Do I Belong?

I’ve always found it hard to fit in. Growing up, I struggled to find my place. I found it hard to make friends, and never really felt like I belonged anywhere. I was bullied a lot growing up and always found myself trying to change myself to fit in better with people, but it never really worked. I even struggled in church, as my faith and understanding of the world matured, I always felt a tension between what I was told was the right thing to believe and what I actually thought. Church was a place where on one hand, for the most part, I felt unconditional love and acceptance from people, but on the other I felt alone in that I felt I couldn’t be myself. I couldn’t be myself because it felt like in order to be a Christian, you had to agree with everything that was being taught, your beliefs had to fit inside a neat little box and if not then there was something wrong.

As much as I tried to force myself into this box I just felt like I was a fraud. In fact the further I went through life, experienced different things, studied the Bible and prayed, the more and more I found that this box wasn’t big enough to hold my doubts and questions.

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, every year I serve on team at a Christian youth festival called Soul Survivor. For the past five years I’ve been part of the “Fringe” team, which exists primarily to connect with the young people on the edge of the event. These are the young people who, for whatever reason, don’t engage with the main sessions of the event. On this team I’ve had the privilege of meeting dozens of young people from all over the UK. Some would call themselves Christians, others not. Some struggle with loneliness or isolation, while others don’t feel like they fit in with the group that they have come with. On one level or another, they all feel like they don’t belong, and our team’s job is to be there for them, and offer whatever support we can, usually in the form of a cup of hot chocolate and a person to chat to.

Because I’ve served on this team for five years now I’ve had the benefit of knowing some of these young people for a few years and have been able to see the transformation that’s happened in their lives over the years. One guy, who I’ll call Joss (because that’s his name), I met three years ago. When I first met Joss he was 16 and very open about the fact he wasn’t a Christian and found the whole thing extremely strange. He’d been brought along by a friend of his and had practically no experience with the Church. He admitted to being addicted to a number of drugs, being an alcoholic and had extremely bad anger issues. Over the course of the week me and some others on our team got to know Joss and some others in the group he was with. We listened to them, chatted to them about things like school, depression, God and life and were able to pray with a number of them. We saw a number of people in his group decide to become Christians, as well as healing and amazing transformations. Joss left with a lot more openness to the idea, but didn’t make any commitments.

When we saw him the next year, he’d given up drugs and alcohol, grown up a lot and he decided to make a commitment to follow God and saw an amazing transformation in his life. When I met Joss this year, it was like meeting an entirely different person, now 18 he is running his own photography business, has dreams of starting a charity and is at college studying art. He is making a real effort to apologise to the people he hurt and to manage his anger. Although he still suffers from depression he is in a much better place and said that meeting my team and experiencing God has had a major effect on his life.

I tell you Joss’ story not because it’s unique, but because it’s the story of so many people. People who a lot of people have written off as a lost cause because they don’t fit the mould that they think a Christian should be. Joss’ story shows that there is hope for anyone and that the Grace of God is big enough for anyone to belong should they want to.

In the book of Acts there’s an account of St. Peter praying in a garden in Joppa. He’s praying around lunchtime and is apparently really hungry. While praying Peter has a vision of a sheet coming down from the sky with all kinds of animals on it and he hears a voice telling him to kill and eat the animals to satisfy his hunger. Peter replies to this voice and says “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” (Acts 10:14, ESV). The voice replies, saying, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” (Acts 10:15, ESV). This happens to Peter three times (he must have been really hungry), and then his doorbell rings and at the door are some men who’ve been sent to find Peter. These men were sent by an Italian Captain called Cornelius, who had a vision from an angel telling him to send for a guy named Peter in Joppa. Captain Cornelius’ men explain this to Peter and Peter travels with them to see Cornelius.

When he arrives at Cornelius’ house, Peter starts to talk about Jesus, and prays for Cornelius and his household. This is unheard of in Jewish culture, because Jews weren’t meant to associate with Gentiles (anyone who wasn’t Jewish), these people were considered unclean and didn’t belong.

We read in verse 44 that “While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.”, Peter then baptised the Gentiles and this starts the spread of the message of Jesus from the Jews, to the rest of the world. And somehow, down the line, because Peter went to Cornelius, I’m sitting here today writing this blog.

This story is powerful because it breaks down the social and religious barriers that were standing. It shows us that the message of Jesus is for all people. Nobody is a lost course, nobody is left out, everyone can belong in the movement of Jesus.

It’s sad that nowadays, so much of the Church has got it wrong. It’s sad that the Church has become a box that isn’t big enough to hold my questions and doubts, and that it’s written off people like Joss and many more as lost causes. But there is hope. The grace of God is big enough to accommodate everyone, when Jesus died on the cross the door was flung open for anyone and everyone to receive the freedom of salvation if they want to.

Preston Sprinkle said:

I don’t know where you’re at. Maybe you’ve been a Christian your whole life, maybe you feel like you’re the furthest anyone could be from calling themselves a Christian. But I want to tell you that there’s hope. There’s hope that you can belong in the movement that Jesus started, that if you want to, there is space for you at the table of grace.

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