My journey
I was raised in a traditional christian household. It was all sunday school and jesus loves you. The typical american christian lifestyle. When I was nine, my family started attending a messianic church. Church on saturdays, biblical holidays, and a whole lot of jewish influence. We would end up leaving that church when I was about 14 and doing fellowship at home with other messianic families. Around that time my family and I began looking into the difference between the covenant and the law. Eventually our fellowship fizzled out and, when I was 18, we moved to Texas.
It wasn't until moving that things started to get personal for me... Growing up, I was certain of the existence of God. I had to prove it to myself, and I did. Be it through observing things around me that I couldn't find any other explaination for, or the time I decided to study evolution in depth and found it to be faliable and requiring more faith than belief in God
I had known God was real for a while. But I had never felt that he was real.
I've since pinpointed the exact reason. Growing up primarily in the messianic community, observing the ways messianics worshipped, I had given myself the impression that there were only a few ways to worship God: Singing, dancing, preaching, or praying on my face on the floor. I wasn't comfortable doing any of those things and it certainly never made me feel closer to God. He always felt like an unreachable abstract concept to me.
But once I was out of the suffocating cities and populations of California and instead found myself in the serene Texas countryside, things started to change. I began to spend more time sitting outide, watching, listening. And then drawing. It became easier to feel his presence, easier to hear him, easier to motivate myself to read and pray and best of all, worship. I'm a firm believer that God gives everyone unique talents to use in our journey. For me, thats drawing, animation and writing.
Whenever he gives me the ideas, I try to spend my sabbaths drawing with him. I turn on my favorite worship music, I pray, I talk to him, and we draw. Call me crazy, but my shabbat drawings always come out a much higher quality than my usual art. It's a completely different style and I like it best. Because I don't make them alone.
I have even made a full length music-video animation over the course of a few weeks this way.
My novel, "champions crystal" Which I've been working on for a little over 2 years now, has grown and morphed and taken on christian themes. I'm certain I never would have gotten this far on it without YHWH. I know it won't succeed without him either.
My beliefs are very non-traditional. I can't tell you what denomination I am because, honestly, I don't have one. I simply read the bible, and apply what I find there. Occasionally I'll find a video or teaching that helps me on my journey too, but I try to avoid having any kind of man be a "spiritual authority."
It's worth noting that I still worship on Saturdays, the shabbat, because it is the fourth commandment. (Exodus 20:8 "remember the sabbath day by keeping it holy"). Similiarly, I celebrate biblical holidays such as Passover and Sukkot. I use the names for God and jesus that are in the original hebrew text. So just know that If I say "YHWH" I mean God, and if I say "Yeshua" I mean jesus. They're the same people, I'm just using their original names.
However, I have found there is a difference between Gods commandments, which are biblical, and Judaic traditions/laws, which Yeshua denounced. As such, I try to apply biblical command to my life as much as possible, and avoid jewish tradition.
I'm always open to civil disscusion, but if you're here just to bash my beliefs or call me names, I'll save you some time and let you know it won't work. Aggression never has and never will change what I believe. We're all God's children so let's act like it here please :)
YHWH bless, ~Rusty diamonds