Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? -John 11:25-26 (KJV)
Growing up without a spiritual foundation makes the world a very depressing place to live in, with no footing below or greater aims and assurances above. Despite growing up with Buddhist parents, they weren’t really practicing, so I grew up in a godless household.
Thankfully, my mother had gone to school in the 1960s with a classmate whose parents, twenty years later, occasionally took me and my siblings to Sunday school at their Presbyterian church. There, a tiny seed was planted in my heart that would take decades to grow and break the surface.
In high school, I remember taking a philosophy class, which mostly just confused me even more about what was going on in the world. The writings of Plato described students of his teacher, Socrates, and all the students who’d dialogue with him to better understand reality. But those discussions mostly made things murkier for me. (It wasn’t till 2015 that I could connect the parallel between Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave and true believers.)
In the late 1990s, I remember shopping around for a world view. Judaism? Islam? Christianity? Zoroastrianism? Buddhism? Hinduism? I ended up choosing Christianity at the time, but it didn’t stick, because I understood it intelligently, but not in my heart.
It wasn’t till 2013, at the age of 40, that God decided it was time for me to wake up…that the seed that was planted long ago when I was a child, was ready to sprout. That it was time to use me for His will and His plans, which are still too grand and complex for me to understand right now. What I do know is that He calls me, just as He does each of His children, to go out and sing His praises to the world, and to continue our sanctification process toward Christlikeness with every passing moment.
One thing I can say that He has told me in my heart is to continue to learn about people of other faiths–and even those with none at all–to learn how to connect with them. It is then that we can expose them to God’s truth, and show them that they, too, can stop searching, because the one way, truth, and life has been revealed to them. All they need to do is choose to accept it.
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