I am the Christian that I am today in large part (and with humongous thanks!) to the example, and the teaching, and the patience, and the investment of dozens of faithful Christian adults all throughout my childhood and teenage years.

They taught me how to read my Bible, how to pray, how to memorize Scripture, and to follow Jesus every day. Because of their instruction and example, I had a daily quiet time from ages 9-14, and it was real! I still have notebooks at home right now that I kept then: they’re full of prayers and Scriptures and the records of my interactions with God during those years.

But my faith in God really became my own somewhere between 8th-9th grades. That’s when I began to pursue Jesus on my own, not just because others were telling me to:

  • I began to confess sin, and to seek deliverance from Him in prayer.
  • I began to pray for the salvation of my loved ones and my classmates, whom I knew needed Jesus.
  • I began praying about all the little decisions I had to make at age 13 or 14 or whatever, just trying to learn how to discern the voice of God – even in small, everyday decisions.

And I was nowhere near perfect – very far from it! I got it wrong a whole lot! But as a young Christian, I gradually learned to stop relying just on the faith of my grandparents and my Sunday school teachers to get me through. I learned to make my faith my own, and to follow Jesus as a young disciple myself, with the help of mentors and older Christians in my life – getting up each time, dusting myself off, walking in His deliverance, and continuing the pursuit.

So my question for you is this: When did, or when will, you make your faith in Jesus your own?

I was talking to my niece this summer during our family vacation – we do a big trip to the beach every year with our extended family – and on Sunday morning at the beach, several of us had gone to a local church together, and I noticed that she had gone down to the front towards the end of the service for prayer.

At lunch afterwards, I was asking her about that – not trying to pry into her business, but just asking if she would be willing to share how the Lord was working on her heart that morning, and she did – it was a good conversation.

My niece is 14, and after she shared with me what the Lord had been doing in her heart that morning, I asked her, “When would you say that your faith in Jesus became your own?” And, without hesitation, right away, she replied, “During the divorce.”

See, her parents had gotten divorced two summers earlier, when she was 12, and she said that was the hardest time in her life up to that point – but that it was also the time when all that she had been taught about God up to that point in her life as a child – that’s when it all became real to her.

She said, “God was with me, I knew He was close when the days were at their worst. And I knew He was listening, and I knew that He cared about me. That’s when my faith became my own.”

When did you make your faith in Jesus your own? When did your faith in God go from being that of your family, or your church, or your Children’s Sunday school teachers, or your youth group Bible study leaders? When did your faith in God become your own? And if it hasn’t yet, could today be the day to do so?