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People find God in many ways. For some, their relationship with God is through their family. If you were raised by parents who had a great relationship with each other and with God, you are blessed in a very special way. That is the way God wants families to be. The Bible tells of people who had great faith because of their parents' faith. The book of James was written by James, the son of Joseph and Mary, and therefore the physical brother of Jesus. In writing to Timothy, Paul said, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also” (2 Timothy 1:5).
Many of us were not blessed with having been raised by godly parents who lived their faith and raised us with the kind of love God wants us to have. Another way that some find God is through suffering and tragedies in life. When I was in the military, there was a saying in our infantry that “there are no atheists in foxholes.” A serious illness, a horrible accident, or a debilitating disease can bring a person to God.
My personal path to faith in God did not involve any of these, and most people today have not come to faith in God through any of these paths. Like many people, I was raised by parents who did not believe in God and did not do anything that would encourage me to have faith. My parents did more than not provide a basis for faith; they were active in denigrating people who believe in God. My parents were not evil people, and they were very successful in the academic world. On Sunday, our family would go to the swimming pool at Brown County State Park in southern Indiana because there were fewer people there than on other days. They told me that Christians were hypocrites and the cause of racism, immorality, ignorance, and intolerance. That is the picture the media presents of Christians today, which is why when people are asked about their religious affiliation, over 40% of people in America say “none.”
So how does a person like me come to believe in God? The answer does not come from organized religion. Every denomination that I had contact with as an unbelieving young person had no answer for my lack of faith. Churches were social clubs and provided no basis for belief in God. As a college student at Indiana University, I saw kids from conservative Christian churches go morally wild when their parents left them at the university. My parents allowed me to join a fraternity, and I lived in a dormitory for two years, where I saw firsthand the results of a lack of moral guidance.
The campus life I saw and the distance that grew between my parents and me, combined with my military experience, led me into a different world. Military field camps in Grayling, Michigan, and Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, put me in a natural world far different from the college life I had known.
Spending several summers in a family camp on Lake Michigamme in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I saw nature at its best. I spent many hours in a boat seeing a creation that was far too complex and far too beautiful to be explained as the product of accidental evolution. I also saw the result of faith in God in the lives of people who were serious about knowing why they existed. The recent writings of atheists about why there is something instead of nothing are an admission that atheism can give no reason for existence.
I was blessed to have companions who had a reason for living and believed that life in this world is only part of human existence. These intelligent and well-educated people had something I wanted. They had a relationship with the God who created the natural world I had come to know well. I had found God through his creation. I found him, first through the natural world he had created and then through people who had found his plan for successful living.
My relationship with Jesus Christ has given me the power to overcome personal challenges and pain. It has also guided me to a ministry that has allowed me to associate with people who have blessed my life.
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Cover: © Marmoset/Bigstock.com
© Marmoset/Bigstock.com
Scripture links/references are from BibleGateway.com. Unhighlighted scriptures can be looked up at their website.