S.W.A.G

This was the article I had originally scheduled to post on Valentines day and even though my article is all about love, it is an atypical one. I had wanted to post this but as soon as I finished writing it seemed like all hell broke loose in my life and my house and the devil mandated some of his special agents after me LOL. But the one who is in me is greater than the one who is in the world (1 john 4:4) and I will share my testimony about God’s love and God’s grace. Ament? Ament. Valentines day being outdated (at least for another year), I thought posting this article around Easter would give this content an added value as it is being released in a context that is perfectly in phase with it. Now before I go further and get into the business of today's topic let me warn you: if you ain't got no Jesus business, God business, spiritual business going on or if you cannot read this without respecting my point of view, stop reading and go back to what you were doing before being curious and clicking read more. This is serious stuff ... It's God's stuff *gasp*. But if you want to keep reading don't worry.. I ain't gonna throw some concentrated Jesus juice at your face, threatening you about going to hell if you don't repent... Nah... I'll save that for another day 😂😂 I am just kidding!

Today I want to talk about the love of God: the truest, purest, deepest, selfless, and most unconditional form of love. It's so weird how people can take a day to celebrate love but forget about how amazing the love of God is... A love that was manifested to us through his son Jesus. And now that I know the true meaning of swag, I can talk about it because God has been good to me. I am not talking about swag as in "that dude/girl is fiiiiine! He/she has gotten some serious swag going on". I am talking about the obashanda SWAG that makes your eyes filled with tears of gratitude: I’m talking about being Saved With Amazing Grace.

I grew up with religion but I was never really a christian per say. Of course I believed in God. I prayed because I was told I had to. I did what I had to do. Then life got complicated and that is when my Journey about finding God and getting closer to him started. I started seeking him and developing a relationship with him. It's at that time of my life that I truly became a Christian. But being a christian doesn't mean you are immune to sin. The Bible says that you will be tempted. But God also says in his world that he has vanquished the world and since he has we have too. Being a Christian means that you have better weapons to fight sin and have victory over it. During my walk with God I had highs and I had lows. And my lows were very low. As a matter of fact, my lows were highly similar to rock bottom. It all started with being sneaky, thinking I was fooling other people and the spiritual authority established over my life. But truly the only person I was fooling was myself. The only person I was hurting was myself. As life got harder, I started drifting away from faith, from the presence of God. Sure I was in the house of the Lord but not in his presence anymore.

Things only went down from there until the day I finally realized how miserable I was from not being in the presence of God and how I had messed up. I wanted to come back to Him but I didn't know how. I felt like I didn't deserve God's love and trust anymore but then I remembered that through everything God's love forever endures. I remembered that God loves us unconditionally and that He is ready to welcome us back like He did for the prodigal son as long as we come back to Him and admit that we messed up big time. I remembered that the grace of God was there to help me off the ground and find my way back to the presence of the Lord. All this time I was away from my Heavenly father I felt lost, miserable and empty. I was looking for ways to give my life a new meanings and for things to fill a void that only God could fill. I thought I had nothing and that maybe, because I had been such a horrible child to my Father, I wasn’t worth being loved. But through all that, when I came back to Him he said to me “My grace is enough”. And it truly was. I just couldn’t see it because of the raging storms in my heart and in my life. But hitting rock bottom made me realize it. Now… you may feel like you have it all. And it’s fine; To each one its own experience in life. But for me, I know I didn’t have it all back then but now I do and I have never been so much at peace and happy in my life, even in times of trials and battles.

It doesn’t matter how bad you’ve messed up, what matters is finding the courage to get back to your heavenly father and say: “Lord…. I messed up big time and I regret it. I am so sorry about it. Please forgive me and help me get back on my feet and be a better person. Wash away my sins and make me a better person. I surrender to you and to your grace and I pray that you do your work in me”. That’s it… that’s all you have to do but you really have to mean it because there is no point in saying you’re sorry if you’re going to do that again. the grace is about finding a way back to good not a free pass to present whenever you mess up intentionally and wave it in god’s face and be like “here God… here is the grace free pass. Can I get in now?” no… it doesn’t work that way.
So no matter where you are in life… Remember that the love of God is bigger, deeper and better than anything you could ever envision and that His grace is enough. Enough to forgive you, to reintroduce you back into his presence, enough to justify you with His word, enough to go from sinner to being part of those understanding the true meaning of SWAG and using their story as a testimony of God’s love, grace and mercy.

I hope this post edified you. I am not forcing my opinion or beliefs on you. Just sharing my story in hope that it will help someone, somewhere reading this. God Bless you.