My Friends Have a Lot To Do With My Faith

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I was taking a stroll down memory lane the other day and realized that my childhood friends played a significant role in my journey to truly following Jesus.

Before I understood what it really meant to follow Jesus, I had already been exposed to different Christian environments. I attended Catholic and Baptist churches and studied in both Catholic and Christian schools.

We worshiped, listened to sermons, attended children’s Bible studies, joined processions… all the things you would expect to do in those institutions.

I am grateful for those experiences because they became a good foundation for my faith. But if I’m completely honest, they were mostly just routine for me—required by school or by my parents. (Although, I did love the school part.)

Then, in my senior year, two of my friends, who are now pastors, invited me to a Christian church they had just joined.

Going to that church with them became a turning point for me. I was able to ask questions, learn more about Jesus, and understand why a personal relationship with Him is so important.

We then invited our other friends—actually, our classmates—and we all went to that same church every Sunday.

It’s amazing to think about how that one friend invited my two friends, who then invited me, and how we eventually invited all our other friends influenced so many of our spiritual lives.

For some of us, it was our friends following Jesus who invited us to know Christ more. For others, it’s their parents, their teacher, or even a stranger. And maybe for some, their journey looked completely different.

Since this is my first time sharing my story here, by the way I’m Iris, and I’m from the Philippines, I’m curious: Who or what played a part in bringing you closer to Jesus?

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Hi @irris ! Thanks so much for sharing your story of how you came to believe in Jesus. I am so glad you found friends who had a relationship with Jesus. Clearly they were prepared to respond with the answers you needed at the time. I too came to faith in Jesus through a friend. Though I grew up in India where there were very few Christians in our community, I came to the knowledge of Christ through a Christian friend as a teenager. She may not have had all the answers to my questions, but her encouraging and welcoming nature, her boldness, and her respect for the poor, drew me to her as a friend. As we spent time together engaged in different activities, I slowly began to see the role Christian faith played in her family’s value system and it got me interested in reading the Bible. As I read the Bible, I was drawn to teachings of Jesus in the gospels, and one day decided to say the prayer to receive Jesus into my heart. From my experience I can say that how we live out our faith as a friend in Christ matters, yet its the Holy Spirit who draws hearts to our heavenly Father and its the Holy Spirit who sustains our faith through life’s challenges, and often through friends even when some friends may fail.

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Hi @lakshmi That’s another beautiful story of how our friends became part of our story of knowing Christ.

And I completely agree with you. The Holy Spirit is the One who ultimately draws people to Christ. We wouldn’t come to know Christ unless He draws us.

John 3:8 says, The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So, Christ uses the wind to illustrate the work of the Holy Spirit and it’s up to us on how to respond to it.

Thank you for sharing this. I wonder how many more people have been drawn a little closer to Christ because of their faithful friend.

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Yeah…it would be great to hear more stories of how friends have come alongside to help follow Jesus. When we lack role models in our lives, hearing such stories can inspire us to follow Christ. We may be encouraged to learn from their unique expressions of faith, be it in habits, disciplines, attitudes, knowledge, or other ideas.

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Well, growing up, I share almost the same memory with you. I grew up in Catholic family, and my friends were all moving in what I call packaged charismatism.

There was no conscious knowledge or personal relationship with God, but there was a sense of the existence of God, awareness and fear for Him, which sealed my start into the faith until I finally found Him in my 2nd year in the University.

My mum, I’d say, played a huge role in planting the seed of salvation in my heart. She’d make sure that all of these experience stayed in me by always making no rooms for me to have my own nonchalant will manifest— you can guess she was the police of my organized prayers (that I didn’t have the patience for), church attendance, and bible studies. Lol. And I praise God for it.

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Thank you for sharing @GabrielJr .

It’s so nice to reminisce where our faith started and, interestingly, how people from different backgrounds (or even different countries) can have such similar beginnings.

You also made us smile when you looked back and described your mom as the “police” of your prayers, church attendance, and bible studies. Oh, moms! :sweat_smile: That’s so true. I can recall seeing my mom praying earnestly at night, sometimes with tears in her eyes.

I’m really grateful for how God has placed friendships and relationships in our lives to draw us closer to Him.

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:blush: :heart:.

And I’m happy to be in the community by the way. Thanks!

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