I agree with Jonathan and this is why:

I was attending a Catholic high school and learning about God, but I did not have a personal relationship with him.

To me, God was a being that was very far away. Sometimes I prayed to him, but I did not know who it was that I was praying to. My motto during high school was: “If it feels right, it must not be wrong.”

As I was exploring how to fulfill myself, I experimented with drugs, alcohol and improper relations with girls.

My friends and I also began exploring different types of spirituality along with the drug scene in which we had engulfed ourselves. I justified my explorations by conning myself into believing that as long as I maintained good grades in school, all of my dark interests were acceptable.

I was going through a struggling point in my life where I could literally feel God pulling me in one direction and everything else in the world pulling me in the other. My family knew I was going through rough times. I knew I needed something, but I was not sure what it was that I needed. I decided to stop doing drugs but still felt empty.

I began searching for God.

Through the process of searching for God, he allowed me to see that he is not a God who looks down at us from a spy hole in the sky, but he is a God who loves us and wants an intimate relationship with us.

In the spring semester of my senior year in high school, someone explained how God loves us and how he wants us to invite himself into our lives.

Jesus said, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”(NIV Bible)

I heard Jesus knocking at the door of my life, and I prayed that he would come into my life and begin changing me into the person he wants me to be.

At the beginning of my college career God allowed me to see what Christ’s death really meant and how ugly sin is in his sight. I began to experience how Jesus suffered for us, how he took on our penalty of death for us and how he loved us even though we all too often turn our backs on God.

I invite you to explore the claims of Jesus. He is either completely wrong or completely right. Jesus does not allow for any other option. He is either the biggest liar and deceiver of the entire world, a deceiving hypocrite blinding one-third of the world’s population who have made their best efforts to investigate the claims of Christ, or quite possibly everything that he said is true.

His truth led to so much anger in his day that men hated the truth and wanted to kill it. Or more accurately, kill him. Over and over again, Jesus was whipped. Jesus was spat at. He was beaten with sticks and rods. He had a crown of thorns jammed on his head. He was stabbed in the side.

After hours on the cross he was thirsty and was given the stench of gull and vinegar to drink.

He was crucified. Why? For you, me and for all of the people who recognize this and for those who don’t yet realize what happened that day. He died for everyone.

As he was dying he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

He didn’t curse the people driving sharp rusty nails into his hands, but rather he prayed to his father. He chose that punishment and died for you and me. All he had to do was deny his claim to be Christ, but he didn’t. So where does that leave us?

We have a choice. We can say, “Yeah, what a stinking liar,” or we can humbly recognize what he did for us.

All he wants for us now is to give us life. He doesn’t want us to muck around in the world blind. He wants to give us hope and a future.

He desires an intimate relationship with us that will never be unfulfilling like the things of this world. His love for us will never stop.

Please just give him a chance.