Grace

During today's youth group, the leader— whom I'll refer as L.— talked about grace, the unmerited love that God gives to everyone. He explained how every part of us, including our bodies, is given to us by God; how everything we have is grace. God has not only created us, but has also bore our sins for us, despite the fact that we rejected him. He could easily have destroyed the human race when we did all the horrible things to him, but instead he chose to bore all the sins for us and to suffer for us. Not because we did anything deserving, but simply because he loved us.

Since everything we have is grace— we are all sinners and we don't actually deserve anything that we have  —there is no reason for us to be proud. That is, because we couldn't have accomplished anything without the gifts of God, nothing we do is great in God's eyes. This also means that we should never expect things from God just because we have done "good" deeds— to God, these things are like "polluted garments" and they are nowhere close to God's holiness and perfection.

At the end, L. said that when one truly understands what grace is, there should be a radical change in one's thoughts and behaviours. One would become humble, and one's actions would be spurred by one's love of god, not by an urge to please god and be saved.

Unfortunately, I can't remember exactly what L. has taught us during youth group; even the things above are formed from my fragmented memory (and this is probably why many things seem vague). However, when he was talking, I felt a stirring within my heart. I don't know why, but for the first time in my life, I felt God's presence, I believed in the existence of God!

Actually, to think of it now, I didn't really believe in the existence God at the moment. Instead, I simply started to accept the possibility that God exists. Still, it was a big moment for me, because it had always been difficult to accept this possibility— it had been too abstract to me.

Of course, the concept of God is still very abstract to me. But now a brand-new perspective is open to me, and I am confident that I have experienced some spiritual gains, however little it might be. At the same time, I am ready to adopt a different mindset, and change the way I think and act.

Tomorrow I will go to church as well. Hopefully I will get to understand God more.

Becoming A Christian??

For the past few weeks, I have become quite involved with church activities.

I have been going to my ethnic United Church youth group for four weeks, and just this week, I went to the bible study session at my friend's church.

During these occasions, I have learnt quite a lot of basic information about Christianity. For example, I learned the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament, I learned the stories in Exodus and Genesis, and I learned several teachings/principles of the religion.

So do I believe in god yet? Of course not. I have grown up in a family that doesn't have a religion, and the majority of the people around me were either atheists or agnostics. Therefore, I have never really thought about God's existence or non-existence, and have never imagined that there would be a superior being watching over me.

But will I ever become a believer? I don't know. I want to be a Christian— I really agree with many of their beliefs, and admire their virtues— but at this stage, it's still hard for me to just accept the existence of God as a fact. And I simply can't imagine how I may change my beliefs over time. So basically, there's no way to tell.

Meanwhile, I should try my best to attend youth groups and bible studies, to expand my knowledge on the bible and Christianity. And hopefully within a few months, I will begin to have a better understanding of my own beliefs.
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If you find this post to messy and confusing, it simply reflects my state of mind. I am really confused about what my beliefs, and what they will be.