18plus: Question, but then choose
15th March 2010 by Mark Soper
Don't let unanswered questions stop your faith!
If you think back to your teenage years, your faith was probably still growing, and was probably heavily influenced by your parents, family, friends and church.
Often, we can fall into the trap of living our faith through our parents, family or friends or even just by going to church. Because of that, we may never really ask the tough questions about our faith.
When we become young adults that all changes because the more experience we have in living life, the more questions we tend to ask about our faith.
An everyday choice
Being a young adult (18plus) is a time when we establish our independence, start driving, maybe move out of home, study at uni or TAFE, work or travel overseas etc.
In those years, we start to question our faith all over again and we are forced to choose all over again what we are going to believe and give our life to.
I think everyday is a choice whether to seek God and be obedient to him, or follow the world and be influenced by society's values and direction.
What are you going to choose ...?
A time for questioning
We are either walking towards God or away from him.
What are you doing?
As young adults, we see the world and all its problems more than we used to. We start associating with people who don't share the same beliefs, who question us, and open our eyes to other ideas and ways to live.
As young adults, we start to question the ideas, Christian principles and beliefs we were brought up in, and we want to see if Christianity (Christ) is as true as we believed when were younger.
Choose God
God wants us to explore, ask questions, and open our mind and life to different things, yet we must accept that we will never have all the answers.
"If faith could be proven we wouldn't have a faith, because true Christianity is expressed through faith alone."
This quote refers to belief without sight.
In these young adult years, I came to a point where I had so many questions about faith, I had doubts.
And I still do have some doubts from time to time; at times, I'm tempted to live by the world's values ...
But I choose to trust in God and follow his ways for my life! I choose a life of faith; and I choose to follow God even when the world pulls me in another direction.
May we never let our inquisitive mind and unanswered questions stop us from living a life for God and receiving the blessings and plan he has in store for each of us! Amen.
Mark Soper is the Ministry Assistant at Menai Salvation Army, where he oversees the youth ministries amongst other responsibilities in the corps.
Mark has previously been youth pastor at Hurstville Corps and has also worked on the Street Outreach Service at The Salvation Army's Oasis Youth Support Network. He loves seeing God grow churches from Christians meeting community needs. Mark is married to Lauren.
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Comments
Hey thanks for ya blog!
I reallly believe that if we don't question our faith and wrestle with it we will have a pretty bland faith. It is when we are willing to ask the hard questions and figure out what our faith looks like and how it effects our lifestyle that it comes alives and starts producing big juicy fruit.