Sanderson Moreira

Rio de Janeiro City, Brazil

Deep, pure, simple

When I was a child, my mom heard about a man called Jesus Christ through the mom of one of my classmates. Since then, she began to know more about Him. My little brother and I were taking our fist steps in our christian journey as we were being introduced to the christian principles at the church my mom started to go to. 

During my adolescence I already had in mind that a life with God was something to be taken very serious. It meanta lot to me; however, my experience was still very skindeep: it was kind of religious, limited to "going to church", filled with lots of charges on myself, good deeds, and always being a good son and an excellent student, such a "flawless boy", but I wasn't experiencing something truly deep in my spiritual journey.

Almost in the end of my teens, I realized that many of my church friends were behaving in a way that wasn't compatible with how I imagined them to be. I heard many weird things about them, things that had nothing to do with what I thought "being a christian" would stand for. It was chaotic to see those guys, my friends, being  totally different from what they seemed to be at church in their daily lives. Questions such as "Is it really worth it living this way, this so-called 'christian life'?", "Who is God to me indeed?",  began to haunt my mind. Sometimes it felt I was living among people who seemed to be so empty in their christian lives and I was so afraid of becoming just like them. Somehow I knew that there was something very important to be lived with God, something higher than anything I had ever lived so far, however I did not know exactly what was it. So, an important pursue in my life began.

Some years later, when I was a junior at the university, I met some christian students at the campus and I started to have interesting relationships with them. There was a specific group that used to meet weekly at the university. Attending their meetings, I began to re-think all my life with God as we talked about our life experiences. I felt so challenged to live something truly real with God. I decided to be more commited with one purpuse: to live for real the life I used to talk and hear about, although I was still feeling kind of insecure that time. Plus, I could finally understand what was really missing in my life; it was something deeper, so simple and pure: a personal relationship with God. It started to make sense that living a life with God was worth it, and I saw that I wouldn't know what my life would be without Him.  

Now I see God in a different way. My relationship with Him must not consist of religious practices or a life full of good deeds. God wants to have a relationship with each of us and He wants us to be by His side in every single moment, whether good or bad days. He does not want us to live a life built on religion, on superficial words; He doesn't want us  just to have a good social behavior. It's all about something more relational, personal and that makes all sense to me today. Every new day I feel even more glad and excited to go deeper in this relationship, having Him as a friend, a father, my God.

Maybe you may have identified yourself with my story or with the questions I used to make to myself, or even my urge to understand God and how my life should be concerning Him. I invite you to think about the possibility of having a personal and close relationship with Him. It's not about religion or church, otherwise, it's all about living close to Him, sure that He also wants it so much so that one day He did something so special - but commonly forgotten, unfortunately - He sent us His son, Jesus, just to show that only He could do something to restore the broken link between Him and us, since we spoiled this connection as we turned our back on Him by thinking we could walk by ouselves, alone and away from Him, living just as we please. This invitation is always available to us, but it is up to us to decide to live by His side. 

If you want to know more about that student group which helped me in this journey visit << http://www.cru.org/ >> and discover where you can find people like these over there. If you want to know more or have questions about life and how to know God, feel free to access << http://www.everystudent.com/ >>

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