Did you know Sunday, September 21st 2014 is National Back to Church Sunday?  This is a great opportunity for me to share with you how I started going to church.

Growing up I was raised catholic, we were not active Catholic Church goers.  We attended church on major holidays and a few times throughout the year.  As a young teenage girl many times I would walk to the closest Catholic Church to my home and go on my own, I had this draw to church and God and didn’t really understand it. 

In my sophomore year in high school, a friend and I were planning on going to a school dance.  Due to my parents weekend plans I had to spend the night at her house to attend the dance.  My friend said if I spent the night at her house, I had to go to church on Sunday with her family which was fine with me.

In attending church with her that Sunday, I felt the pastor was speaking directly to me, about my life circumstances and situations.  After the pastor was finished preaching he gave an altar call for anyone to come forward who would like to accept Jesus in their heart.   I didn’t fully understand at the time the great gift that had been presented to me but I went to the front and prayed with the pastor to receive Jesus as my Savior.  From that day forward my life changed dramatically for the better.  Kindly my friend Angela and her parents would pick me up every Sunday and take me to church. 

My mom was familiar with the Christian faith because her mom, my grandmother attended a Pentecostal church in Texas.  My mom would often ask me if I knew what I was getting involved with and she didn’t understand my desire to go to church every week. 

I was attending church for about 3 months praying for my parents to find Jesus as their personal Savior just as I had.  In December my parents were going out to celebrate their Anniversary.  My mom told me I needed to stay home to babysit my brother and sister on a Friday night that the church was having a special prayer meeting.  Another family in the church offered to take my siblings and I to church that night.  My mom wasn’t sure about the whole thing but she agreed. 

My parents were at a local restaurant enjoying happy hour and had plans to go dancing afterwards; that is how they spent most weekends.  They ended up leaving the restaurant and went home. 

We arrived home pretty late and she wondered what we had been doing at church for such a long time.  I wondered what they were doing home so early.  My mom said their drinks were watered down and they felt weird to be out drinking while their kids were at a church that they had never even visited.  My parents told me they were going to visit on Sunday and see where I had been going all this time.  That Sunday my parents gave their heart to Jesus and our lives have never been the same.    I will elaborate on future blog posts.

I take this opportunity to invite you to church, if you have been and stopped attending or maybe you have never been.  Take a step of faith and find out what this faith thing is all about.  Choosing God and faith has been a decision that I have never regretted. 

Family Community Church, North Highlands, CA
If you are in the Sacramento area I invite you to attend my local church Family Community Church, 6331 Watt Avenue, North Highlands, CA 95660, you can also view services on-line via live stream at www.familycc.org right from the comfort of your own home thank God for technology.   

Service times are Sundays at 11 AM & 6 PM and also Tuesdays at 6:30 PM PST.  I also recommend that you ask God where to go to church.  How do you do that? You simply ask God, yes just like you talk to a friend, ask Him to lead and guide your family to a church and He will, with an inward leading sort of how your conscience guides you and speaks to you.  A church will stand out, or all of a sudden you’ll end up talking to someone about a church, I have seen it happen many times.  

If you attend church regularly I encourage you to use this opportunity of National Back to Church Sunday to invite someone to attend church with you, share your story of how you found faith with someone else.

I don’t believe the action of attending church alone will change your life, but rather it’s an encounter with God that changes your life and although you can have an encounter with God anywhere it is in attending church regularly that will develop your relationship with God. 

Why I attend church:
  • I attend church to learn about God and the ways of God, to develop a greater relationship with Him.
  • I attend church to set apart time to recognize life isn’t all about me but something and someone much greater.
  • Church gives me a sense of community; I enjoy meeting new people and learning from their life stories.
  • Attending Church gives my children the opportunity to choose faith.  To know they have a Heavenly Father who can love and care for them better than their father and I.

God loves you and has a plan for your life.  Know He longs for you to look to Him and talk to Him about anything anytime.  You don’t have to know all the “right” words to say, just share from your heart and know He hears you.  You don’t have to clean up your life before you come to Him; He is in the fixing and cleaning up business.  Just come as you are.

Bible Verse John 3:16 reads “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Here is a simple prayer to receive Jesus as your Savior.

Dear God I know I'm a sinner, I ask for your forgiveness.  I believe that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for my sins. Come into my life Jesus to be my Lord and Savior and wash me from all sin, shame, and guilt.  In Jesus Name I pray.  Amen

 Thank you for reading my story.
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