It's always puzzled me when people I know abandoned their faith.
I became a Christian when I was nine years old, after finding a pocket-sized King James Bible with the Psalms, Proverbs and New Testament when I was rummaging through junk in an old bureau drawer at my maternal grandmother’s house one summer. I asked her if I could have it, and she said that I could.
I began reading it while lying across my uncle’s former bedroom starting with the Psalms. But I couldn’t make heads or tails of what it was saying, so I skipped ahead to Proverbs, which I was able to comprehend. It was while I was reading the Gospel of Matthew that I became a Christian, being impressed by the fulfillment of so many Old Testament prophesies, which led me to conclude that what I was reading was true. (I finished reading the rest of the New Testament before the summer was over.)
No one in my immediate family was a Christian, so I did not start attending church until some Jehovah’s Witnesses came to our door when I was in the eighth grade. I was impressed by the fact that they did not seem to be hypocrites like most of the people I knew who attended other churches appeared to be. But having already read the New Testament for myself (probably twice by then) it wasn’t long before I could plainly see that the JW’s were not legit.
The first time I began to doubt was shortly after that, during the summer following eighth grade, when a lot of things in my life were not as I would have chosen. However, I opted to reread the Bible at that time in that I still respected it as a book of wisdom, looking to if for some reason to continue enduring life.
It led me to consider something my middle school art teacher did that made me feel significant, and to reflect on what a tragedy it would be if I could do the same for someone else, but was not there for them because I opted out of this life, with the result being their opting out of life as well. I reasoned that if I could do for even one other person what my art teacher did for me, then my life would have been worth living, regardless of what I had to endure.
So, having given up on God, I decided to rely on myself, and by (actually during) my senior year in high school, I had become band concert master, won a few art awards, made the varsity basketball team, secured the lead role in a school play, and appeared in my senior yearbook a total of twenty-one times. It was at that moment that I realized that though I had turned my back on God, God never turned His back on me.
The Bible does not actually say that God helps those who help themselves. But I realized that this is true, nonetheless. It was a mistake for me to expect God to do
everything! It was on
me to take the first steps (in a manner of speaking, though God actually took the first step when He drew me to Himself).
Thinking about it now, I see examples of this throughout Scripture, such as the four men with the paralytic breaking through the roof, the woman with the discharge of blood pushing her way through the crowd, the blind beggar crying out all the more when everyone told him to be quiet, etc.
I never doubted God again after that. But it was not until a few years later that I finally experienced the presence of God. For one thing, it was not until I was in my twenties that I finally heard of a church that believed what was written in Scripture like I did, that “these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
And once I started attending, it was not until I was filled with the Holy Spirit (and began speaking in tongues) that I started to develop a personal relationship with God. It was then that “praying without ceasing” became automatic rather than something I would consciously attempt—unsuccessfully.
Still, it was a few more years after that, after leaving this first church, that I said to myself, “You’ve done everything a believer is supposed to do, except that you’ve never been baptized. You need to go to a church to get baptized!”
It was after carrying out this final act of obedience that everything opened up for me, that the Old Testament came to life for the first time and no longer put me to sleep, or made God seem like a monster to me, and I was finally able to read the Bible all the way through, from Genesis through Leviticus, Kings, Chronicles, Song of Solomon (what a shock!) to Revelation.
It was then that I saw clearly that it was not about what God could do for me, but about what I could no in His service. That when I worshiped Him, it was
me who was blessed. When I helped others,
I was the one who was healed, etc. And from there, studying science only deepened my faith in God. When I saw that no matter how infinitesimally tiny scientists peer into the universe, they always find something more, it helped me realize all the more that God is a God of infinite detail—so that there was no question in my mind that He is absolutely aware of every single facet of my life. That I am never alone and He is always with me.
It’s not about obedience per se—it’s about a relationship. Once the relationship is established, the obedience follows naturally.
