I Believe in Faith, Grace, and Love

I believe that “religion” is not as important as faith in God, the grace that He gives us, and loving your neighbor. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and in my church, religion meant everything. People cared about what people wore on Sunday mornings, whether or not they had tattoos and piercings, which service they attended, and many other things that should not matter to Godly people. Many of the leaders in my church were judgmental and harsh on those who did not believe the same exact things they did. Fortunately, my parents made sure that I knew that the matters these men saw as important were irrelevant. However, these matters are eventually what caused the hardest four years of my life. These men and their beliefs are what led to the break-up of the church I knew as home.

In seventh grade, my world was rocked. My pastor resigned from the church due to threats made on him by “Godly” men of the church, my youth pastors who I saw as family resigned and moved to new churches, and my family left the church I had called home for eight years. For almost four years I had no church to call home. My faith in God had been shaken and I had no idea if I could trust Him anymore. Then, once I stopped looking, I finally found my new home church. I visited my friend’s church one evening and I immediately knew that God had led me there. Everything I once knew had been restored and I found better Godly friends than I had before. I knew that this was God’s way of showing me that everything is in His hands and that we can always trust Him to pull us through tough situations.

My junior year, my faith in God became a solid rock. Because of everything I went through as a child in my old church I now know that religion is not as important as faith, grace, and love. Religion is a very loose word; to me, this means the denomination a person claims they are. In my opinion, religion is only a label. Faith in God and that He will provide what we need and believing that we are saved by God’s grace and not good works determines a Christian from a non-Christian, not their religion or label. And finally, loving your neighbor as yourself, as stated in Mark 12:31, is the best method of ministry a Christian has towards a non-Christian.

I finally have the strongest faith I have ever had. I know each day that God has a plan for me. I will continue to live a life of service to Him simply because of His love for me. I can do nothing to make Him love me any more than He already does; therefore, I will continue to love others the way that He loves me. My life will be a life led by faith, grace, and love.