At some point along one’s process of spiritual growth, a wave of questions comes along. Some people worry about this, thinking that they are losing their faith. Suddenly it seems some of the answers you have been using appear shallow to you. Faith may start to look too simple for life, as life becomes more and more complex. As it turns out, your life may not be that much better than it was before you decided to follow Christ. For some, it may be worse. Those who try to “sell” Christianity based on the success/happiness/overall well being of the final product may look like shysters based on what you now know.

I think a lot of this disappointment is due to a common misunderstanding of what it is that we find when we find Christ. We don’t find a bunch of answers, or a system of beliefs that work, or a god that is going to guarantee us everything our culture has taught us to desire. We found a relationship with God, and finding this relationship is only the beginning.

What we have found is a lifetime of learning, growing and deepening in that relationship with God. Some of that involves pain. Some involves losing. It all involves a redirecting of our lives from one way of looking at the world to another.

What makes it worthwhile is not the end product, but the fact that, all along the way, the living God—the one who will be the center of our eternity, accompanies us.

If you read the Psalms of David, what you come away with is not the triumph of David’s exemplary life, but the heart relationship with God that holds it all together through victory and defeat, joy and sorrow, friends and friendlessness, depression and elation—the presence of God and the seeming absence of God. It’s not an altogether pretty picture. It’s not what TV preachers promise. It’s what God gives. Himself. And a major part of the finding is finding out that He indeed is enough. He is everything.

That’s what you find when you “find” Christ. It’s a little like finding what you weren’t seeking, but really wanted all along.