Confessions of an Ex-Atheist

My, has time flown since my last post in 2015! We're officially three days into year 2018! Happy New Year to you, my wonderful readers and supporters of this blog. I deeply apologize for leaving you. It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you, without a dope beat to step to! Haha! I'm going to be very honest with you about what happened. I was kidnapped and then I escaped! Lol 

No seriously, I disobeyed God when it came to a very important move I was supposed to make in 2014 and this cost me greatly. So much so, my desire to continue with this blog was stomped out of me among other things. I'll share more about this in a later post, I promise! 

Until then I have this confession...

This past October I turned 9 years old in God and I couldn't be more excited. I shared on my conference call I held this past weekend, that prior to these years, I ping ponged between being an atheist and agnostic depending on how depressed and rebellious I was at the time. No one could tell me anything about God, the bible, Jesus, the church or none of that because I thought all of it was a bunch of fresh baked b.s. I could care less! I just wanted to do me! I've realized now that there was an origin to these beliefs. A catalyst for my wadded up dysfunction. 

I was betrayed by the people of God when I was 8 years old.

When me and my siblings were young, I was 8, my sister 7, and brother 5 or 6, my parents allowed us to be picked up by a teacher from school to go to her church where we would sing in the youth choir. I personally loved everything about singing in the choir. It was the best thing in the world to me. I felt like I got closer and closer to God every note I sang. I wanted to understand this being I couldn't see or touch, but yet I could see and touch! You can imagine my excitement when someone, I believe my auntie, gave me this dark yellow hardcover book with shiny red engravings. It was an illustrated book of all the main events of the bible. I loved that book I read it, I don't know how many times because I thought it would send me first class to heaven. Boy, was I was mistaken. I would be mistaken about something else too.

One particular Sunday, an announcement was made that baptisms would be held on the following Sunday. I immediately recalled the account of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and the heaven's opening up. I thought you needed to be someone special to participate in this. So the following Sunday, I with my siblings holding my hands, walked down the aisle to be baptized. I watched the pastor, whisper to my teacher who was her daughter, and I heard everything she told her because she had a deep crackling voice that always sounded as if she needed to swallow her phlegm. She said, "They can't get baptized because, they don't have on all white." 

Mind you we were very poor. We didn't have money for church clothes so my mom and dad sent us to church with our blue and white school uniforms. I stood there eyes swelling with tears wondering if an exception would be made for us. Nope. We were turned away. Till this day, I do not understand how any adult allowed three babies who were not chaperoned by their parents, to be turned away from being baptized. No one stood up for us. No one offered to buy us all white garments to be baptized the next Sunday. How could people who claimed to love God turn away His babies because of something so stupid as the wrong color of their attire? I was inconsolable on the ride home that Sunday. I was betrayed by the people of God at 8 years old. 

After that I successfully protested with my mouth and my actions for the right to never ever step foot in a church. I didn't want to be close to God. I didn't want to be near His people, I actually hated the sight of His people and I didn't want to sing because it reminded me of Him. At 11 depression grabbed a hold of me so strong, I was having nightmares and I was afraid of the dark. I struggled greatly with lots of perverted thoughts that stemmed from some things that happened to me when I was just a baby. I remember writing in my diary that it felt like I was in a glass coffin floating in a river going nowhere. I hid this pain from everyone because I didn't know what it was. Yet, I always still felt like I was being watched by the same omnipresent being I wanted nothing to do with. 

"GET UP!"

 One afternoon when I was 13 I was awakened from my nap when I heard a voice loud and clear shout, "Get up!" It scared the living daylight out of me because the voice didn't sound like anyone I knew. It was Him. Beckoning me. But I buried that voice and I purposely suffocated any attempt to investigate it as I struggled during the various phases of natural maturation. My depression worsened during my teenage years as well as the thoughts of perversion that I begin to eventually play out in various ways to get rid of them. It wasn't until all of this running and toxic forms of self medication caught up to me at the age of 22. 

I found myself on my hands and knees in so much emotional pain I wanted to die. I wanted to take some drugs and overdose. Thankfully, someone close enough to me witnessed my destruction, thwarted my premature death sentence, and invited me to church. There is where I ran back into Him. He accepted me as if I never left and He literally turned my life around cleaning up my mess and blotting out my mistakes. 

So, why am I sharing this with you all?

First of all, I believe that there are so many people right now, in need of an encounter with God. An intimate visitation from God that has to be championed by people who are sensitive and compassionate enough to set the atmosphere. And I believe the main people who need this are the atheists. Out of nowhere last year, I felt a strong surge in my desire to see them free. Because I used to be one of them! I know how they think, because I used to think just like them. 

Christianity and the church has broken this beautiful bridge of trust and understanding in God, making it much more complicated and trivial than it needs to be. Religion has perverted relationship. Routine, showmanship, and cowardice has allowed the injustices in the body of Christ that continues on to this day. 

Matter of fact, just three years ago, I was broken in half by the church and thrown to the curb. Rejected and betrayed by God's people yet again. The only difference between my 8 year old self and me now was that I was able to separate God from God's people and go back to the point of pressure which is where He was. I was able to do this by myself but a lot of people aren't this strong. A lot of people need assistance including the atheist. The atheist needs someone who loves them as God loves them and can be patient and gentle enough to guide them back to that place where they first met Him. Even if it's just a small corner in a dark field. It doesn't matter. If a believer can just get them there...

Zechariah 1:3

Therefore tell the people: This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Return to me,' declares the LORD Almighty, 'and I will return to you,' says the LORD Almighty.

Joel 2:13

Return to the LORD your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and boundless in loyal love--often relenting from calamitous punishment. 

Call in at your leisure and listen to the playback of my conference call Do or Die at 712.451.0375 passcode; 970215 ref# 2. 
G.I.N.O
God Is Number One!