Mere Religion to True Faith

I praise God for His gift of eternal life and am humbled by the thought that He chose to save me. Because of this gift, I have the confidence and confidence to trust in His plans. Serving Him and not myself also gives me a real sense of fulfillment that transcends all earthly joys and is borne from true faith in Him that goes beyond mere religion.

I grew up in a "Christian" family. My parents were church-goers who never missed a service and active attendees of the local Baptist church we used to attend. When you grow up in such a kind of family, you have a tendency to be religious, fooling yourself that your genuinely saved because you uttered the words to "some" prayer. It took me 17 years of fooling myself into believing I was a genuine Christian because of all church ministries I was involved in and how much concern I had for others, how many times I said "Amen" to the preaching, yet not having the full assurance of what would happen when I suddenly died. I was already even baptized and part of the formal membership roster. It also took the Lord 17 faithful years and immeasurable abundant grace to pursue me. In Sept. 2008 in my desk at a Christian school, He shed the scales off my eyes and showed me what a hypocritical life of defiled religion I had been living. I asked my teacher to share the Gospel to me again, and really listened for the first time. Praise God! He took a hold of me!

God gave me genuine inner peace that day! I've recently been asked if I believed in such a thing as luck and what I do to avoid bad luck. With all confidence, I said there is no such thing and further said that if I plan things and do things to the best of my abilities, and yet "misfortune" falls on me, then I rest in the fact that that is what was planned for me. I say that with a non-flippant attitude as well because I fear the possible pain I might have to go through should God choose to make me go through it, but I rest in the defining faithful abundant love from my Father's heart Who knows me and cares for me more than anyone ever could. As for religiosity, He is my reason for service and not myself. I am humbled that He should call me to serve Him and use the gifts He has graciously bestowed that He may work His goodness in me as I minister to others as well. What I do now is no longer for show or man's approval.