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"(God) isn't a decision. It would be like trying to fall in love with somebody, or trying to convince yourself your favorite food is pancakes. You don't decide those things, they just happen to you. If God is real, He needs to happen to me."

-Donald Miller, "Blue Like Jazz"

There was a time before I was a Christian, a Christ-follower, in which I was a churchgoer. It was really hard to tell the difference, even for me. I was in church every Sunday. I went to Sunday school. I sang loudly. I prayed along vehemently. I got linked in with a men's bible study. I participated in outreach and social events. You could've called me Mr. Church!

Only one problem. I wasn't really sure I believed in God. I really wanted to, but I couldn't force myself to do it. Like Donald Miller said, you can no more make yourself believe in God than you can force yourself to be in love with someone you don't or enjoy a food you can't really stand.

Sure, you can fake it for awhile. You can make other people believe it. Hell, you might even be so good at pretending that you can convince yourself for awhile, but eventually the truth will come out. People will begin to recognize the emptiness in the words you speak and the actions you take. There's a lot of things in this world which can be masked and hidden for a long time, or that go unrecognizable, but love of anything is not one of those. True love and geunine feelings always show their true colors.

It wasn't that I was completely opposed to believing in God or even that I felt incapable of loving God. I just didn't know how to go about it and it certainly wasn't at the top of my priority list. I thought if I sang loud enough, prayed hard enough with the right words, and did enough good deeds in His name that he would simply be there and I wouldn't need to put much effort into it. The math seemed simple enough, but my calculations were incorrect.

Here were my two major mistakes:

1) Having a greater desire to be viewed as a Christian than my desire to be one. I was doing a lot of stupid things in my life at the time, so I figured I'd go to church. After all, church-going people didn't do stupid things, right? Church-goers were all forgiven by God for their wrongdoings, weren't they? This was going to be easy... I would go to church, and if there was a God I was as good as gold beacuse I made appearances and said and did the right things while I was there. Not only that, but people in the community would see that I went to church and would therefore know that I was, in fact, a good person! As my current pastor says, I was living like hell 6 days a week and trying to get right with God on Sundays.

2) Not speaking to God from my own heart. I'd go to church and reiterate in my head the prayers the pastor would speak from the pulpit. Doing this is much like following the bouncing ball in a Disney Sing-Along video. It's okay for a time, but if want to be recognized as a real singer... you eventually need to branch out and sing your own song. It took me a long time before I reached a comfort zone where I could pray my own words, thoughts, feelings, and concerns to God.

Eventually I reached a point where I was going to church not just to go through the motions, but I really wanted to obtain a personal relationship with God. I started praying to him through my heart instead of vicariously through the words of others. When I made those changes, God happened to me, and it has been an amazing ride ever since!