I've often thought that if one did something really bad or horrible, God would stop loving them.  I was scared of God; He seemed so big and so ... cruel.

I mean, how could God say He loved me (or others) when He allowed such things as murders, natural (or manmade) disasters, or babies or kids being born with terrible diseases or conditions?  To me, that didn't sound like a God who was supposed to be about love and goodness.

I decided then I didn't want anything to do with Him.  I felt I could be better off without God in my life.  So I did everything possible to distance myself from Him.  I fell into a worldly lifestyle, worshiping things like women, booze, sex, drugs, and rock and roll music.  I felt I was happy; for a while life was great.  I didn't have a worry (or a care) in the world.

Then one day, it all came crashing down.  I found myself on the streets, homeless and pennyless, with mountains of bills looming in front of me.  Suddenly the life I thought I knew and loved was no more.

Angry?  You bet I was.  Who wouldn't be after going through something like I did?  So I did the most stupidest thing yet: I blamed God for all my problems and seemed determined to distance myself even further away from Him and all that He stood for.

I felt that if I could become the world's most cynical, meanest, and nastiest person, then God wouldn't want to have anything to do with me.

For fifteen years I lived like this.  And I was even more miserable than I was when I thought I had it all.  To put it mildly, life sucked.  Big time.

I had done a great disservice by abandoning God like I did.  Yet I wasn't ready to ask Him to help me; I thought He was through with me after the way I had raged against Him.

How wrong I was.

~To be continued!~