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https://soundcloud.com/psalmstogod/how-i-found-god
Hey guys welcome back to the PSALMS to God podcast! So, last Friday I turned 11; it marked 11 years since I joined my sorority. Yeah, I know. What does that have to do with me finding God? Well, I don't know how old I am in Christ. I cannot tell you. Am I 31? No, I'm definitely not 31—I'm not even 31 in real life, what am I talking about? I’m only 30. 😂 My math is bad today guys, but I'm not 30 in Christ, that's for certain, because I didn't know anything as a child. But I've been a believer my whole life. There's never been a point in my life where I did not believe in God, where if you asked me if I believed in God I would say “No, I don't believe in God,” and there was never a point where I was quote-unquote turning away from God. There are points where I was less obedient, but that also has to do with my interpretation of scripture at the time versus my interpretation of scripture now. We won’t dive too deep into that, but in general, I've been a believer my whole life, which kind of poses the problem of how I define when I became a believer and how I identify a quote-unquote birthday or born again day that I would start counting from.
17 And it will be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all people; then your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. 18 I will even pour out my Spirit on my servants in those days, both men and women and they will prophesy. 19 I will display wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below: blood and fire and a cloud of smoke. 20 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Acts 2:17-21 CSB
But, you know, in general, most people would probably consider their date of baptism, I guess. And when you think about that, and I think about the amount of friends I have that are in sororities and fraternities that post year after year that it's their anniversary of joining their organization, I've never really seen people post like that about being baptized. I have seen people post that they were baptized—and to be honest only recently have I ever seen that—but I've never really seen people come back and be like “Yo it's been a year since I got baptized! I'm a year in Christ!” or you know, “Hey, it's been 5 years” or “10 years ago, on this day I joined the body of Christ and I'm loving it!” You know, like I never seen those same kinds of posts about joining Christ’s family, and I thought that was interesting—because I'm talking about myself as well. And the Holy Spirit kind of put a lot on my heart to speak about as I was thinking about this and realizing what was happening.
So, there are 3 things that I want to share with you guys and I think it's going to take 3 podcast episodes to do it, because sometimes I get along a little long-winded, and also because I think that they are heavy topics or topics that I want to go all the way in detail with. I want to let the Holy Spirit say what the Holy Spirit wants to say, and I also don't want you guys to have a 3 hour podcast episode! So, I'm going to break it down into 3 different episodes.
So the first episode is going to be on my testimony of how I came to be a believer and how I ended up where I am, I guess. The second episode is going to be on baptism, because believe it or not I am actually not baptized, and I want to talk about why I'm not baptized and how that kind of happened, and where I am in the journey of getting baptized and all of that stuff. So I went to do an episode on that. The third episode is actually going to come back to this concept of being in a sorority in Greek life, and what I've learned from being in my sorority that I feel like I should have learned from The Church, and as it pertains to how I walk in Christ and how I show my faith in Christ—and don't worry, that’ll make a lot more sense when I actually get to that episode. So those are the three topics that I want to talk about, and I would really like to get all three of those episodes out this week, as opposed to cutting into the other scheduled episodes that I was planning to do, but I know that time doesn't always permit that. So it may be, you know, 3 Monday episodes—but stay tuned, because there will definitely be 3 of them and I am going to do them back to back.
So without further ado, let's jump into how I became a believer.
Like I said in the beginning, I’ve been a believer basically my whole life, and I really cannot explain to you why that is or how that came to be. When I look back, I am actually pretty shocked that I am where I am or that I believe the way that I do, considering my upbringing and how God was presented to me. I don't... Only the Holy Spirit could have brought me to the point that I am now is what I'm trying to say. So, I grew up in a quote-unquote divided household. My mother's family is Methodist and my dad's family is Baptist. Growing up we kind of ping-ponged between the AME Church, which is an African Methodist Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, and the Baptist Church or a Baptist Church, I should say.
Basically in South Carolina when I was born, the churches were basically all segregated—they're still pretty segregated but less so than they were then. So basically, black people did not attend the United Methodist Church, which is why my family attended the AME church, and I was christened[1] at an AME Church. My grandparents on my mother's side were actually pretty instrumental in forming an interracial United Methodist Church. So as I got older we would attend that church sometimes. And my dad's family would attend this Baptist Church and the Baptist Church was actually across the street from my house—like literally across the street, like I used to walk to church.
And so, as I got older, I mean like 5ish, I actually started to attend church on my own. So my parents did not attend church regularly, they were kind of just went whenever they felt like going. And you know, when they went, I went to whichever church they went to, but if I wanted to go to church on my own, I pretty much always went to the Baptist church, because it was across the street and it was easy for me to get to. So what my childhood pretty much looks like was me going to Sunday school pretty much every week,[8] maybe missing once a month or so, but you know, I went to Sunday school pretty much on a regular basis by myself. My mom or dad would walk me across the street and drop me off at the church, and somebody from the church would walk me back across the street and make sure I got home safely.
And I really cannot explain why I used to go to church by myself, what prompted me to go, because my parents were not the parents to make me do it. One of the things that I am extremely grateful for is that they didn't force me to go to church, they didn't force me to believe. There was no ultimatum. It wasn't like, “Get up. Get dressed. Go to church.” It was more like, “Hey, do you want breakfast? Are you going to church?” You know, “What's going on today?” It was pretty much up to me whether I was going to go to church each Sunday or not. And so at some point, when I was 5 or 6, the Baptist church asked me if I wanted to join the Sunday school. I really don't—to this day I don't really understand how you join the Sunday school without joining the church or I don't understand how those are separate entities or whatever, but that was a thing apparently, and I said yes. And I joined the youth choir, and I just kind of became involved in the church in that manner. And from then out, I was basically, a Baptist. So if you talk to me in person, you will hear me say that I grew up as a Baptist, even though technically I attended a Methodist church, as well off and on. This is why I guess I claim Baptist as what I grew up as.
Anyway, I kept attending church all the way throughout Elementary School, and why I was going on my own, and what was motivating me, I really cannot say. I can only speculate that that was the Holy Spirit drawing me to God. So when I was like 8 or 9, I was sitting in church—and I'm pretty sure it was one of the Sunday's that the youth choir performed, and I was sitting with all of the youth—and I distinctly heard a voice say “I am here.” And this was not the preacher, it was not anyone sitting beside me, it was nobody that I could see, saying that they were there. And I came to the conclusion that that was God speaking to me, and God telling me that He was there. And you know, 8-year-old me or 9-year-old me, however old I was, I was like “OK, if You're here, I'm here. I’m trying to be wherever You are.”
And I think is that is probably the moment where I became an outright believer on my own. You know, as kids we typically believe what those around us are telling us. And so our parents tell us, you know, this, that, and the other. The adults in our lives—our grandparents, our aunts, uncles, the people who are teaching at the church, whatever—they're telling you what they believe and you just believe them, because you believe the adults. That was the moment where I was like, “Yeah, God is real. I heard Him! He told me He was here!” And I think that's the moment that I became a believer in God in my own right.