Because my mom told me.....

First let me take a minute to properly introduce myself. My name is Debbie. I am a Christian – a proud Christian who loves her Heavenly Father and is grateful to Jesus for making it possible for me to have direct access to God. I have decided to spend my life doing what I can to be a witness for God by following the examples of Jesus. I am not always perfect in that pursuit therefore is grateful for grace, but since quitting is not part of my vocabulary, no matter what situation I face….I win.

I was not raised as a Christian – in fact I wasn’t even raised with any religion at all. It wasn’t until I was living in Hawaii at the age of 21, stuck in a bad marriage, that I realized even though I was living in ‘paradise’ and had a beautiful daughter, my life was completely empty. Off in search of something real – I attended a local denominational church. What a disappointment. As I sat in this church looking at some of the same people I was sure I saw in the bar the night before, all dressed up, stiff necked portraying a God that was boring, impersonal and hard to understand, I realized, no, church wasn’t my answer.

Then, one day, a friend invited me out to a day of shopping, well, if I came to her church with her first. Sneaky, but it worked. I entered this church and noticed that some members were Asian, some were black, some Samoan, some white. Some were wearing suits, some had shorts and dread locks. Some families and some single parents. And each one of them seemed to love this Jesus, whom I didn’t know, and were even having fun worshipping God, who I may add, seemed very interested in their lives. THIS made sense to me. The same God who I later discovered created all the beauty and variety that I saw in nature, was the same God that created all the variety that I see in people. I quickly decided to give my life to this very interesting, loving, capable God and have never gone back on that decision.

God has truly blessed my life. He gave me a new life, a new marriage, and 4 more beautiful children that I have the joy of homeschooling. Now, my eldest daughter & son in law have even blessed me with 2 beautiful granddaughters. I am a blessed lady, indeed. Yes, I suppose I am the ‘seasoned’ one of this blog, for now, but since I plan to live to 120 – I am not even middle aged yet, so watch the ‘old’ jokes. LOL!

Now that you know just a little (and I do mean a little) about me – it brings me to my post ‘question’ for the month. As I stated earlier, I educate my 4 remaining children at home. I choose their curriculum carefully and, of course, include teachings about God and Jesus along with their other studies. Recently I was thinking, I have always tried to challenge my children in critical thinking and try to give them as much opportunity to make many life choices on their own, with my guidance and age appropriate, naturally. But here is my thought; do my children follow God solely because I have indoctrinated my beliefs into them or is it because they truly love the Lord and have come to that conclusion on their own? I mean, my plan is that they will choose to give their lives over to God and serve Him with everything that is in them, make no mistake on that, but my questions is do we, as a society, believe what we do because we had a life changing experience? Or is it possible that someone, even a relative, has indoctrinated us? How about you? Did your parents raise you to believe what they believe, or someone else? How do we know, that we know, that what we believe is from our own discoveries and not just something that was planted by someone else? Hmmmm??