This I Believe

I was brought up in a very religious family. My father is a preacher. My Mother, Aunts, Uncle's, Cousin's and Grandparent's all believe and participate in our religion. The religion I was brought up in is called Pentecostal Evangel. I was going to church from the time I could walk until about age thirteen. My teenage years were tough growing up without a Father around that time. My parents got divorced when I was seven years old. I still continued to go to church until I reached thirteen. I remember my Grandparents coming to take me and my siblings every Sunday after my parents divorced. I have very fond memories of going to church when I was young. I would go to Sunday school and listen to a very colorful bible story, sing songs, color, and just have a lot of fun. When I was young I did not really understand our religion, to me it was just a fun thing for a kid to do and so as I grew up it became more of something people do out of habit, a repetitive thing and so at the age of thirteen I decided not to go anymore. I got married young and had children and had not gone to church in some time on and off from the age of thirteen and up. I still believed in God but just not the way the churches had taught me.

Now at the age of forty one I am much wiser and fully mature to understand it more then when I was young. I do believe in God because of a personal experience I have had, but not because of my upbringing.   I believe in God in a different way then my family believes because of research I have done on my own.  I started to research other religions such as, Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism. What I found interesting was that in some areas they were almost all the same in their beliefs and in other areas they were not. For instance all these religions including the one I believe in all believe in one God one higher being over all creation.  Another interesting fact is that the God we all believe in died on the same date, I personally found this quite interesting! Another fact is that all these religions believe that the world will come to an end. These are just some of the things I learned from researching. This gave me a new outlook on my beliefs.