How Loss Shattered My Faith and Love Brought Me Back

Hi, welcome to Christianity.com. My name is Rachel Baker. I am a small groups director at my local church in Nevada, and I just wanted to share with you a couple reasons why I'm a Christian, but I'm a storyteller, so I want to tell you a little story first. I was raised in a Christian household.

My parents were both first-generation Christians and became Christ followers as adults. We were raised in this really sweet little Christian community, but tragedy struck our family just before I turned 13 when my dad and older brother were killed in an accident. This really tested my faith in Christ, and I'll be completely honest that, as a young teenage girl who had just lost her father and older brother, though I believed in God, I did not know Him to be the kind, loving, gracious Father that we see in the Bible.

So my faith faltered, and as I entered into my teenage years and my early 20s, though I had a theistic view that a God existed, I didn't understand Him in a personal and relatable way, and I started shifting away from wanting anything to do with the God of the Christian Orthodox Bible. In that season of hardness, I ended up doing a year of study abroad in the south of France, and I ended up connecting with a flatmate who was going to an English-speaking church, and I was so desperate to hear English that after he invited me to this church, I said, Sure, I'll go. The pastor and his wife just loved me, even though I was a complete mess and was very far from anything that looked like Christianity.

They just kept on loving me and drew me into community. Their love for me softened my heart and helped me address long-term issues of grief and trauma and ultimately drew me back to Jesus, and through their guidance and discipling, I ended up walking back into a Christian faith and rededicated my life to Christ during a sunrise service for Easter, and I've followed Jesus from that time faithfully, but not perfectly. There is no such thing as a perfect Christian walk.

We will falter and fail, and that is why we need Jesus so much. His love is on display for us, and His forgiveness is on display for us as we are being formed to Him and looking more and more like Him in our lives. He walks us through that process. Another reason why I am a Christian, as I mentioned, is that my parents were first-generation Christ followers, and my mother to this day is a very strong believer in Jesus, and though my father is not with us, his legacy of faith still lives on within me.

I fully believe that we will be reunited in heaven, and I look forward to that day. The same goes for my brother, and my dad had such a strong faith and talked openly about his faith that it's just not lost on me. It's a part of who I am, and I'll never forget how strong his faith was and how that faith trickles down through the generations, and I hope through me and ultimately through the rest of my family, we will acknowledge and see that faith and honor it at the end of our lives and through our lives.

So those are the main reasons I am a Christian. Of course, I absolutely believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that we have so much fantastic evidence for who Jesus was, not only historically, but spiritually.

I believe in the Trinity. I believe that our Scripture teaches us exactly who God is, and is very clear on who God is. So if you're not sure who God is, I invite you to dive into the Gospels.

That's a great way to get started, and then follow it with Acts. That is a picture of the early church, and so if you're unchurched or looking for a church, read Acts, and then go find a church that looks like Acts. All right, well, thanks so much for hanging out with me today, and I hope you feel encouraged and continue walking out your faith.

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