Sunday Thoughts: When you’re young, your parents and teachers guide you in the ways to live life.
They teach you to say please and thank you. They teach you to walk once the light turns red.
They teach you to have respect, integrity, and honesty.
When you’re young, you learn a lot of things to be a good ‘rule-follower’.
But as you get older, how often do you retain and represent every lesson? The same is true with faith.

When you’re young, your parents and community may tell you what to pray, how to pray, who to pray to, when to pray…
It seems natural when you’re younger because people are always reminding you how to be ‘religious’.
But as you get older, you have to decide for yourself.
You can’t just adopt and represent the faith of the people around you because if you do,
and it doesn’t come from within you, time and challenges will cause your faith to fade away.

Jesus shares this lesson perfectly in the Parable of the Sower.
And Jesus told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.
Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil,
but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away.
Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”
Matthew 13:3-9

My challenge to you: Have you ever thought about why you believe the things you do?
Are they YOUR beliefs or your parent’s beliefs?
Are you worried about the approval of people?
Will you seek the truth?

Cheers,