Stories of Hope: Matthias

My name is Matthias, and I’m 18 years old and currently still in high school.  I’m studying to become a… Read more Stories of Hope: Matthias

My name is Matthias, and I’m 18 years old and currently still in high school.  I’m studying to become a film director and want to create films that inspire people to be good and to do good.  

I grew up with 2 older brothers, who were tough to live with at times, but I couldn’t imagine growing up without them. They were not always friendly toward me, and I wished I had a little sister or brother to play with sometimes. 
My mother and father educated us in a Catholic way — we had to pray before dinner, for example. We eventually stopped praying, though, because my brothers and I didn’t believe in God.

When I was 10 or 11 years old, I went to SportQuest for the first time because my brothers convinced me to come with them. I went to SportQuest because they would teach me how to play basketball, but, in the meantime, they also taught us about God. I never really believed in God, and it was odd to see so many people that did believe in Him. Some of the people even came from the other side of the globe, just to teach us – me – about God.

Around the age of 13, I started to believe in God. I felt a pain in my back and in my neck. Rance and Brandon, my SportQuest coaches, prayed with me about the pain I felt. When we were done praying, I straightened my back and felt a big relief. It didn’t hurt as much as it did before. I was surprised that this had happened. How was it possible? Was it truly God or was it just a coincidence?
 I started praying for a while but after bad things happened to my family, I couldn’t think of God as a good thing. If God loved me, why did my mom and dad divorce? If God loved me, why did my family have a lot of financial problems?

I still went to the SportQuest camp each year and never missed a single day since I first started going. At the age of 16, I still didn’t believe in God. “There is no proof of his existence,” I thought. I was only focused on things that had been proven by scientists. God has not been proven to be real.
 I talked with a SQ coach, Kevin and asked my questions: Why does God allow war? Why aren’t criminals stopped by God? Why do people die of cancer? Why does God allow that? I asked him why God was allowing bad things to happen to my family. Why doesn’t God care for us?
 There was a moment of silence.

Then he said that God does care for me.

I didn’t believe Kevin. I didn’t believe in God. I only believed in things that have been proven by scientist.

A few months back, I was thinking about SportQuest…about the conversation I had with Kevin.

He said that God does care for me.

I suddenly knew he was right all along.

 My parents were divorced, but then they got remarried. My aunt had cancer but recovered. My family’s financial problems were fading away. I had sleeping problems, but now I sleep fine. I hated school ,and now school is great. I’m finally happy, and I even have a little sister now! 

I had ignored the good things that had happened, and I had only been looking at the bad things in life. I never realized until a few months ago that God has been watching over me, even when I tried to block God out of my life. 

Now I pray, I believe. I know God is hard to find sometimes. I know it’s odd to believe in God. But God exists. Maybe you think he doesn’t, but I feel that He does and knowing that others feel the same love I feel, that’s amazing. Reading the Bible and being able to relate to parts of it because I was in similar situations, that’s amazing. Finding out that God has been here all my life to watch over me…that’s amazing!