It's True. I Love Forums

Guilty! I love going into forums and debating with others about random topics. I love hearing others perspectives on different matters and I enjoy making my point known. Going into a forum hard-headed can easily lead to destruction. I keep an open mind and sometimes what I believe completely changes. Even when I go into forums about religion. If somebody makes fun of my religion, I do not argue with them saying, "You're wrong" or "That is not true at all." No. I listen to their arguments, let them know that I understand where they are coming from and kindly tell them why I believe what I do, then if the other person is mature enough, we end up having a healthy debate, both of us learning a little bit more about what others believe. It is a lot of fun and educational as well :) I apologize if it sounds a bit choppy. I didn't edit it before posting:

I was in a forum today and one of the topics was, "To Christians: Why are YOU a Christian." Intrigued, I entered into this conversation and realized that people were posting why they did or did not believe, then the author of this forum would ask them questions about their answers. I found this to be interesting so I decided to post my "life story" and see what questions she would ask me. I just posted it, so she has not responded yet, but as I was writing, I thought to myself. Hmmm.. My blog readers haven't gotten the chance to hear my story, so here it is, exactly what I wrote in the forum. A very condensed version of my story. If you want to hear it all, feel free to comment this post with whatever questions you might have and I will be more than happy to answer you :)


"I can tell you why I am a Christian.

It is true that I grew up in a Christian family and I've held on to the title of "Christian" because of what I grew up knowing. I did not know the true meaning until the end of 2008.

My whole life, I learned that God was Father of all, loving, caring, and longing for a relationship with all of his people, weather they believed in him or not. All of this, I believed in, but I did not know what it meant to "be in a relationship" with Him. I treated Him as more of an aquaintance than my dearest friend. I would pray, but my heart would not be in it. Going to church bored me. I couldn't stand reading my bible, because I had trouble understanding what God was trying to say by doing the things that He did and it seemed like more of a hassle than a joy.

So for my entire life, when people asked, I would tell them that I was a Christian, which is not entirely false. I believed that God sent His one and only son down to Earth to die for our sins and that His love was unfailing, but I never attempted to wrap my head around what I thought was the highest form of truth. I was very ignorant to my own faith.

Then I entered the world of College in August of 2008. Warner Pacific College to be exact. What I've learned here and am continuing to learn has turned my world upside down! Through his faithful followers here, I have been able to get a glimpse into the life of a Christian who actually had a relationship with God. Who talked to him casually multiple times in a day, absolutely loved opening up their bibles to try and better understand the great and unfailing love of our God, who couldn't wait to get up early Sunday morning to go to church, and who could tell me "I will pray for you," and I knew that they were being completely sincere in what they were saying.

After meeting and getting to know these wonderful people, I started to feel a great longing to have what they had with our Almighty God. So I started reading my bible more often (which started out as a struggle, because I still found it a bit dull), I made it a priority to pray every morning and night for everything that I could think to pray of, I started making prayer lists and when I would hear that a friend was struggling, I would put them on my list and make sure to pray about them at least once a day, I bought a new devotional book (a great help. I learned a lot through them), and I tried to avoid all of the temptations that would make me falter in the past such as swearing and other bad habits that I picked up from high school and it's great peer pressures.

I wish I could say that the first month went smoothly, but that would be a lie. It was hard, but I could feel a change happening inside me. A change that at the time seemed small, but by Christmas it had grown a substantial amount. I began to actually trust in God and believe that He was hearing all that I was praying for and He began to bless me with a completely new outlook on life. I began to trust again, which has always been hard for me to do, but most of all, I was starting to feel a genuine desire to be closer to my God and experience for the first time in my life what the feeling of love felt like.

Since then, I have been completely changed. I feel that God is the greatest part of my life and I can feel His love. It gives me great joy to know, without a doubt that my God loves me more than I could ever imagine and I know that it gives him joy to know that I know that I could never love someone as much as I love Him. I have given up a lot in these past two years so that I could grow closer to my God. I don't date anymore, because I want to spend more time thinking of my God and not some guy. When God shows me that I am ready to go out and find someone I am meant to spend the rest of my life with, He will let me know. No matter what people have and without a doubt will continue to tell me, I fully trust that He will let me know when I am ready to start looking for my "other half." I've also given up bad habits that I've struggled with most of my life. Some that I would not rather share with complete strangers, but things that I have lifted up to God and He has almost completely taken those temptations away. Sure, I still fall back into old ways, but every time I do something that is not pleasing to God, I cry for his forgiveness and try to stay away from what keeps me from honoring Him. My temptations have been lessened a great deal and I know that someday they will be completely gone and I am looking forward to that day!

Now that I know what a true relationship with God feels like, I am positive that I will trust in Him for the rest of my life, no matter how bad life may get. With God, I will never hit rock bottom. I can and will come close, but if I trust in my God, he will catch me before I fall too far. The bible tells me that God will never make me face trials that I am not strong enough to face. That doesn't mean that it will be easy and I know that. He's shown me that a few times now, but like I said earlier, He will NOT let me fall!"