My Walk With God: The Second Decade
When I was fourteen, I wrote a short essay entitled “My Walk With God” that was published in our summer camp’s souvenir magazine. It was an essay about how I came to know about God and what my relationship with Him was like. While I was chuckling to myself, I suddenly realized that I had been a serious teenager (and that my writing skills had not really developed as well as I had hoped). From the pages of an aging green magazine, a young self-image popped in my mind’s eye for an instant and lectured me on the search for truth.
It has been thirteen years since I wrote that essay. Some questions I had back then, I still do not have the answers to. Some questions, I have forgotten. Some, I have ignored. But God spoke to me: It’s time for me to pick up where I left off.
For me, the search for truth is synonymous with “My Walk With God”. Some may not agree but I sincerely hope they read on.
Just a quick backgrounder (for those of you who don’t know), I grew up in a denomination called the Worldwide Church of God, which founded by Herbert W. Armstrong. WCG had been a cult that followed the tenets of Anglo-Judaism—we believed that we must keep the Laws of Moses to the letter. We had zeal for God’s commands but legalism instilled self-righteousness in those who were trying to become “perfect.”
After the death of Mr. Armstrong, God heard the intercession of the Saints, intervened and transformed WCG from a group of arrogant isolationists to members of the Body of Christ. If you want to know the whole story, you can get a copy of the book “Transformed by Truth” by Joseph W. Tkach, Jr. (or stay tuned in to this blog as I might write about it in another entry)
During the years that I wrote “My Walk With God” I could already sense something was at work in my life although I didn’t know what it was (or WHO it was—I realize now that it was the Holy Spirit). It was not long after that when doctrinal changes began to take place in WCG. A lot of people were shaken. It was a time of confusion for many but in God’s eyes it was the hour of our redemption. Of course, the question that lingered in our hearts: “What is the truth?”
The search for truth begins with a question. Almost everything that I had believed in was cast in a shadow of doubt except in one thing: God’s Word. We all came back to the Source.
I understand that there are so many arguments as to whether the Bible is fact or fiction (or both). And before we could go any further in our search for the truth we must, with open minds, assess the validity of the Scriptures and its relevance in our lives.
Is this not the challenge of the millennia? To say that politics and tradition would always succeed in hiding truth is not an issue. Remember, we’re not trying to change the world, yet. We can start changing ourselves once we know what the truth is. And truth will always have heroes.
But before we can validate the Scriptures, there is a greater question that we must ask. A person who is really sincere in the search for truth will have an answer to this question:
“DOES GOD EXIST?”
To say that to have really searched for wisdom and understanding—I must have a personal answer to this. And to go on this search is to acknowledge the danger of accepting the mere “word” of man as the truth.
Some might think I’m trying to be overly philosophical—even too intellectual when I say this but this search has to start somewhere. It is not that I have attained enlightenment or have become perfect. Far from it, my friends. Let’s just say that I have gone on this journey and I can share what I have learned from it. Still, my walk with God continues.
It has been thirteen years since I wrote that essay. Some questions I had back then, I still do not have the answers to. Some questions, I have forgotten. Some, I have ignored. But God spoke to me: It’s time for me to pick up where I left off.
For me, the search for truth is synonymous with “My Walk With God”. Some may not agree but I sincerely hope they read on.
Just a quick backgrounder (for those of you who don’t know), I grew up in a denomination called the Worldwide Church of God, which founded by Herbert W. Armstrong. WCG had been a cult that followed the tenets of Anglo-Judaism—we believed that we must keep the Laws of Moses to the letter. We had zeal for God’s commands but legalism instilled self-righteousness in those who were trying to become “perfect.”
After the death of Mr. Armstrong, God heard the intercession of the Saints, intervened and transformed WCG from a group of arrogant isolationists to members of the Body of Christ. If you want to know the whole story, you can get a copy of the book “Transformed by Truth” by Joseph W. Tkach, Jr. (or stay tuned in to this blog as I might write about it in another entry)
During the years that I wrote “My Walk With God” I could already sense something was at work in my life although I didn’t know what it was (or WHO it was—I realize now that it was the Holy Spirit). It was not long after that when doctrinal changes began to take place in WCG. A lot of people were shaken. It was a time of confusion for many but in God’s eyes it was the hour of our redemption. Of course, the question that lingered in our hearts: “What is the truth?”
The search for truth begins with a question. Almost everything that I had believed in was cast in a shadow of doubt except in one thing: God’s Word. We all came back to the Source.
I understand that there are so many arguments as to whether the Bible is fact or fiction (or both). And before we could go any further in our search for the truth we must, with open minds, assess the validity of the Scriptures and its relevance in our lives.
Is this not the challenge of the millennia? To say that politics and tradition would always succeed in hiding truth is not an issue. Remember, we’re not trying to change the world, yet. We can start changing ourselves once we know what the truth is. And truth will always have heroes.
But before we can validate the Scriptures, there is a greater question that we must ask. A person who is really sincere in the search for truth will have an answer to this question:
“DOES GOD EXIST?”
To say that to have really searched for wisdom and understanding—I must have a personal answer to this. And to go on this search is to acknowledge the danger of accepting the mere “word” of man as the truth.
Some might think I’m trying to be overly philosophical—even too intellectual when I say this but this search has to start somewhere. It is not that I have attained enlightenment or have become perfect. Far from it, my friends. Let’s just say that I have gone on this journey and I can share what I have learned from it. Still, my walk with God continues.
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