I disregarded it. I continued with my belief.

My mind is so convinced with the belief in Deism and I can't think of any argument that could change it. However, there's still a feeling that I can't explain whenever I see people wearing a cross necklace, whenever I pass by those churches, whenever I hear people sing praise and worship songs, and whenever I hear people pray. I can't exactly explain it. It's like there's still a little voice in the back of my subconsciousness shouting and shouting and I can't hear it and my instincts are telling me there is.

It's like a mixed feeling of guilt, repentance, pain, love, and longing. It makes me shiver and has goosebumps so I avoid those instances in which I can encounter spiritual-related things. I keep running away. I keep hiding and become more stubborn. It makes me restless in body and soul.

I keep rebelling until I came to work on this company that I currently working in. They are all Born-again Christians. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we have this Bible study session that lasts for an hour.

The routine is like this, at first, we have to sing praises, then one-by-one we have to say all the things that we should be thankful for to the Lord, then we read Bible verses that we should discuss for that day, and lastly, we all should pray together.

At first, honestly, I was feigning. I'm embarrassed to decline the session meetings so I went with the flow and imitate all that they're doing. I'm so good at acting that they didn't even notice, LOL! I can frankly call myself a hypocrite at those times.

As the cycle of schedules continues, I slowly forget the belief in Deism. I started to doubt it. I started to think that maybe I have done a huge mistake disregarding the Lord. I felt guilty by then. I started taking the sessions seriously. Every time I did that, I felt relief, peace, and fulfillment.

I get back to the belief my parents had taught me –the belief of Christianism. Once I started repenting, blessings had slowly poured into my life. One of them is my reconciliation with my father, having good harvests, and a good job that saves me and my family in this pandemic. That's how I truly understand God's grace. It is the things we don't deserve but still, God had given them to us.

I just want to drop my daily verse here.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Whatever problems you are dealing with your life, even though you have nothing left and no one is there for you. Don't ever forget that there is still a powerful God above. Just call upon His name and everything will be alright. Anytime, anywhere in every situation, He will always be there for you.

____________________________

Hey there!!!

A blessed Sunday to everyone. Thank you for reading this article until the end. If you like reading this article,

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