I grew up in a very conservative Christian background. My Dad was a minister, so I was very familiar with all the churchy sort of stuff. And spent most of my life trying to live what I was brought up to believe.

That came into question for me in my late twenties and by age thirty I was in deep depression and couldn't figure out why. That story and how I found my way out of that is something I share in [Best Life Success], but that's where I took a step that for me felt like committing a heresy - I began to question everything I had been brought up to believe because something was very definitely not working in my life!

As awful as my life was and as painful as that choice was at the time, I have since come to have great gratitude for that time in my life, because it set me free to become a truth-seeker and a truth-speaker. And that has made a world of difference in my life for the better.

In my spiritual journey in the years since I have learned that a lot of who I had been taught to see God as - was in fact not who He really is.

And learning to hear His voice and talking WITH Him for the past ten years or so, has opened my eyes to things about God that are so different than what I used to think. Because He has been showing me from His Word who He really is. (I certainly do not know anywhere near all of that - I am, like everyone else, a work in progress.)

What I am learning about Him has changed whatever relationship I used to think I had with Him into something so much better than I could have even imagined.

Before, He was always Someone distant from me - you know, that Somebody up there who was so much higher than me, who was keeping an eye on me and judging me when I messed up. Somebody I was never really comfortable with. Someone I was told who loved me, but my experience of that very seldom felt like it. Someone I felt like I could never be good enough to be worthy of having a good relationship with Him.

Sound familiar?

God is inviting us to come and KNOW the REAL person that He is.

I want to share something I wrote in my journaling just the other day.