Unfortunately we do not live in the a world where Jesus preaches in parables and the apostles follow. Unfortunately, we are long past that era and into the twenty–first century. According to Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Because Jesus has long been crucified and risen to stand at the right hand of God, faith is pertinent to believing. My understanding of God was shaped from a very early age. I grew up in a Christian home, where we went to church every Sunday. I heard all the “good” and “pure” stories found in the Bible, deemed acceptable for the ears of children. The stories that involved traumatic events or “bad behavior” were censored. I had an idea of this mighty God, …show more content…
My understanding of God has been gradual. My faith, in the process, has been challenged but never shaken. My belief in God was challenged both directly and indirectly growing up. I believe my first question was why “bad things happened to good people.” I remember being ask this question on the bus when I was in elementary school. I was having a juvenile debate over the existence of God. Thats when the boy I was talking to ask me why “bad things happened to good people.” I didn 't have a direct answer for him and for next several years I would wrestle with a similar question: “If God loved me why did he allow pain and hurt to be apart of my every day life.” To understand why I would ask this question I will give you a brief but essential history of my childhood. My parents got divorced when I was young. My dad struggled with bipolar I disorder. He was often times unpredictable and as a result missed out on a lot of my childhood. My mom got remarried and would spend the next ten years in a marriage that lacked love and instead was replaced by manipulation and abuse. When I was twelve, my mom …show more content…
We are both believers but came from different backgrounds. His father is a church of christ preacher, so traditionally he was born and raised following the church of christ doctrine. As I’ve mentioned before I was raised in the baptist community. Two things the baptists and the church of christ followers disagree on is the way in which someone is saved and the way service should be conducted. Traditional church of christ will not use instruments to worship due to verses such as Ephesians 5:19; “Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Another difference is that the church of christ body believes that in order to be saved you must be baptized. The baptist congregation believes that baptism will not save you but is an act of obedience. These are questions that I struggled with at the beginning of our marriage. My husband holds firmly to these beliefs and I respect him for them; however, I have come to the conclusion that these are small details that God will straighten out when the time is right. I believe being saved is important as well as being baptized. However, when it comes down to a man on his death bed, I believe that if he has accepted the Lord, he will be saved regardless of if he 's been baptized or not. To this day, I attend a church of christ church out of submission to my husband. I don 't believe a church will save me so if
At the age of 14 I had already doubted if there were a god. I had happened to be brought up in a quite religious family, and so being a child, believed in what they believed in. I had tried praying, watching for a sign that there was some sort of powerful entity there to help through hard times, and everytime I tried I heard nothing, I noticed nothing. The so called “God” wasn't speaking to me, so I took my life into my own hands. Who better to be in charge of my life, my way of living, than me. I even tried to speak to Satan, during an edgy emo phase of my life. Nothing from that end either. I do not believe in anything but death, and death only. We have all been dead before life, and I have no memories of wandering the Heavens with Jesus
I have always had the knowledge of Christ, but up until this last year, I realized I did not truly believe in him. I questioned the things in my life and why I always ended up with the same misery over and over. I had grown up in an abusive life from my early years. I can honestly say I had brief periods of peace when I was allowed to go with my grandparents, but they were short lived. I was taken to a variety of counselors from a very young age and put on prescription medicines starting at 16. Everyone around me could not figure out what was wrong with me and why nothing would “fix” me. Sin was a normal for me, and I carried on that lifestyle into adulthood. I had no concept of trust and what love really was.
There was a moment when I doubted religion. An avalanche of tragedies piled upon my life in the blink of an eye. My father moved seven hundred miles away, people died, and family members began to discover the effects of methamphetamine. I began to think religion might be a lie. I asked myself, “Why would God make me suffer through this hardship?” By enduring this oppression, the silver lining became apparent. I grasped the true concept of my series of unfortunate events. The circumstances of my childhood have molded me into a stronger
As a young boy, I attended Sunday School for many years. I learned about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit once a week and was immersed in a family that was religious. We never missed a Sunday, prayed before every meal, and talked about God in our lives. I was baptized and began attending a Lutheran church up until the end of middle school. Our lives became busier, and our attendances to church became fewer and far between. In school I began learning about evolution and how humans came about. I remember that I did not understand how school could teach something different than what I learned my entire life. At first I did not know what to believe. I became skeptical about many ideas in the Christian faith. Is there one almighty God? Did he create man as told in the story of Adam and Eve? I thought these bold ideas were far-fetched. For a short while, I did not believe the teachings of the Bible or of God. I had many of the same thoughts as doubters of the Christian religion. How can the idea of one God or Heaven be real if no living person had ever witnessed it for themselves? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? The absence of God and the theory of evolution seemed like the reasonable explanation to me. As time went on, I continued to attend church sporadically and did a lot of thinking about my faith. Every so often, I would find
God is unknown and more complicated than our brains could ever comprehend. There only description we understand about God is his characteristics. God is loving, wise, graceful, merciful, my savior, a judge, perfect, never changing, a King who watches over His kingdom, and He is also just. One popular question people ask is, “If there really is a God, then why does He let bad things happen?” When God created humans, we were perfect, but we also had free will. To retain free will God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:9 NIV). Eating its fruit would allow sin to enter the Earth and since Adam and Eve both ate the fruit, the nature of the universe turned from good and perfect to sin and evil (Genesis 3 NIV). Sin was brought into this world and it has made us into selfish people, horrible people, murders, etc. God can not step in and control our actions for the same reason He put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden: freewill. Ev...
...ed a part to him. First we see God as omnipotent then we see God asking where Adam and Eve are hiding (Not being omnipotent). With the creation of mankind God loses some part of his Godliness and he gains some humanity. God has a little human in himself and we have a little God in us. But the main point still is the same, God is the authority over man and will remain this way. I also feel that the God in the bible is truly no different than the Gods of Greece for example. The God of ancient Greece acted just like humans, the only difference was that they were immortal. The God of the bible seems to act just like humans, shows love, anger, regret, learns from mistakes and so forth. So in the end God shows flaws and learns from mistakes. God is like humans, maybe this is why we don?t understand God sometimes because we can?t understand other people and their actions.
... my life and influences from other people may alter my ideas, but my beliefs and faith will never falter. I will always believe in God. I know that God is with me every step of the way throughout my life whether it is good or bad. I believe that everything happens for a reason and that if God wanted or wants something to happen on purpose, he would make it happen or he would steer me in the right direction so that I can make it happen on my own.
“Most Christians would rather die than think; in fact they do” (White, 17). This quote from Bertrand Russel is thought provoking and a most appropriate way to start a book on using your mind for God. A Mind for God by James Emery White is a fantastic piece of literature that delves deep into what it means to truly follow God with your mind. In just under one hundred pages White explains why, how, and what we need to follow God with all of our mind. “And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27, ESV).
The beginning of my faith journey can be described as rocky, at best. Each Sunday morning my dad would stay home just so that he could catch every possible second of Sunday football coverage. I wasn't even exactly sure who God was; my mom just told me I had to go to church "'cause I said so." This upset me, especially as a child. Furthermore, the example that my father set for me was far beyond comprehension. Who was he to tell me to go to church when he didn't even go himself? For a long time, I lost trust in my parents because I was being led on so many different paths.
I am fortunate to have realized my faith in god in early years of my life and experiences in life have only strengthened my faith; I was born and raised in a small town in India and my elementary to undergraduate education has been from a Christian, catholic school, Convent of Jesus & Mary, a congregation established by Mother Claudine Thevnet who wanted to undertake the education of girls in India. It was in school, I first experienced the introduction to Christianity and my family being Hindu resonated a lot of common values being taught at school. Since there was no conflict in my values learnt at school and those at home, these were only deepened and have become an important part of my personality. As a result of my upbringing and my education, memories of my faith are amongst my earliest. I believe in the presence of god and I believe that god has bigger plans for me. My education and my family has integrated values in me for respecting, accepting, understanding other members of the society. Hinduism taught me how to be respectful and tolerant to others, it taught me that I need to understand that I am a human and I am here to serve and help others in need. There have been times when faced with difficult challenges in life and I have followed the path laid by god, ignorance went away and I found solutions and answers to the problems and challenges that I faced.
"Who Is God To Me" God means many different things to many different people. There are a lot of people who believe that there is no such thing as a God. There are people who believe that there is no God because no one has ever seen him. I personally believe that there is a God because of my faith. I have faith in God and I feel that God is real. I have many reasons why I believe in God and who God is to me. But I have three reasons that stand out for me about who God is to me. They are the following: God is always there for me, God is my friend, and God is my creator. These are my three most important reasons of who God is and what God means to me. God has never let me down in my life. Sometimes I feel that God has let me down or that He did not answer my prayers in times that I most needed Him. But I have to realize that everything that God does is for a reason. God has taken a few friends of mine from this Earth at a very young age. I have prayed to God and asked Him why? But I have never seemed to fully understand why. I have come to the conclusion that God works in mysterious ways. I do not think that anyone can fully understand why God does what He does. So for this, I do not feel that God has ever let me down. He just does these things for a reason and if you believe in Him, He will never let you down either. God is the longest lasting friend I have ever had in my life. He was there for me before I was born and He will be there for me after I leave this Earth. God is the best listener also. I can talk to God anywhere at anytime. Every time I want to talk to Him or ask Him a question, He is there for me. Most of my other friends are at least a phone call away, but not God. He has always been there in time of need, even though sometimes I feel like He is not. Even when I do something wrong, He is there to forgive me and set me straight.
As mentioned earlier, I practically grew up in church. I went there every Sunday and every Wednesday. The concept of who God was, however, never became a reality to me until I was about 13. I remember being at a church camp thinking I had been living exactly how A Christian was supposed to live. While at the camp, God’s presence, or the Holy Spirit, convicted my heart. I really felt the presence of God that night and from that moment forward I believe Jesus had ...
Just a few simple words can always change your perspective on so many different things. From that point on, I found God in most of my day-to-day activities. I talk to Him like a close personal friend, I confide in Him in my times of need and thank Him for all the wonderful things He has blessed me with, including just life itself. He showed me how to live life to the fullest, or “grab life by the horns” and “live for the now, for today. Not for tomorrow.”
Since as long as i can remember, my parents have taught me to believe in "God", the father of Jesus Christ, the "one" who created the world we live in today. As I got older and a little more wiser I started to question this invisible figure. Who is he? How do I know that he can perform miracles? Does he forgive you of your sins? Just as I started to find out if Santa Clause was really a figment of my imagination, I wanted to know the same about God, I wanted to know the truth.. And soon i learned the truth.
But I want us to notice how Paul tells us that our faith may become effective. This isn’t something that happens over night. It’s not something that comes into the life of every believer once they place their faith in Christ for salvation and are baptized.