For my whole life I have been following Christ. To my parents it was always important that I follow God with my life.

Soon after I was born I was baptised. I have no memory of this of course but there are pictures with Me, in the priest’s arms and my baptismal clothing on to prove it. After this every week my parents made sure we attended church. Every meal we shared together as a family, and every night before bed my parents would sit beside me and we prayed over our entire family.

These are all wonderful things, and I am so happy to have had a family that would be so focused on the disciplines of Christianity, but even after becoming a Christian I knew there was more to my relationship with God than these simple actions.

By the age of four I accepted the truth that Jesus lived, died, and conquered death through his resurrection for me. At age six on my way to school as I walked under our giant oak tree I distinctly recall thinking about how amazing it was that not only did Jesus die for me but for everyone that would have faith in him and what an amazing truth that is.

Unfortunately… ten years later at the age of 16 I would still be walking under that same tree every morning as I went to school. I had changed schools, I had different relationships with family and friends, but my relationship with God had hardly changed since the first day I placed my faith in him.

I was still going to church, I was still praying at nights and at meals, but at age sixteen I realized there had to be more. I was missing something. The only problem was…. I didn’t know what I was missing.

Because God had put it in my heart I began to search for what I was missing in my relationship with God. I searched through prayer, I searched through reading my Bible daily. I tried to listen closely during the teachings at my church but there were no answers.

And there continued to be no answers. I would wait six more years to get an answer from God and it was nothing I could have guessed. For six years of reading the Bible, and after nearly twenty years of knowing God personally, somehow I had missed it.

You remember how at the age of 6 I was walking under that Oak Tree. Back then I knew Jesus had paid the debt for all of my sin, and the sin of the entire world. But, at the age of six I assumed everyone understood the gospel. How could someone not know that God was the creator of everything? How could people not realize they have sinned and daily fall short of the glory of God? And if everyone knew these things, why would they not place their faith in Jesus? It is so easy, the burden is so light. Why would anyone not want this everlasting relationship with a God who loved us first despite the fact that we will always turn away from him?

But then I realized. They may not have ever been truly offered it, they may not have grown up in church or even if they had, they may have never heard the gospel.

The Christian disciplines that had been a part of my life for the past twenty years were good, but they were meaningless if I was keeping such wonderful news about a perfect saviour for myself. This is what I prayed to understand for six years. This is what my soul yearned for. This is what I was missing. That the joy, hope and peace I received from God was not my own to hold on to, but was God’s provision for me that I may offer the same hope to all who would accept Jesus as their savior.

You see the same truth in Jesus’s life. He didn’t come simply to live the perfect life. He came to serve, he came to share the hope of having a relationship with Him to the world. He sought daily to bring the message of God’s love to the people on earth. No pain, or perceived loss kept him from His task. And now I seek to do the same. Not for myself, but that so whoever hears the words of the gospel and believes, might find the same hope in their life, that I have had in mine.