Now,
"correctly" starting off this blog post series depicting my journey away
from Christianity and now my journey back into the faith and what I've
learned on this road is too high a task for me, because there is no
"correct" way to start things off but to jump in.. :)
So I will flesh things out eventually here with context, trust me! But
for now, I'll start the series off and jump in where I am currently with
two of my latest journal entries from my private journal that I'm using
specifically for this new time in my life:
---Thursday, November 1st, 2012:
Well, these last 15 days have been very significant for me in terms
of my moving back towards God, and into what issues I'm moving deeper
into...
It hasn't been that difficult at all to getting back into talking to
God. If fact, I have really welcomed it with great warmth, like getting
to talk again with an old, good friend. More on this later..
---Thursday, November 8th, 2012:
Wow, it's been a week already. And it's not like I've been having fun and so time has been flying. Strange, hmmm.
Anyways, I feel I'm on the verge of getting closer to God in addition
to my talking to Him and praying for people.. I feel that God has been
trying to remind me of His love for me through my relationship with Ivonne.. What a great gift from
God she has been! It is hard to describe how precious she is to me in
all the little ways she is my Ivonne and in how I react to these
things that she does. It makes me want her to be happy in every
possible way. And she's a really, really good-hearted person and a
sincere Christian, and she makes here relationship with God the biggest
influence in her decisions on things, more important than anyone's
advice to her..
It is Ivonne in these ways, more than most things in my life, who is causing
me to move towards God and reconsider things about God. For instance, it's also
showing me and reminding me how much more of a
"full community" is the Timberline Baptist church that Ivonne and I
attend; how much more it is a place for people & relationships than
any secular alternative, like CFI Portland, that I know of.
Now, there's always room for improvement, but I think it takes my
situation: not attending church for about 6 years, then really trying to
create a secular alternative to it for a good 3 years, then being in
limbo with ones secular "community" due to one's disappointment with it
for about a year and a half, which was my way of slowly walking out of
that "community" and the start of my, in early 2012, beginning to attend
church (Imago Dei Community) again...
I think it took this long process to really put into perspective for
me how valuable and irreplaceable church is and how superior to any
perspective that I've tried and practiced, (which I admit I haven't
tried a lot of things), how superior is the Christian worldview and
specifically: a personal relationship with Christ...
So, Ivonne and my increasing church experiences are indeed changing, steadily, the course of my life and worldview in 2012...
"Lord, may I not underestimate the value of what I am experiencing here."
So, those were my most current journal entries. They're a great
introduction into this 10 part series and I look forward to writing part 1
in the very near future.. So let it be.., so let it begin!
