My parents were very loving and taught me
about who God is, and I wanted to tell people about him even when I was very
little. I told my mother I was going to
be a mssionarry in Japan when I was six!
When I was eight, My mother decided to teach
me at home. I thought I had good friends, but when I stopped going to school,
they started to make fun of me and be very mean. I felt very alone, and I
thought that what they said was true. I didn't think I was beautiful, or worth
being loved. At thirteen many things happened all at once to make me very
depressed. I would often hide in my room for days, and the only good thing I
would do is draw, because it was the only safe way to let my emotions out. I
didn't want to feel, because feeling hurt. I wondered why, if God loved me,
would things like this happen? Even though I still believed God was real, I
didn't care about him, because I couldn't hear him speaking to me. Then someone
asked if I wanted to come to a christian concert. There were many people
speaking, And one of them had no arms and no legs. I don't remember all of what
he said, but I thought, “If God can love that man, with no arms or legs, and if
He can do good things for God, So can I. I remembered the bible verse Jeremiah 29:11-12.(read
out the verse?) God had plans for me! I was worth something! I held on to
that bible verse. It said that even though God's chosen people were having a
very hard time, and they were hurting, One day God would heal them and bring
them back home.
I was still
depressed, but now I had hope, and I knew there was a reason I was alive.
When I was 15 I went to work with children that had no home or sometimes no
parents. I felt that God was calling me to help people like those ones again,
Just like I wanted to when I was little. I worked with those kids for four
years, and then felt like God was calling me to go to Australia to study the
bible, and how to use art to reach people. I didn't want to, because my art was
very close to me, and I didn't show anyone, because I thought it wasn't a
worthy way to spend my time. But God kept telling me to go, and so I did. In
Australia, I learned so much about God's love, and plan for me. I healed a lot,
and learned I could trust God, and I could trust people. I met genuine
Christians, who were willing to love God no matter what. They wanted to share
God's love in everything they did! I started showing people my art, And I
prayed for God to be able to use it to bring the world hope. I didn't really
see the worth in my art yet. My art
teacher encouraged me to do big things with my art. I was so afraid! But as I
let God use my art, I began to see how it shows God. God can use any skill, if
you let him! The hardest thing was to draw myself. The first time, I drew a
very ugly person. The second time, I drew a person who was searching for
something. The third time, I drew a person who was beautiful. She looked like
she knew God loved her!
When my Australia team found out we were
going to Japan, I was so excited! We prayed, and God gave us a picture of a red
balloon. To me, the red balloon means
being filled with Hope. Not from what you can see, but from Jesus Christ. That,
with God, we can rise higher than the things that hold us down. And that God
gives us the ability to have joy even when the world seems dark. The red
balloon is a reminder of who God is, and how much he loves us. It may take
time, but prayers really do get answered.
Having God means that I have hope, and that I always have him with me. . I’m not saying everything
will be easy when you follow Him, far from that! But life is always better with God. His idea of what’s best and our
idea of what’s best are very different. No matter what you have done, no matter
how much you think God should not love you, you can still come back. He has a
purpose, and sometimes the bad things in your life shape you to be used by God
for something better in the future of his Kingdom. Look for him, search for him, and you will
find him. He makes that a promise. Galatian 6:9
tells us that when things are hard, when Jobs are stressful, when friends and
family leave, don't give up God's work. He loves you, and your life has a great
plan to build the kingdom of heaven. God can use anything you can do, and even
if you don't thing you can do anything, He knows what you can do. He loves you
anyways!
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