Christian

I am reading the book of Revelations in my quiet time and yesterday I had a very long talk with someone about religion and different beliefs and how can so many people go from one end of the spectrum to the other and not stop to question what they believe or why. I am not an impending doom kind of person although I see moral decline all around me I also believe when it gets closer to the end there is going to be some kind of superficial, fugacious accepted behavior. I have never really considered myself to be a history buff even though I understand the importance of studying it and learning from it so today I am considering the importance of church history. I am on this personal mission to examine myself and to make since of the beliefs and habits I practice without thinking about them. There are so many different religions in this world and each one of those has so many branches that even if you say you follow one religion it could possibly be way different than all the other people practicing that same thing. I have to say right here that my definition of religion is: man’s attempt to appease or gain favor with a god or higher power or whatever you call it. I say all this not to judge others or to say I am right and you are wrong but because of this urgency God has put on my heart. If I say nothing else of value I beg you to examine what you believe and why you believe it don’t leave the results of your life up to family traditions and taught behaviors. The Bible says: “the heart of man is deceitfully wicked”, “there is none righteous, no not one”, “there is none that seeks after God”, I can say that for the majority of my life all of those were true of me. I am a Christian, a follower of Christ, not because of anything I did but because He loved me enough to do it for me. It does not matter how much I dress up the outside, how sweetly I can string words together, if I have the right friends, go to the right places, if I convince enough people I am right, if I pay enough money, if I suffer enough things, if I say enough memory verses, this list could literally go on for days but the truth is He sees my heart, my intentions behind my actions, my thoughts behind my words, He knows me and still loves me. How could I not love Him back? I do not claim to know all things or that I even have everything right but I cannot deny the change.  There is freedom in knowing it is not up to me to change the outcome! “It is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment” the choice of my beliefs are my own, nobody is going to stand in my place on that day and this is the ultimate reason for my journey.