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Michelle1982
Member
| Joined: | Tue Nov 6th, 2007 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 23 |
| First Name: | Michelle | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | protestant services at military chapels, Bible, Baptist, Berean, Calvary Chapel, ... |
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Posted: Tue Nov 13th, 2007 04:18 am |
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Well, where do I begin? I am becoming Catholic. I asked Jesus in my heart when i was 8. I grew up going to protestant services at the military chapel on base, I also went to Bible, Baptist, Missionary Alliance, Evangelical Free, Christian, Presbyterian, Calvinist, Vineyard, Calvary Chapel, Berean churches. My grandparents went to Moody Bible Institute. My mom and all her sisters went to Bible Institutes before going to regulat college. I even went to a Bible Institute before going to a regular college . I grew up going to Christian School most of my life.
Well, I am 25 years old and now my life has been turned upside down. I started going to this protestant Bible study on base because the guy leading it had my current piano position at the protestant service I used to play at. I will call him Bill. Plus, I heard that he was single and cute and loved the Lord with all his heart. He sounded like the type of guy I needed. The first time I saw him leading the Bible study, I saw how the Holp Spirit was talking through him as he lead the study. When I found out his brother went to the same Bible School I used to go to and this guy was getting out of the military to become a pastor, my heart raced. This is awesome!! I think I found what I am looking for.
I was sitting next to a Catholic guy though the first time I came. I will call him Colton. I thought nothing of him except that he was nice. I felt bad for him. He loved God but was blind. One night a couple months later though, Colton and I were talking on the phone. I needed some guy advice. The conversation turned to God and our relationship with Christ. Somehow, Colton said that while the protestants are studying the menu, the Catholics are enjoying the feast. This struck a chord in me. I wanted to understand. I ended up studying the Catholic Bible and a couple Catholic books. A couple weeks later, I felt God telling me that the Catholic church was the church that he founded. I told God that if this was true, that would he show me in truth, that I would understand it or that he would show me how he saw fit. God showed me. I devoured at least a couple hundred Catholic books over the next few months.
Well, to make a long story short. I started RCIA class in August. I took a break for a month. I live with Calvinists. They are awesome people, but they are 5 point hyper-Calvinists. The kind that tell their four year old, that God died and only loves the elect. Well, I have some personal financial problems, which makes it out of the question to move. Well, when my sponsor, Colton went to Afghanistan for a months, I took a break. I need support.
My support system is all Protestants. I am a military brat and I only work on base. But, the military is like my family, especially since my parents got divorced when I was in high school. My point is I can't be honest with anybody about this conversion process. When I mentioned the fact that I was looking into Catholocism, my protestant friends became worried and upset for me. They thought that I was not growing as a Christian. The Catholic Church is vey cold. I have made a couple Catholic friends, but most I do not have anything in common with. Plus they speak a different language when it comes to our relationship with God. I decided to stay Protestant a few weeks ago, then my sponsor came home. I knew that I had to become Catholic.
To help you understand where I am coming from, I have called priests, Catholic Apologists, et.... asking about the church. A few days ago, I had a priest tell my point blank that all roads lead to heaven. He said that I needed to be the best Catholix, Jew, Muslim, HIndu that God was calling me to.
Last week in my RCIA class, my the girl teaching it was very wishy washy. She said that I needed to follow God's will whether that meant being a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Catholic. I must say that I have run into some pretty frusterating people lately/ This might be Gods church, but there is a lot to be done. Then. my sponsor is moving in July. Well, I need him as my support system. Do I make any sense at all? I guess, what I am trying to say is this: By me becoming Catholic, I am giving up most of my friends and family. Then. I am slightly annoyed that some people have started telling me that I should consider becoming a nun. First of all, I have no desire, plus I haven't even converted yet. I fell like I am going crazy. If I convert, I am going to get kicked out of the house that I live. So, I feel like giving up. I keep on asking the Lord, to open my eyes and help me think like a protestant and it is not working. I am so confused.
Last edited on Tue Nov 13th, 2007 12:15 pm by Michelle1982
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"..............From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more." Luke 12:48
"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." J
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David W. Emery
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Brownsville, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 2098 |
| First Name: | David | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic |
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Posted: Tue Nov 13th, 2007 09:07 am |
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Michelle, it looks to me like your problem is people, not Catholicism. You seem to understand the bible and a bit of theology and are convinced where they point. But you are confused because the Protestants you know are anti-Catholic, and outside of your sponsor, the Catholics you know are by and large not good ones.
You are an adult, and you should be thinking for yourself. Other people cannot make up your mind for you. Right now you are allowing them to influence your direction in life when you should be concentrating on following the truth, regardless of what others say or do. This applies to both positive and negative influences.
If the people you live with are five point Calvinists, that is fine for them, but your life is your own. You alone must decide whether their theology is acceptable as you keep your eye on the truth.
If the priest is giving you bad advice or the teacher in RCIA does not know her material, that is one thing. But what I see them saying in your report is that you must follow God’s will wherever it leads. This is precisely what I am telling you: Keep your eye on the truth. This is God’s will, not what other people say about it. In other words, if God is showing you that the truth lies in Islam, so be it. But if he is showing you that the truth lies in Catholicism, is this any different? Follow the truth. These people are confident that you will see the truth in Catholic Christianity because they do, too. Why? Because it’s there.
As a Catholic convert myself, following the truth has been a big thing in my life. I believe with all my heart that God became man in the divine Person of Jesus Christ. I believe he established a Church which was to endure until the end of time. And I believe that the Catholic Church is that entity. Everything I have ever studied about Catholicism has been completely reasonable. The Church has nothing to hide.
The big turn-off to Catholicism has always been weak and sinful Catholics. There are a lot of them. They just do not bother, in many cases, to live up to their calling. But if you study the Old Testament, you see right away that the same was true of the Jews. So if you believe that biblical Judaism was God’s true revelation and that it led to the definitive revelation we know as Christianity, you recognize that the members will continue to act like weak, sinful human beings just as they did in biblical times.
Meanwhile, those outside the Catholic Church have always been against it. That’s why they are outside. They don’t believe in it. In fact, they think it is an evil thing crawling with sin and deception. But your point is clear: You have studied and God has shown you the truth. The only reason you are rejecting Catholicism right now is because you want friends, and everybody you know is Protestant. Why aren’t you making friends with Catholics? You know where to find them. All you have to do is accept them.
My sponsor is moving in July. Plus, he has talked about becoming a priest. Well, I need him as my support system. Second, I have become attached to him. I do not really want him to become a priest. I know that theses are purely selfish reasons. I am starting to care about him. Do I make any sense at all?
There is a certain sense to it, but it is not a healthy sense. This man is your sponsor before God, not your boyfriend. He is not interested in marrying you; he is interested in God, and in you only to the extent that he wants what is best for you: that you know God as he does.
You need to be reconciled to the fact that if your calling is to marriage, you need to look elsewhere. This is why I say, you know where to find Catholics, and you know how to make friends. Eventually, you will find the right guy.
Now my final word is this: Take all these things before God. Pray to him to know the truth, that he will guide you to where you need to be. Do not let other people make a mockery of the truth; speak directly to God about it and get it from the source.
May the Lord smile upon you, Michelle.
David
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Ken Follis
Member
| Joined: | Thu Oct 25th, 2007 |
| Location: | San Antonio, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 40 |
| First Name: | Ken | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Charismatic Episcopal Church; Roman Catholic Church (1999) |
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Posted: Tue Nov 13th, 2007 09:38 am |
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Michelle,
I work on a military base and spent five years in the Army; one and a half of those years was in Iraq and Turkey for this war. Needless to say, I understand what you are up against dealing with Calvinists, chapels and chaplains and trying to become Catholic. Ugh!
You are in my prayers.
Ken
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Jer. 6:16 "Stand, Look, Ask and Walk!"
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Michelle1982
Member
| Joined: | Tue Nov 6th, 2007 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 23 |
| First Name: | Michelle | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | protestant services at military chapels, Bible, Baptist, Berean, Calvary Chapel, ... |
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Posted: Tue Nov 13th, 2007 12:17 pm |
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Thanks for the comment. So you converted yourself, huh? How long ago was that?
____________________
"..............From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more." Luke 12:48
"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." J
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David W. Emery
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Brownsville, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 2098 |
| First Name: | David | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic |
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Posted: Tue Nov 13th, 2007 12:40 pm |
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I’m in my mid-60s now, Michelle, but I became Catholic at age 19 after a number of years of discernment and waiting until I was old enough to make a legal decision. My Protestant parents and others in my family and among my friends were very much opposed, and they placed all the obstacles they could in my way. Basically, I had to leave one world, one civilization, and enter another. Nobody came with me; I had no support from anyone. But I was following the truth, so I knew it was the right thing to do.
David
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Michelle1982
Member
| Joined: | Tue Nov 6th, 2007 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 23 |
| First Name: | Michelle | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | protestant services at military chapels, Bible, Baptist, Berean, Calvary Chapel, ... |
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Posted: Tue Nov 13th, 2007 03:47 pm |
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Ken Follis wrote: Michelle,
I work on a military base and spent five years in the Army; one and a half of those years was in Iraq and Turkey for this war. Needless to say, I understand what you are up against dealing with Calvinists, chapels and chaplains and trying to become Catholic. Ugh!
You are in my prayers.
Ken
Thanks for that!
____________________
"..............From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more." Luke 12:48
"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." J
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JillD
Member
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Visalia, California USA |
| Posts: | 784 |
| First Name: | Jill | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | heathen, EvFree, Messianic, LC-MS, Catholic 2007 |
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Posted: Tue Nov 13th, 2007 03:59 pm |
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Some people don't care much about "truth." Or, they figure "you have your truth, and I have mine." But it seems to me that the people who are determined to find Truth (as opposed to a church where they feel good or at home), eventually find the Catholic Church. I was on the hunt for Truth for 15 years, dragging my family through one denomination after another, certain each time that we'd found it. Now, when I have found it, they won't follow - at least not yet. But I'm praying. Praying, not that they'd follow me, but that they would also hunger for Truth.
Don't settle for less!
Blessings,
Jill
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"I praise you, for I am wondrously made. Wonderful are our works! My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret." Ps 139
"Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men." Ps 140
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catholicdan
Member
| Joined: | Wed Jul 11th, 2007 |
| Location: | Merced, California USA |
| Posts: | 65 |
| First Name: | Danny | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | From A 2 Z now on to RC. |
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Posted: Mon Nov 26th, 2007 04:08 pm |
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Hello Michelle.
I myself am in the process of converting to Catholicism. I am currently in RCIA with my wife and it has been a challenge also. We are very active in the class and have made a couple of really good friends in the process and one is going to be our sponsor.
I would like to share with you what my wife and I have given up on our journey to the Catholic Church. I hope this will encourage you and at the same time challenge you to stay focused on the truth of Jesus and his Church.
I was a pastor for ten years and before that I was a Deacon, Usher and praise and worship leader in our church. This was our home, our family and our world. I met my wife in this church, we had a son together in this church and all my boys grew up in this church. We we very much part of the life of our church.
As I was in the midst of becoming a minister in our church my wife and I formed even more relationships with other pastors and their wives. I was invited to their churches to preach and teach their congregations. My wife was involved in diverse women's groups and we were very certain that we were where God wanted us.
About five years into my ministry I started to have a curiosity that lead me into studying the history of the Christian Church. As I started to read and research more and more of the history of our specific church I began to realize that our fellowship was only about thirty years old. It started in Huntington California and grew from there. I started to see that there were things that we taught and I believed that were not quite lined up with the whole of Scripture. This caused me to start to ask questions and those questions lead to more questions and I ended up with a dilemma. I had to make a choice about the ministry I was in and the church I had become so in love with.
God used my curiosity to guide me to certain books that really began to challenge my thinking and my whole understanding of what the Church really is. I discovered that Jesus had already established a church and that it was built upon Saint Peter our first Pope. This began to cause some serious discomfort because I started to see that what I was teaching was almost correct but just not complete. I sat down with the senior pastor of our church, who was my closest friend, and I started to ask questions that eventually lead to my having to resign from my position in the church.
We lost all our friends and we lost the fellowship that we had come so used to being involved in. We married people, baptized people and even berried some dear brothers even as young as 23 years old. My wife and I were devastated to say the least, but there was a peace that we had not experienced before. We knew that what we had decided to do was what God wanted us to do, even if everyone around us was "praying four our souls" because we had become "confused" in our understanding of the the church and its history.
For a year we prayed and asked God to direct us to the right church. Believe it or not we ended up in a Seventh Day Adventist Church and I had become a Deacon and my wife also was very active in this church. Once again, we thought that we were in the "right" place but God was not done with us yet...and is still working on us by the way.
During this time, I kept reading all I could about the history of the church and after about three years we left the Adventist Church and my wife and I both decided that we were not going to join another church unless it was the one that was truly God's Church. I am now typing this message out to you while we are in the process of joining the Catholic Church because we know that this is truly God's Church and Christ has established.
We lost a lot over this transition. I lost my income and had to get a secular job and let me tell you that was very tough. Can you imagine an on fire preacher working at a very well known wireless phone company and having to bite my tongue when someone would relate a personal problem to me on the phone? I would just start ministering to them right there. Didn't go well with my employer but, hey, I learned to grow from this whole experience.
My wife lost all of her friends and that has been very hard on her but over time she has been able to grow from it. God has placed new people in our lives and we know that we are in the right place. It has not been easy, but is the truth every really easy?
The real challenge Michelle is that you know where God wants you to be and that my sister is what you really need to look at. The bible says, "those who know to do good and don't do it, it is a sin". I know that this may seem a bit up front but we all have to workout our own salvation with fear and trembling daily.
Your friends will try to pull you in the other direction but there comes a time when you will have to get a back bone and decide if you are going to follow God our man. Jesus loves you so much that he will chase you to the ends of the earth to show you his love and compassion, so grab onto his calling in your life and be faithful to Jesus and not your friends. You eternity is on the line and that is just the the way it is.
God is good, we know the goodness of God but let's not forget also the severity of God. You are an adult and you have to make the choice to follow Jesus or follow your friends. Who was it that paid the price for your life?
Be of good courage and do not look to the left or to the right. As Saint Paul said, "my heart is not with those who put their hands to the plow and then look back". Today we need young men and women of God who are not afraid of the cost but look and live for the reward of eternal life with God.
Our prayers are with you so be the woman you are and follow God where ever it is that he leads you.
Peace,
catholicdan.
Last edited on Mon Nov 26th, 2007 04:17 pm by catholicdan
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"To be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant." Cardinal Newman
"Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux,
Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux"
May the Holy Cross be my Light.
Let not the dragon be my guide.
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