Where is God and How Do I Find Him

Where is God and How Do I Find Him?
Where is God and how do I find Him? Are you wanting to know more about God and Jesus? Do you know where you are going when you die? I was asking those same questions. I was an atheist and had this desire to know more about Him. I explain my story on how I met Jesus.

With a country divided, the Republican risk and morality being redefined, it’s time to gather round the camp fire, get back to basics, and spark the revival that this country so desperately needs.
This is the American Camp Fire revival with Cook Cameron.
Uh, how do I find my way back to god?
I thought that might be a good thing for us to talk today?
How do you find your way back to god? Or or maybe maybe it’s not a returning to god.
Maybe you’ve never known god ever in your life. And I’m not about to preach
a sermon But with, uh, with, with many of you asking this question,
I I don’t think I’m qualified to speak for god,
he does a a an excellent job of speaking for himself through his word.
And through his spirit, when you when you call out to him, and through ministers like like the minister at the church I go to and maybe a church in your area.
But I am qualified
to tell you what god did for me and how I found god.
Some of you even asked if I would share that here, uh, during these campfire revival meetings.
So Uh, let me tell you how I found god.
Um, I I I let people know right off the bat. I’m I’m, uh, I’m transparent about this.
I used to be
an atheist. I call myself today a recovering atheist.
I I lost my faith in atheism. I lost my faith in the belief that all of this
is just the random chance result of a of an explosion
that happened by accident and and out popped birds and trees and and everything that evolved out of out of a primordial soup over billions of years and that you and I are are, uh, are really just nothing nothing that was made on purpose.
I don’t believe that anymore. Uh, I
had blind faith in what my science teacher told me.
And, uh, then I started asking questions and thinking for myself and and and and and my life has changed.
Now I will say this. A minister friend of
mine told me years ago, Kirk, uh, I wanna
I wanna clarify uh, what you’re saying. You may believe in god, but but you didn’t find god.
He wasn’t lost. You were, and he found you.
So you didn’t find God. He wasn’t lost. You were lost, Kirk, and god found you.
And and and that is a perfect description.
Of what happened. I was not looking for god. I was happy on the
set of growing pains. I was making money. I was making friends.
I was uh living the life and and I loved it. It was great.
But I started asking questions like What else is there besides money and fame?
And here I am seventeen years old, and I’ve I’ve I’ve I’ve got so much.
Uh, I started thinking about What happens when you die? What happens out there when we step out of here?
Some of the big philosophical, uh, and metaphysical questions And I started dabbling in the new age moving, which sort of
told me that I am god. And I thought, no, I’m not god. I I how could I be god?
I’m not I can’t create things. I I I can’t make a pot of rice.
Let alone an entire universe with sunsets and human beings who can, uh, produce babies and and and compose symphonies and, uh, I I can’t create anything.
I’m not god. And then I went to church with, uh, a friend.
And in that church service, I heard a message that rocked my world And the pastor of that church spoke about a creator who was loving and kind.
He was all powerful, and
he and his character was was pristine. He was holy. That’s what that means.
He’s he’s without evil or darkness. He is light. And in him, there is no darkness.
And how He created the world and he filled it with the sun and the moon and the stars and he filled the land with animals in the sea with with swimming creatures and then he created one creature separate and distinct from them all.
And that was man. Man kind, he made mankind male and female, and he told him to be fruitful and to fill the world and to to govern it.
To rule over it, to beautify the world.
And man was in relationship with god, but he gave man a choice.
And together, the first man and woman chose to reject and rebel against god.
And there were consequences that led them down a road of death and destruction.
And he went on to tell this message
of the Bible, which by
the way was totally new for me. I’d never really heard this, sir, and definitely didn’t believe it.
And, uh, I mean, it sounded like a sci fi movie or something. Um,
but, you know, he believed it and spoke it with such conviction that I kept listening.
And he talked about the moral character of god being perfect and pure, but he talked about how the moral character of mankind was polluted by something called sin and selfishness, this stubborn selfish streak that now runs through the heart of every person including you and me.
And he defined it. Uh, so you can you can see it in yourself.
Just look into the mirror of the ten commandments when you lie. You know that’s wrong.
When you steal when you use the name of the god who gave you your life as a cuss word.
That would be worse than using your own mother or father’s name as a filth word.
To express disgust and yet we use the name of the creator who created our mother and father and our children as a filth word.
That’s called blasphemy. When you covet things that belong to other people, rather than being grateful for the things that god’s given us himself.
And he even said that if you look with lust at another person, you’ve already committed adultery with person in your heart.
God sees our secret thought life.
And you and I have have fallen from that moral standard that god has commanded us to live up to.
And rather than punishing us for that sin, that god initiated a rescue mission and promised to send someone who would pay the price for our sin so that we could be forgiven and granted the gift of eternal life and come back to god to find god if you will.
He says that if we will seek god, we will find him when we seek him with all of our heart, when we turn from our wicked ways, and we put our faith in the one god sent to save us.
And that’s his son, Jesus, who died on the cross and paid the price for the sin of
the world with his blood.
And then he said how how god raised him from the dead and he conquered death and he rules in heaven as as king of kings and lord of lords And if we’ll turn to him by faith, god will forgive us of our sin and grant us a new heart.
He’ll heal our heart and bring us into a right relationship with him.
And give us the gift of eternal life. I heard that message. And I went home.
I asked my friend’s father a lot of some of the questions he could answer, but he said ultimately, Kirk, if you want to know how to find god, why don’t you ask him?
Because he’s not just a a force He’s he’s he’s not just, uh, an idea. He’s a person.
And so I was sitting in my sports car at seventeen and a half years old, on Van Eye Boulevard.
Early in November nineteen eighty seven, I remember it clearly.
I had dropped my friend off at
an acting class, and I I got thinking to myself that I could pull out into this traffic and hit by a drunk driver.
And if I die, I’m gonna find out whether what that minister said is true. If there is
a god, if there is a
heaven and there’s a hell, I’m gonna find out.
And if there is a god in heaven, I knew in my heart that I would not be going to heaven because I I mocked
the concept of god. I I felt I
was too smart to believe in a creator of the universe.
I later found out that Einstein believed in god and brilliant people believe in god, doctors, lawyers, physicists.
And I thought, you know what?
I don’t wanna be wrong about this. Cause I don’t know when I’m gonna die.
And I and if I’ve been blessed this much and I die and
end up being expelled from heaven, never knowing god, and perishing under the wrath of god because of my arrogance and pride and conceit as a celebrity on growing pains, I will be remembered as a guy who played the role of the fool.
Not Mike Siever, but one of the greatest fools that ever lived because he never said thank you.
And forgive me and change me. So I decided I would pray. I closed my eyes.
Uh, I didn’t really know why you close your eyes when you pray, but I saw people in church doing that.
So I thought maybe that just gets
the prayers up past the past the clouds
to heaven and so I just prayed, God, if you’re there, would you show me?
If you’re real, would you please please get through to me?
Uh, I don’t want to be a religious Crazy person.
I don’t want to be standing on the street corner with a Bullhorn and a sandwich board. Uh,
I want to know if if you really created me on purpose and you have
a plan for my life. And I
said, would you would you please forgive me?
That part about sin, that’s that’s definitely in my That’s it’s on my record. I’m guilty.
And would you would you forgive me and would you would you do what that man said?
Would you make me a new person on the inside and and and show me the way.
I didn’t have my theology straight at. That’s about as complicated as I knew how to make it.
I opened my eyes and It wasn’t like I saw a vision of Jesus on the windshield.
I didn’t feel the Holy Spirit rushing through the
air conditioning vents and blow my hair back into a a televangelist comb over, like
you see on TV, Uh, I just had this sense that maybe the the the one who created me just heard me speak to him for the first time.
And I knew instinctively. I was humbled because I recognized that although other people saw me as as the celebrity, I knew that I would not be the celebrity in that relationship with my creator.
And I felt about this big But something felt really good that I had humbled my heart and that god was listening to me.
I started going to church with a friend, another friend. Somebody gave me a Bible.
I started reading it, and it was it was just like they said. It was like it’s not like
I read the Bible. It was
like the Bible read me. And and and told me who I was and who god is and why I’m here and his plan for my life and that I was he
was gonna change me on the inside I’d have a
new heart with new desires, and that’s exactly what happened.
And I began to follow him wanting to to to obey his word
and build my life on that
rock, like we talked about last night, not just hear the words in church, but actually obey those words and build my life on those words.
And it was like I went from darkness to light. My priorities changed.
I wanted to live my life in such a way that one day I would meet god and hear him say, well done, my good and faithful servant.
And I can tell
you after thirty plus years of of walking with god.
Sometimes I I I I I veer off sometimes I’m I’m so busy and distracted.
I’m not hearing from him. I’m I’m I love this phrase.
I’m not what I could be. I’m not what I should be, but I’m not what I was.
God has been so good to me.
And I know that he is good to you.
If you’re looking for a way back to god, here’s my suggestion.
Take him up on his promise.
He says that you will find him when you search for him with all of your heart.
How how will you deal with your
with your moral failures on the day that you stand before the judge of the universe.
He’s just he can’t just acquit those who are guilty without payment or justice being served.
And the great news is that There is one who paid your fine for you and satisfied the demands of the justice of god’s moral law on your behalf.
And his name is Jesus, and he did that when he died on the cross.
He lived a perfect life.
God in human flesh sacrificed himself on the cross so that you could go free, so that I could go free when our court case comes up.
I believe that with all of my heart. I live by it. I build my life on it.
And if you trust him with all of your heart, you search for him, like you’re searching for hidden treasure, God promises that he will lead you right right to himself.
So this Sunday night, my prayer is that you and I will not let our hit head hit the pillow without getting on our knees.
And saying God created me a clean heart, renew a right spirit within me, and help me find you.
No. God, you’re not lost. Find me. I feel lost and bring me home.
Adopt me as your son as your daughter. I wanna be a child of god.
I’m laying down my excuses.
I’m willing to turn away from what I know is wrong, and I’m willing to humbly submit to you in reverend obedient faith.
Show me what that means and what it looks like in my life.
And then break open his book and begin to read it and obey what you read and God will never let you down.
Let me give you a blessing this evening. May the lord bless you and keep you?
May the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you?
May the lord lift up his countenance upon you? And give you peace.
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