For as long as I can remember, I have lived with God. It doesn’t make me perfect. Trust me. In some ways, it makes me lazy, and there is no excuse for that when it comes to building a relationship. Like being the child of a famous man, I feel my proximity has made me take him for granted.

I accepted Christ when very young and have been blessed with seeing and experiencing him throughout my life. There are moments of doubt of how to approach him, and I’ll even tell you that sometimes I stop and ask, is He really there? Are we actually some kind of cosmic accident?

And then I think about how He’s worked in my life, sometimes in pretty miraculous ways. God has never failed to provide for my family, even in the worst of moments. We lived in a house afflicted with spirits at one point, and by faith removed demons from each room, annointing each doorway, and drove them out. We were once driving through the mountains in the Appalachians and nearly flipped off the cliffside. The man following our car believed that we were simply dead, as our car was more than 45 degrees in a roll toward the cliff. By calling out the name of “Jesus,” I kid you not, we went from flying off the mountain to driving smoothly down the road as if nothing had happened with no recovery moment.

When mom found she was pregnant with me, she said to God: “I didn’t expect Him, I have no father for him (not talking immaculate conception here, so don’t get all excited), and I have to trust You in providing for him. What would you have me call him?” God replied: Call him Christian Johnathan. These two names mean: Christian = Christ-like, and Johnathan = God’s Gift.

I grew up Christian Crosby, but I have no blood relation with Crosby, so I prayed about it and when I was in high school, I asked God, what would you have me change my last name to? I heard him say: “Mihka’el.” I was like, huh? He said: Go to Daniel 12.

“At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.”

And come to find out, Michael = “Who is Like God.” So my first name and my last name mean the same thing, and all my names have come from God. I changed it on my 21st birthday.

I grew up with a mother ingrained in her faith and she passed that on to me, but I was a very black-and-white child, geek and tattle-tale. I become a southern baptist in high school and I was a rather judgmental boy who believed tattoos and rock music and pot and so many things from this life were evil because mom didn’t like them or I just thought it was one thing or another.

For years I’ve worked harder to get away from the religiosity of Christianity and get into the relationship of it, to learn how to love people. I hope, over the past decade, I’ve overcome most to all of my judgmentality and have become someone who loves people where they are.

I’ve come to learn that living with God is about a relationship, and that our entire purpose here on Earth is to build that relationship for eternity. Nothing in life compares with WHO you share life with over WHAT you share.

God created us to share His life with us and to find who among us would share our lives with Him. He spends His time courting us, guiding us, teaching us and developing us. My gift in this life is to see truths spread across time and distance. It’s a form of prophecy, but understanding prophecy is for a different blog.

I am constantly battling myself to learn how to live every day with God. It’s really hard, because I’d rather play games, read books, writing my novel, go hang out with friends, watch a movie … I don’t want to sit and read the Bible or pray and study. I don’t want to meditate on his word or fast.

But our relationship requires discipline and focus, specifically because God has remained aloof. He does so for a number of reasons which will take a whole other blog to discuss, but it’s the best option. Just know that if God were any easier to see or know, it would infringe our our freedom NOT to believe in Him, and that is something he won’t deny us, however much He wants us to know Him.

God is my dad, as I never had one. He’s raised me, taught me, developed me, punished me, been patient with me. He’s been what I needed in ways so many others could not have been. He is everything. Nothing else in life means much without Him, because everything fades away, is but dust to achievement and effort. Without someone to share your life (and afterlife) with … what’s it all for?