My parents had me baptized as an infant, I grew up going to church, and I called myself a Christian. However, it wasn't until these last 2 years that I started growing in my own faith and understanding what it meant to have a relationship with Jesus. Although I know God has been working in my life all along, my personal journey of understanding God’s love and his word has been much more recent.

For most of my life I just had head knowledge of God and was not active in my faith and I didn’t know how much I was missing. I didn’t know I was missing the personal relationship with Jesus. I didn’t know I was missing his grace and understanding or knowing what his love felt like.

I have often put too much emphasis on the approval of others and the idea that love and acceptance was based on my performance, which caused the majority of anxiety in my life.

Since learning and growing in my relationship with him, many things have become apparent for me:

1. He chose and continues to choose me regardless of my performance and mistakes.
2. I have a greater sense of ownership and empowerment to live an active type of faith and genuinely want to continue pursuing a life like Jesus.
3. Now my newly found peace & joy comes from being able to repent of my sins and still land in His grace, knowing that I’m truly & fully KNOWN and still LOVED by God.

I feel that my faith has grown exponentially in the last year alone. This past summer I started feeling the push and urgency to get baptized to publicly declare how God has moved in my life and be a marker of my newly found faith and understanding.