Ending up in World Religions

One of the courses I am taking this trimester at Franklin University is on World Religions during which "we are invited to experiment with a spiritual method with which you are not already familiar, to incorporate it into your daily life, and to reflect on its effect."

This blog will be a daily look into my prayer life and devotional Scripture reading. I try to read God's Word daily and I am at a place where I am praying multiple times per day. This is much improved to where I was a year or so ago. So let's start out this journey with blog post number one which I will highlight my past and how I came to this course. I will also try to make additional posts to reflect on the thoughts, prayers, and readings of the day.

Prior to Franklin

...or as I like to call it "The Past"

I did not grow up in the church. My parents got divorced when I was about 6 years old, and this shifted how I viewed the world as well as how I was raised. I lived with my mom during the week and saw my dad every other weekend. I was not raised in a religious home, but this does not mean that I was without moral values. My mom was of the opinion that you need to be nice people and kindness was revered in our home. This is similar to the belief in karma, but it wasn't practiced as such.

I went through a period early on where I did a lot of soul searching because God was tugging on my heart, but I didn't know it was God at the time. So I used the internet to try and find out where I wanted to camp, spiritually speaking. Then one day in a class at high school I got a tap on the should from a guy who would end up later baptizing me into faith in Jesus Christ.

Things started out great and I was reading my Bible a lot as I was held accountable and shown the ropes by the other people my age who I hung out with in our youth group. I learned more about the the Christian faith and was doing alright until I went into the military. I was away from my family and friends both physically and spiritually and I really struggled with both. I really did not do well when I was on my own, and part of that was due in fact that I didn't find a new youth group and my Bible reading dropped dramatically.

Current

I got out of the military and met my wife who was attending the same church I was in high school only at different times out our lives - it only made sense that we go back there together. We starting going back to church and I eventually came back to reading God's Word more and more. He pulled me out of my previous behaviors by His Grace and has set me on the straight and narrow path.

1 Peter 5:7 "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you."