Category: Illustrations

WHICH RELIGION SHOULD I FOLLOW

Q.  I am trying to decide which religion I want to follow.  How did you decide that you wanted to be a Christian?  I don’t have any religious background, but now that I’m out of college i’ve decided I need to start thinking about it.  R.W.

A.  I”m grateful for my parents’ example of faith in Christ, and for their commitment to take me to church and teach me about the Bible.  No doubt God used these to prepare me to make my own commitment to Christ as a teenager.

But I became a Christian not because I grew up in a Christian family or went to church, but because I sensed a need in my heart to have my sins forgiven and to know God personally.  I realized later that God had put that desire within me, and I believe He is doing the same in your life.  Within every of of us is what has been called, “a God-shaped vacuum” – a spiritual emptiness in our souls that only God can fill.  My prayer is that you won’t try it with anything less than a the living God.

That is why I urge you to turn to Jesus Christ, for He was God in human flesh, sent from Heaven to open the way to God.  Only one thing separates us from God, and that is our sin – and no matter how hard we try, we cannot erase our sins by our own efforts.

But by His death on the cross Christ became the final sacrifice for our sins.

Ask God to help you discover from the Bible who Jesus is and what He has done for you – and then give your life to Him.  The Bible says, “Christ also suffered once for sins . . . to bring you to God” (I Peter 3:18).

– Billy Graham

D. L. Moody told the story of his conversion this way: “When I was in Boston I used to attend a Sunday school class, and one day I recollect my teacher came around behind the counter of the shop I was at work in, and put his hand upon my shoulder, and talked to me about Christ and my soul. I had not felt that I had a soul. I said to myself, “This is a very strange thing. Here is a man who never saw me till lately, and he is weeping over my sins, and I never shed a tear about them. But I understand it now, and know what it is to have a passion for men’s souls and weep over their sins. I don’t remember what he said, but I can feel the power of that man’s hand on my shoulder tonight.”