Intro: Matthew

Hello, my name is Matthew and I am yet another contributor to this awesome blog. I write a blog called Loving Christ With Your Mind (LCWYM). In my blog, I write about apologetics and defending the Christian faith. I really wish to write some posts on this blog that discuss how to witness to those who don't know Christ. Let me start with discussing who I am and what I mainly aim to accomplish.

I was raised into a "Christian" home (and still am). My family called itself Christian just because we believed in Jesus. Throughout the years before I got saved, I was mainly focused on religion and trying to please God with my works. I was absolutely terrified of hell, and I wrongly thought that I had to do something to go to heaven. This all changed last summer when I truly got into a relationship with the Lord.

One day, my dad brought me to this awesome church. We were just kind of visiting. One thing I really enjoyed about it was how awesome the music was. The first service I attended was on Easter, and my dad and I continued to go to that church. In the time around the summer the pastor talked a lot about salvation and what it meant to be saved. One verse that he went over really spoke to me. It was Ephesians 2:8-9, and this is what it says:

For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

It was an amazing moment. I finally realized that I didn't have to do anything to go to heaven. All I had to do was trust in God's saving grace that works cannot earn. Now let me talk about how I got into apologetics.

Well I was a new real Christian who had just been saved from sin and religion. I wanted to go show Christ to the world. I remember one day that my sister introduced me to this app on my iPhone called opinionated (now called Thumb). I started showing my faith on there, and there were many atheists on that application. They completely destroyed my faith, and I really did not know why I believed what I believed. I really wanted to believe that there was a God who loved, for I had just recently struggled with depression.

One day I almost gave up on my belief in Christianity. I considered becoming agnostic. But what's really cool, though, is what good God could bring about through this situation. I started to search for reasons to believe in the Bible. I found that there was so much (which you can check out on my other blog). I was soon gaining more and more faith day by day.

But another obstacle hit me: my sin. I always tried to overcome my sin, but I found that my own efforts were never enough. Throughout my fights with temptation, I thought of a line from a Relient K song called For the Moments I Feel Faint. The lyric is, "I think I can't, I think I can't, but I think You can, I think You can." What this line means is that we cannot do anything without God.

I can't imagine something more true than this. Throughout all my hardships and my sin, God never gave up on me. That's what agape is. Agape is the Greek word for unconditional love. God's love is not like human love. His is unconditional. We humans often hold a mindset that if someone does a certain thing, we won't love them anymore. I hope that my friends and I can write some posts describing how to live showing agape. A Christian is one who loves God and others, and my firmest intention is to show others to Christ.

Give me no glory. This blog is for the Lord. May God use it to bless you. I hope you enjoyed my post and I hope you look forward to more.