My journey with God and how I came to know Him, acknowledge Him, worship Him and love Him is a lot like EBAY. EBAY is a website that allows you to buy and sell items on the internet.
So why is my relationship with God like eBay? This is why my journey with God is like eBay…
When I first heard of eBay I thought it was really unusual for people to buy stuff on the internet when they could just buy it in a store. And I was almost certain that eBay was a scam, you have to give them your credit card information before you can buy it and you’re not even able to physically feel it and see what kind of condition your item is in. Someone could easily say that they’re selling you an apple product for $200 and when it arrives at your doorstep you open it to see a bottle of apple juice…like I mean it’s not like the juice was not an apple product, so technically the buyer wasn’t lying… so what can you do right! Is that not enough to at least frighten you of the fact that eBay is dodgy?
And I don’t know if you can see the relationship so far but God is a little like that. God asks that we give ourselves up before actually getting his treasures in heaven. And has anyone seen heaven before? …is there a picture on google that’s legitimate? I don’t want the same situation as the apple product to occur!
So there was this one time where I needed this item. It was a cord that my brother and I desperately needed. So we went looking for the cord in various stores but could not see any shop that sold the cord. And so we started getting impatient and so I decided to look on eBay. So I was searching and found the cord and I went to buy it. And this is the first time I’ve ever bought something online so I was being extremely careful of what I was doing. I gave my credit card details and then I waited, until after 2 days it arrived! I was over the moon, like we finally got what we were asking for and I was celebrating and just so thrilled!
And that was exactly like my relationship with God. There was a time that I desperately needed a certain outcome and I searched many various ways to obtain it but it didn’t happen. I couldn’t find anything that could help me so I was desperate and I would try anything. And so I went to God and I asked Him to answer this one prayer, and the thing is that when I woke up the next morning He had already answered it!
The prayer was asking God to help me not get in trouble from my parents. I was out in the city after church having dinner and I was like 16 at the time so I was fairly young and I got home quite late like 12:30. So I was praying to God like don’t make my parents yell at me or something or take my privileges away from me even though I didn’t have any privileges. And He answered that.
I would say that after God answered this prayer of mine, I officially became a Christian.
So after this situation came a great time for me, it was a time of spending and joy. After I bought that item on eBay I continued to shop and I would look at the most useless items! I was looking up houses and cars… and I’m a uni student! I don’t have any money but I didn’t care, I just wanted to use eBay and shop around!
And so the same happened with God, I would constantly talk to Him to answer my prayers and do all these great things for me! I once prayed to Him and this was during dinner time where I was with a friend and I asked Him that He would give me the wisdom in choosing a good dish to order… Can’t remember quite correctly but I’m pretty sure it was a good dish! But that wasn’t even the pinnacle of God’s power in answering our prayers! He blessed me abundantly with all these things I didn’t even ask for! And the analogy I want to use again is of eBay. So for eBay, once you shop around for a bit and have bought a few…dozen items they do something special for you! So they give you these codes and what the code does is that it gives you discounts on your next purchase. I don’t know about you but I like some good discounts, and so what happened was I got this discount and it said $20 off your next purchase. So again, poor uni student here having no money, you know I invested good time in finding a good item. I made sure I bought an item costing $20, not $19 or $21 but $20! So I didn’t spend all my time on finding this item, maybe like 4 days straight. Eventually I found the item and so I was preparing to check out as you do, and I typed in the code and then proceeded to my payment. And something happened…there was an error.
This was a very sad time for me, I’m quite embarrassed of how sad I actually got. The thing was, it wasn’t an error with the item, or internet connection or low battery on my laptop. It was an error with the discount code. See, the thing was, the code had already expired. And the bad thing about the code expiring is this: if there was an error with the item itself, I could look for a new one, but I would still eventually get an item; if the error was with internet connection or low battery, I could just wait a bit; but if the code expired, I wouldn’t be able to get my item! I would have to pay for it and it wouldn’t be free!
And this is the part where my relationship with eBay goes in another direction to my relationship with God. Unlike eBay, God doesn’t expire, unlike eBay, there’s never an error in God and unlike eBay, GOD’S DISCOUNT CODE IS 100% OFF! You don’t have to pay anything to get what God has to offer. You don’t need to go on a week long journey to find that perfect item! That perfect item is God. And the best thing is that God is always available! You don’t need Wi-Fi or 4G to access Him. He’s always there.
My life is not perfect, I’ve hit low points. There was a time in my life where I was just frustrated with where God had placed me and I felt as though He had abandoned me. I was at a point where I felt that the people that I thought accepted me were actually against me, and the ones who were supposed to be the “good guys,” were really not who they were. I was angry because I knew that I loved God, and I knew that God loved me, so why was He making me feel so much pain and suffering. And the thing is our eyes and minds are so limited; And the thing is our eyes and minds are
so limited; how do we expect ourselves to see the bigger picture of God’s plan – when we struggle to see a sign 20m ahead of us, compared to the eyes that belong to a being that is able to create all by just speaking. There’s a passage in Psalm 42 and it says: “My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my saviour and my God.” During the lowest of times, the worse of scenarios and when everything begins to fall and change for the worse, there is always one thing that stays constant…and that is God! And so I will continue to praise Him, for He is able to immeasurably more than all we ask and imagine.