He found me before I went looking.

Every testimony I had heard began with a search. Mine cannot. I was never looking. He was already there.

I always knew He was there. I want to say that first, because it makes my story different from the ones I grew up hearing. I did not find God at the end of a long search. I did not read my way to Him or argue my way to Him. I knew He was there the way you know the floor is there in the dark. I knew He was protecting me and I knew He loved me, because there is no other explanation for how I survived growing up.

The problem was never whether God existed. The problem was me.

I grew up across four cities and between two households. In one there was poverty. In the other there was comfort. I moved between them and learned early how to be two people, one for each house. I have eaten in shacks and I have gone hungry. Later in life I have eaten with billionaires. I know both tables well.

There was also abuse, and it was extreme. I am not going to name anyone or describe what was done. Some of those people are still alive, and this is not their story. What I will say is that I should not have come through it, and I did. Every time. I did not call that protection then. I called it luck, or being tough, or being clever. It was none of those.

Many people will not believe my story. It belongs in a television drama, not on a quiet website with a cross on it. I have seen some of the ugliest faces people are capable of. I have walked into dangerous boardrooms and dangerous neighbourhoods, and I am still not sure which of the two was worse. He walked into every one of them with me.

So if I knew He was there, what was the problem? Sin is a church word, so let me say what I mean by it. Sin is living as if I am the centre. Look at the word and you will see the I in the middle of it. Pride has one too. That was me. I knew God was there, and I still built my life around the letter I.

And I built a lot. I became an advocate. I became a Certified Financial Planner. I started companies. I was not hostile to God and I never argued with Him. I was simply busy. I was building the plan, and the plan had my name on it. When you are winning it is very easy to believe you are the reason.

Then all of it fell apart. I am not going to dress this up or make it sound noble. Everything I had built came down, and I was left broken and expecting nothing. Not rescue. Not a lesson. Nothing.

He saved me anyway.

Brokenness does one useful thing. It stops you talking long enough to look back. When I looked back, His fingerprints were on everything. Every success I had taken credit for. Every dangerous situation I had walked out of. Every problem that somehow got solved at the last minute. In everything good, He was there. He had saved my life more times than I had noticed, and I only started counting after the fall.

He comforted me every time I was broken, long before I knew to ask. He broke down strongholds, which is another church word. A stronghold is a way of thinking or a pattern of living that has hold of you and will not let go. Some of mine were decades old. He took them down. He shielded me from attacks I only recognised as attacks afterwards.

None of that started when I turned to Him. It had been going on since before I could remember. God said something to the prophet Jeremiah that explains why.

I am not Jeremiah and I am not a prophet. But look at the order. Knowing comes before forming. Forming comes before birth. God’s knowledge of a person is the first thing in the sequence, not the last. Nobody has to go looking for someone who has known them since before they were born. That person has already found you.

If you are a Christian and you are sure that you found God, I understand. I would have said the same. It is hard to give up the credit, and your search was real. But listen to how Jesus described it to men who had followed Him for three years.

They had left their boats and their tax booths. They had walked hundreds of miles behind Him. And He says, you did not choose me. The choosing was His. Your search was real, but it was a response. Something moved first, and it was not you.

That is my whole story in seven words. I did not love God into loving me. I did not earn my way into being kept. He loved first, He protected first, He found first. He never gave up on me. And when I finally turned around, He did not make me stand outside and explain myself. He welcomed me. He has always welcomed me.

Maybe you are reading this and you are not looking for God. You are busy, or you are broken, or you have decided this is not for you. I have been all three. I am not asking you to believe my story. I am asking you to consider that the same thing might be true of yours.

Look back at your own life honestly. The near misses. The person who arrived at the right moment. The door that closed and turned out to be the door that saved you. You may have called it luck. I did too. You do not have to go looking for God. You are not lost to Him. He knows exactly where you are, and He has been there the whole time.

If any of this landed, pray this with me. Out loud if you can. The words do not have to be these ones, but they can be.