katI don’t think anyone can ever fully understand why I believe in God. It’s physically impossible for a single human being besides myself to understand, but in short, I believe in God because he answers my prayers.
One day, in my senior year of high school I took a leap of faith and started praying to a God I wasn’t too sure existed. I asked God, if he existed, to make himself known to me and to answer my prayers. Somehow I had faith that what I couldn’t see would show itself to me.
Faith goes a long way. It continues to go a long way in my life even now. My faith is not blind, but it’s based on trial and error, research, and experimentation.
This week’s Sunday service message at my church urged us to “research God,” and to understand that just as one can’t stand to see something that is not beautiful because it’s unpleasant to look at- God too can’t stand to see things or people that are not beautiful. You might think, “Well everyone is beautiful before God’s eyes,” but that’s simply not true.
People and things become unpleasant for God to look at when they stray from God’s Will. I’m not talking about physical beauty; I’m talking about spiritual beauty. If people or things stray from love, truth, and God’s peace they are hard to look at.
The crazy thing is Saturday, the day before Sunday service, I went to the Renaissance Festival and the theme that day was Barbarian Day. There were lots of unpleasant things going on around us: insane amounts of people smoking, excessive cursing, drunkenness, and lots of…bareness to say the least.
At first I really regretted going, but as the day progressed I grew fond of the silliness of it all: a bunch of people dressed up in medieval, fantasy costumes all pretending to live in a past time period and role playing for the fun of it, and boy was it fun!
For my Christians, you might be thinking why even go to a place like that? You might even call me a sinner. That’s a very literal way of thinking. I went to have fun with friends and to connect to people who are non-christian. I prayed to God that day asking God that I would make friends and that it would be a blessed day. It truly was. I fully feel God inspired me to go so that I could experience the power of His Sunday message the next day.
After eating fried oreos, walking the dirty pebble stoned paths in search of all the cool shows, and going shopping we were just ready to leave when at the last shop that one of our friends stopped at- mind you, it was a puppet dragon shop-we were informed there would be a raffle in thirty minutes. So we decided to stay those extra thirty and I’m so glad we did. We spent the time looking through other shops until the time came to meet for the raffle.
One of our friends handed us our tickets, one by one. There were tons of people in the crowd, and one of the workers was at the top of the store on a balcony, yelling things out in a weird English accent I couldn’t distinguish. She kept trying to hold the accent, but was struggling to as she yelled out to those crowds of people.
Then she started sharing instructions and making us chant, “Pazzah!” after she said “Hip Hip!” She also made us yell out the first two numbers of the ticket as a crowd, “FORTY SEVEN WHAAAAT?!” Then and only then would she share the rest of the numbers with us. I think about one or two people won a dragon. Then they showed us a really creepy scary one and my friend who was next to me even said, “That one is kind of ugly. I don’t really want that one.”
I agreed, but in my mind, I was talking to God during the raffle. I was telling God it would be so cool if I won, but then I was like, “That’s kind of selfish.” So instead I told God I’d be happy if one of us won. I told God, “I’ll value whatever you give me.”
Even if it was ugly, I wanted to win and I wanted to be thankful. So then they started calling out the ticket numbers and one by one my numbers started to line up. I couldn’t believe it-was I really about to win? Sometimes I feel like I have bad luck when it comes to winning things. I watched the last two numbers intently as the lady read them out, they were the same as mine!I lost my mind! I was shocked and stoked! I screamed, squealed, and jumped up and down. It definitely was an overreaction but I didn’t care what anyone said, I was just so happy! I was so shocked because I was thinking, “It would be funny if any one of us won.” I was telling God, “One of us has to win, we are your people God, if anyone deserves to win it’s us.”
Then I walked up to get my dragon and I remembered what it looked like. I received it with joy anyway and observed it. “Oh, it’s not very pretty,” I thought but I was still thankful that God allowed me to win. Truly, I know prayer and conversing with God works. Then I returned to my friend group and they were like,”Wow you won!” but they acknowledged that it was terrifying. I told them of how I told God I’d value whatever he gave me and I meant it about spiritual things too. This is not to say that I want ugly things, but that I’d be grateful to receive whatever he blesses me with, big or small, even if it’s not what I expected. Just the fact that God gave it to me, is so grand. I don’t take things like this as just coincidence though before I was a believer, I used to. Now I know it is God’s love and working.
I remember in my prayers, asking God that the people choosing the ticket would grab hold of one of our tickets; that God would inspire them to choose one of ours.
After the raffle continued but I wasn’t very happy about how the dragon looked. To be honest, the dragon was HORRIFYING. It had human lips and was skull-like, and we all agreed it was unpleasant to look at! We tried to say things like “Well, if we paint it pink it might look ok!” Or “We can make him a snout, so he looks less scary! Just look at his eyes. His eyes are kind of cute, but everything else is just a little scary.“ It was funny how we tried to salvage it but no, that thing was UNPLEASANT to look at! We even tried to think it was a revelation about how our spirits looked before we gave our lives to Christ. Then the raffle ended and no one else in our group won anything so we walked to the exit.
But as I neared the exit I stopped and said, “Maybe I should’ve gone in there and asked if I could exchange it for a different one.” My friends urged me to decide whether I wanted to try that before we exited so I said, “OK I’ll try! I wanna try it. It doesn’t hurt to ask.”
I asked my friend to come with me inside the store, and into the counter, hoping that the fact that she bought a two hundred and twenty five dollar dragon from them would thaw the workers’ hearts. So I prayed in my heart that God would move the workers’ hearts to allow me to exchange the dragon. Then at my friend’s suggestion, I walked up to the lady who announced the tickets earlier. I looked at her, smiled until she turned to me. I made sure to put the dragon on the counter and she said, “You won, isn’t that amazing?! I loved your reaction,” and I said “Yes, yes I am so happy, so grateful it’s just that…well…it’s terrifying.“ She simply stared at me with a serious look on her face. I looked back at her with bulged eyes and she said, “I know!” The silence between us was hilarious. I thought, “Oh, man she’s definitely not gonna let me switch it out.” With utter fear I tried anyway and asked, “Is there any way I could switch it out for a different one?” She quickly said, “Yeah, alright! Just because you reacted so well I’ll let you switch it out.” She walked me to a shelf outside at the front of the store with tons of much, much cuter dragons of equal value. I was so thankful and shocked that this even worked! I thanked the HEAVENS.
My friends were outside near the shelf and asked if she let me switch it out.
“Yeah, let’s choose one together,” We looked at all of them and picked out a really cute one.
I realized a few things from this experience. One, it’s important to go with God everywhere, and to call out to Him. Then we will be successful in everything we do and receive blessings.
I learned that God uses people and works through them. Also, God surely hears your prayers and if you are thankful, God will bless you. Sometimes what you receive at first may not be what you expected, but if you ask the Almighty God and petition him, you lose nothing. If you ask, He will give you better, more beautiful, pleasant things both in body and spirit. I was so shocked that God worked in the way that He did.
I felt God‘s love deeply, and it became another story of love with Him. Another reason to be convinced that God is surely with me. I am not certain of God’s existence because of any literal things that happen or just because someone told me to believe. I’m certain of it because of all the amazing wonders and mysterious ways He continues to work in my life. God, you’ve always done so and continue to. Thank you God for always giving me the right life experiences at the right time so I can realize your will deeply.
