In the seventies I felt abandoned and overlooked. I never told anyone this but that is how I felt all through junior high and high school. My parents had gotten divorced when I was about five years old and at the time, I felt or thought it was somehow my fault. No one at home knew what to tell me or say that could “make it better”, so my teenage years were my self-destructive years. I started drinking every Friday night and I didn’t drink beer, I could get whiskey or almost any hard beverage that I had the money for.

I had been to church and heard the sermons about God’s love but at the time it wasn’t much more than a fairy tale to me. It wasn’t real and I didn’t begin to believe it until later in my life. Much later.

The only reason I made it through my teens and twenties was because God wanted me to become someone useful to Him. That didn’t happen until I met the love of my life and we had a little boy. I had to come to Jesus because he needed someone who could be a father and a Daddy, and I was neither of those before Jesus changed my life.

It is true that God calls those who can be useful to Him but He also gives each of us the ability to be more useful than we could be without Him. I was reading and listening to Jesus teach about the lilies of the field and how God clothes them in splendor yet they will dry up and blow away. How much more will God change your life and mine if we keep our eyes on Him every day? If He cares for the sparrows and the flowers of the field, how much more does God love those He created in His Image?

Seek to know Him deeper every day because He formed you to be His if you will respond to His call when your heart feels it.