Who made you belive in you religion?

Question

What's your opinion?

Answer 1

This is a very good and pertinent question! Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share with you my story!

I think that God made me believe in Him. When I was a younger man, I did not believe in Him.

I changed my mind because the Pagans and Hippies and followers of Don Juan I hung out with were all a bunch of drug addicts like me. We had nothing except a hatred and disdain for anything that suggested that we were nothing but a bunch of wastrels feeding our bodily passions selfishly without discipline or direction. I could plainly see that we were all empty shells, just organisms taking up space, food, water and oxygen. That disturbed me.

Then one day just before Thanksgiving in 1978, I was sitting at home. A knock came at my door. My friend (I thought) was there with some tart he picked up off the street to see if I had some marijuana for us to smoke. I had none and told him so. He promptly leapt to his feet and said, "See ya later!" He and the little street walker left to search for someone who had marijuana.

I sat there stunned and saddened. These were my friends I thought. I was always a friend to him and people like him as long as I had beer in the fridge and dope in my little box. If I had none of those things, I was not their friend. I went for a walk in a feedlot. I was walking along and thinking how I wished I were dead because my life was devoid of meaning beyond satisfying bodily appetites. I was not happy when I was not drunk, stoned or masturbating with pornography or having illicit sex with some other addict like me who was as hollow and empty inside as I was. I walked along and thought of retrieving my gun and blowing my head off to end the empty existence I had.

In an instant, I just collapsed to the ground having almost no will to live, certainly no will to go on living as I had been for many years. I was in the most exquisite agony imaginable. I think I was crying and rolling on the ground in the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth that condemned devils in hell experience when they know that they are forever shut out from any chance for happiness. That is exactly how I felt. Hollow. Empty. In hell.

Somehow, a little spark that had lain dormant within me for many years was retrieved out from under the ashes of my pitiful, hedonistic existence, a spark of remembrance of my little Bible, my little songs I had learned when I was little; Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.

Heavenly Father?
Are you really there?
Do you hear and answer every childs prayer?
Some say Heaven is far away.
But I feel it close around me as I pray!
Heavenly Father, I remember now!
Something that Jesus told disciples long ago!
Suffer the children to come to me.
Father? In prayer I'm coming now to Thee!

Pray, He is there!
Speak!
He is listening!
You are His child!
His love now surrounds you!
He hears your prayers!
He loves the children!
For such is the Kingdom,
The Kingdom of Heaven!

I prayed in the most desparate way I had ever prayed, if, in fact, I had ever prayed at all. This time I was praying for my life. I had to know if there was a God, because I knew there was no happiness in all the garbage the hippies and pagans were feeding me. They spoke of love and peace and brotherhood. But the brand of peace, love and brotherhood they preached came from a street dealer and the sacrament was in bong hits and orgasms. They were things that were for sale if you had the money to buy them or the wits to steal them or to bum them off of those who had purchased or stolen them. I refused to live that way any longer because each sacrament of that sort brought me the exact opposite effect, they made me more and more miserable. I was praying for God to rescue me if there were a God at all. I screamed at Him to reveal Himself to me in an unmistakable way because I was about 100 yards away from my .300 Savage rifle and if life were as I had lived it, without hope, without peace, without love, then I had had enough of it and I was going to blow my miserable brain out of my miserable head and disappear out of existence, out of conscienceness.

I screamed at Him and told Him that if He did exist, He had better tell me so now, before I blew my head off.

You know the rest of the story.

He did answer my prayer. He did speak Peace to my soul. My despair was lifted and I went in to the phone and called my Mormon friend and told him to come tell me what to do to have the Peace and Happiness he had.

Ever since that November day in 1978, I have had the perfect assurance that He lives and that He cares about me! My life has not been perfect, I have not been perfect, but bit by bit, I have become a better man and have increased in faith and have known His perfect love!

I feel so bad for those who do not have the faith and knowledge I have.

I pray for them.

I believe in my religion because my Father in Heaven revealed it to me when I asked Him to reveal it to me.

In James we read; (paraphrased) "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not."

That is my opinion!

Thank you for listening!

God Bless You!

Answer 2

No one is capable of making another believe anything. Our lives, however, can be of influence to others in the way we believe & live our lives. Being raised in a fine christian home, bible reading was common place. I grew to have a love for the prophesies of the holy scriptures, and have sought to live my life according to the precepts and the moral laws written there in. I've spent a life time searching for deeper spritual truths, and have been privileged to have been called into the HOUSE OF YAHWEH, located in Abilene, TX., and led by our Pastor & Overseer Yisrayl Hawkins. This is the only HOUSE were the LAWS OF YAHWEH are being taught & followed; where the BOOK OF YAHWEH is in perfect harmony from the first page to the last. I can finally feel as part of something for real in that we actually follow the LAWS OF YAHWEH, & not just giving lip service of what we're supposed to believe. Questions? Ask at Abel, 325-670-9494, & tghat will settle the matter!!!!!

Answer 3

LOL no-one "made" me believe....

I haven't much memory of my pre-kindergarten years, but, it was during that time that I sought out God on my own because my family considered me "too young" to go to church or to understand anything even if I went.

I know I had asked God things based on things I had overheard on the radio, but, that's about it.

I have always been somewhat of a rebel, lol, I don't accept things simply because someone in authority or someone I knew said it to me....I was often naive, but gullible and naive are 2 different things, lol....and I was an analizer even as a child....never satisfied, always having to ask and learn more and more and more, lol...especially when someone told me I couldn't!

LOL...my children and grandchildren all seem to display some of the same traits! Oh well, now I know what my family went through with me! LOLOLOL :)

As I grew up, I saw that the Bible said there was more than what the average person practiced, and, I wanted it ALL, simply because so many others did not! :)

Answer 4

No, however for those who die after which upward push three days later, I feel you could then acquire a few credibility, and fans. Christianity's credibility lies within the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, NOT faith. No "faith" has any credibility. This is what such a lot humans fail to recognize. People create religions at all times. The catholic church and islamists have performed it higher and bigger than any one else, and extra humans decide upon to comply with the ones "religions" extra so than any others, but neither, surely has any credibility whatever.

Answer 5

My mother introduced me to religion, but I've been exposed to many. I've always been given free choice over my religion. I wrote down everything I felt, and did research. I came across a religion that fit almost all my personal beliefs. So it was a mixture of my mother and myself.

Answer 6

The Holy Spirit.

Answer 7

I did. I know how to read. When I read one book that was full of nothing but rape and murder all in the name of one god. I said I can not follow anything that treats its people so shamefully. Who has laws in it such as the law of rape.

Laws of Rape (Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)



If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.



What kind of lunatic would make a rape victim marry her attacker? Answer: God

Death to the Rape Victim (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB)



If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.


David's Punishment - Polygamy, Rape, Baby Killing, and God's "Forgiveness" (2 Samuel 12:11-14 NAB)



Thus says the Lord: 'I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives [plural] while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.'

Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." Nathan answered David: "The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die. But since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you must surely die." [The child dies seven days later.]

Answer 8

No one made me believe in God. I was raised in a non-religious household, and became a Christian when I was 20 on my own accord.

Answer 9

All religions hold truths in my beliefs...even the fact that there may very well be nothing!!

And, since I've realized there is NO ABSOLUTE TRUTH in any religious/spiritual path, I've been very, very, happy...and very, very, comfortable with my connection to the Divine, and the natural world.

Answer 10

The Holy Spirit....

Ephesians 2:8,9
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God not because of works, lest any man should boast.

Answer 11

I always felt that when I went to church it was fake. Even when I was young. When I found paganism, I knew then what I was missing. I believe that I was born a witch.