Choosing Christ: My spiritual journey (Unfiltered) ... Part one

" You were not kidding when you said this path is narrow; choosing to follow you is not easy but what keeps me going is knowing it will all be so worth it in the end" (me).

When I was a little girl I remember being at church all the time because my mom was on the church choir. She would go to choir practice multiple times throughout the week or weekend and would always take me with her. We would go to church twice in one day on Sundays for morning and evening services; we practically lived there, church was our life and it was all I knew. 

    Although I grew up in the church and had a church family, I felt like a black sheep. I knew about God and I would see people being filled with the holy spirit and baptized but I always felt like I was a spectator looking in from the outside. I went to church because I had to and when I did I never really paid much attention to the preaching but at the end of every service the bishop would say something like, "if your not saved you better baptize before God comes back and it's too late," which would always scare me but it still never pushed me to take that step yet. I wanted it to be my decision and not because I was scared or pressured into being baptized. For this reason, I would call myself at that time a "Christian by association" and I feel that a lot of people, especially young people, who grew up with a Christian background but have not actually made the choice themselves to follow Christ are this. We all have to go on our own spiritual journey at one point in our lives and really discover and encounter God deeper than what people just tell us. 

"If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourself today whom you will serve" (Joshua 24:15). 

    As life is full of choices, we have to make the important one of how and who we live our lives for. I finally decided one Sunday to bravely walk up to the front of the church to say that I wanted to give my life to God and be baptized. We had special days where the church gathered all those who wanted to be baptized to tell the congregation why they wanted to do it and then bishop would dip their whole body in a tub of water to baptize them. When they rose up from the water rejoicing music would play and people would welcome the new person into the kingdom of God. I remember being so nervous and in my speech I told everyone that I felt like I was sleep walking through life and wanted to feel more alive inside and give my life to Christ. When I got dipped into that water and came back up I felt different like I was born-again, which is what baptizement represents, all my past sins and self being washed away and having a fresh start at life but this time with the awareness that God is directing it. I felt a kind of peace and joy after making that decision but it never really hit me until after that being baptized does not mean your cured magically from all your sins and automatically are a better person, you have to work at it. This reality really hit me when I was heading off to university, which was a whole different set of temptations. 

It was one thing to choose to believe and accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, which I think is the easy part but it was another thing to start being a follower of Christ and learning what that truly requires and boy let me tell you it is hard but that is why were not suppose to walk this path alone but with Christ by our side, right?

Part two coming soon :)