Misguided My Beliefs About God

When I first started believing in God most of my faith was based on how I felt and not what I knew about God. I did not have much experience yet and I had just started reading the bible. When I entered college I was confident in my faith, and my God, and wanted to learn more about Him from the Bible. I was frustrated when I began to read the more difficult text to only find myself completely disconnected or lost, especially in the Book of Revelation. I was eventually fortunate enough to be pointed towards a book on Revelation, “The Rapture Exposed” by

When I was about 12, I started to drift away from God. I had a whole new world of temptations to face. I always just figured if I sinned all I would have to do is tell God I was sorry and ask for forgiveness. The problem was I wasn’t being sorry in my heart, I just did it because that’s what church said to do. When I was 15, I renewed my faith in Christ and I have been going from there. Mere Christianity has really helped my walk with Christ over the summer. He showed me the wrong in the daily stuff I did. I started to change my life and fix what I did

Growing up the daughter of a minister, Jesus and my faith have always been a major part of my life. When I was five years old, I accepted Jesus into my heart. Ever since then, I have seen God move in mysterious ways through my friends, family, and myself in mysterious ways. Recently, I have seen God reaching out to me through an eight year old boy from Haiti. This young boy has shown me the true meaning of God’s love for us and how God always has a plan for us.

I became a Christian in May 2005. I was blessed to grow up in a family that is highly involved in church. Prior to my conversion, I had noticed how I could not partake of communion; this led me to begin asking questions about salvation and the Gospel. I was blessed at a young age that God revealed enough basics to draw me to him. In May 2005 I realized that I was a sinner, and I could not make a pathway to God on my own; I knew that truly believing Jesus dying on the cross to take my place and rising on the third day and confessing he is Lord and that I needed to repent of my sins was the only chance to have a relationship with him. After this realization, my parents and I got in touch with our Pastor at the time – Rev. Junior Corn to schedule

I did not come to know Christ until December of 2003 at the age of 25 at First Baptist Church of Gordonsville Tennessee. As a young boy, I had a desire to know GOD, and had even made a profession of faith, but never had anyone

However, when I was seventeen, I went through a serious depression that lasted about a year and a half. During this time in my life, I was led astray and lost my hope in God. I truly hated Him for what He had put me through at that point in life and I wished that I had grown up not knowing or believing in Him. My mom sent me to multiple different counselors who tried to help me get out of the deep hole that I had put myself into. No one seemed to be helping me and the longer I was stuck in this depression, the farther away from God I became. Life without God was extremely difficult, people make it seem so fun and exciting to live against God’s will, however, coming from a person who has lived on both sides of the fence, it was awful. I never was happy, I could only focus on myself and never on other people, and when I did sin, I never felt fulfilled, just regret. It was not until I got to college that I truly found God again. I remembered why I had worshiped Him since I was four and why I needed to follow

There were times that I will doubt that God will come through for me, because I thought, he forgot about me. I was mentally abused, cheated on, have an Autistic child, scared of life, trusted no one, and I thought that was my guide of life. Not realizing all that was doing was destroying me. The more I thought about what had happened the bitter I got, and I was living it every day of my life. I will take it out on people, tell anyone off, and not trust a single soul, not realizing again that I was closing the doors that God wanted to

Everyone was talking and someone looked at my laptop and saw that I was listening to “Fill me up” by Tasha Cobbs, and the boy said “ Bruh, you so Holy.” After these four words a whole discussion started about me being Holy, which led to them talking about God in general. I had one headphone in, I took it out, so I could listen a little better. A girl said “ God is not real so you guys are just wasting you time talking about this subject.” Right this moment, I felt tears in my eyes. I held them in and said in my heart “Lord please I’ve listened now let me speak.” At that very moment I felt a strength that I have never felt in all my years in this earth. I turned to the girl and asked “ Do you have proof of what you just said?” and she said “ I’m an atheist”. I said “May God forgive you for your ignorance.” She got up and walked towards me and she started cussing me out. But all that did not matter to me until she again repeated “God is not real.” I wanted to yell and cuss too but I remembered 1 Peter 3;15. I took a deep breath and asked her “what brought you to be an atheist?” she told me that it was none of my business. Then I told her that just because you're going through a difficult time in life it doesn't mean God has forgotten about you or he gave up on you, it’s because he’s testing your faith and patience. One year for us is one hour for God. He does not give us what we want, when we want it only because he takes his time to give us not what we want but ten times better than what we had asked in the first place. She rolled her eyes at my statement. Then she said “If God was really giving us better than what we want then how come He didn’t make my brother better but only let him die. I looked at her and she wanted

When I was a sophmore, I went through a period of time where i stopped going to church as much as i had before. After a while i found myself questioning where i stood in my faith. I would always become angry quickly and shut everyone out, soon i realized that i needed to go back to where i started. That same night i fell to my knees in prayer asking the

As a child, I was never an overachiever, I wasn’t outstanding, and I wasn’t ever someone who believed I could change the world. However, it took me confronting a part of my past, a painful part of it to realize that by me speaking up, I was changing the world in more ways than I knew. I was that child that believed that I had a special gift inside of me that no one else knew or possessed. I made many mistakes, I had many personalities throughout my life but that constant belief that I had a special gift no one knew about was always there. That special gift, which only I possessed, was my faith in God.

My belief (or disbelief) in God must be understood backwards, so I shall start from the beginning. From birth, my relationship with God was set in stone. Being raised in a moderately strong, Catholic family, and going to a Catholic pre-school and middle school, I had basically inherited my love for God from my parents, and they from theirs. I was taught in school and by my family that God should be at the center of everything. That God loves us more than us mere mortals can ever imagine, and that it is our sole duty to love him the best we can in return. This was so easy for me at a young age because my relationship with God was so unspoiled. It was not hard for me to love God when He had not thrown any real hardships my way. I had been brought up believing in a perfect God. One who was “all loving”, “all knowing”, and “ever-present”, and because of this, I believed my relationship with Him to be invincible. But I was wrong. The day my parents divorced, was the day my inherently perfect relationship with God was ruined. The first traumatic experience in my life sent me on a whirlwind that caused me to doubt all the love that God had supposedly had for me; the love that I so foolishly believed in.

In the past, my faith had been challenged on numerous occasions. The very first time that my faith was challenged was when I was nine. I was diagnosed with type one diabetes (T1D). This was so hard for my family and I to cope with and to understand. I did not know anything about T1D nor all the strains that came with it. I blamed God for giving me this disease, I had asked him “Why me, what did I do to deserve this?” I spent a lot of time seeking for this answer.

My personal experience of God is based on my life experiences and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I have experienced God’s presence in my life and I have felt the Holy Spirit guiding me. I first felt God’s call as a teenager and prayed that one day I would become a pastor. But my new Christian faith was not strong enough and I soon succumbed to the desires of this world. I refused to recognize God’s call and it took decades for God’s prevenient grace to bring me back into fellowship with God’s Son. More than a decade ago I felt God’s call again but this time in a completely different way. This time my faith was strong and I had that personal relationship with God’s Son. During my Emmaus Pilgrim Walk in 2007 my teenage prayers came back to me. Calmness overcame me like none I had ever experienced and for the first time in my life I knew that God had set me aside for this purpose. I felt God’s call in a way I had never felt before and I knew that the Spirit had been preparing me all these years to become a pastor. I realize now that God saw me as I could be, not what I was at that time! God never gave up on me and I now believe that God answered my prayers so that everyone else would know that only God could have changed my heart and the direction of my life.

I have often talked of faith as a journey. Our journey consists of many turns and twists, hills and valley. This journey takes us closer and, possibly, further from a true understanding of God. One thing is certain on our journey of faith; we can never come to a full understanding of God. With God, there is always mystery. That said, the hope of our faith journey is coming to a better and deeper understanding of God. These last several years in ministry have led me to deeper experiences with and a deeper understanding of God.

My belief in God has alway been very strong. This last summer my youth group from church and I went on a service trip to Lexington, South Carolina. Through this experience I firmly believe that my actions and the help of others that I grew in my relationship with God immensely. It not only changed me emotionally, but spiritually as well. I developed more as a person, feeling that I now fit in in the world and in my normal life in Dubuque. From the 4 A.M. wake up to leave, till the 11:45 P.M. arrival time back in Dubuque, the events that happened during the trip would truly show and develop who I am.