Member-only story
My Encounter With God and the Foundation of My Faith
“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony”
I grew up in a nondenominational home in the truest sense of the word. In many churches, nondenominational is a denomination. That was not the case for me. I went to every type of church you can imagine. We went to nondenominational churches, Catholic churches, Lutheran churches, pentecostal churches, and military chapels. I have been to church in Japan and Peru. I’ve heard sermons preached in Spanish and Navajo. Christianity has always been a part of my life from my earliest memories. But as anyone who has grown up in the church knows, at some point, you have to take the impetus to invest in or reject your faith on your own, apart from your family and your church.
The reason I went to so many different churches was because I grew up in a military family. My father was in the Navy, and we had to move every three to six years for the first eighteen years of my life. My longest stay was in Connecticut (seven years), and my shortest stay was in Rhode Island (one year). My mother came from a devoutly Catholic family (replete with twelve children). One of the stops we made during my childhood was Japan, where I lived for three years. During that time, I was familiarized with both Shintoism and…
