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Allen Cheatwood: I felt very much like I’d just been washed away in the middle of the ocean. I felt very adrift. I was looking for something to help stabilize me.
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STORIES OF FAITH
I’m Brother Allen Cheatwood. I’m 25 years old. I was born in Germany and raised in various places across the U.S. (United States).
I grew up in a military family, so I didn’t live in very many places for very long. Every three years growing up, we would pack up and move. When I was about eight, we moved here to Hawaii. We lived here for about 10 years. I first started to realize that life wasn’t all fun and games when my dad first got deployed to Afghanistan. That one was particularly rough because I was older at that point. It kind of forced me to grow up a little bit faster, needing to be there to take Eric to help my mom with taking care of my sister. We still got to talk to him while he was in these places; he definitely made every effort to still be there for the family.
Right before my senior year, it felt like my entire life had gotten uprooted. I took it really, really hard when we moved. I was like I said, I felt lost. I felt very much like I’d just been washed away into the middle of the ocean or something. I felt very adrift. I was looking for something to help stabilize me, I guess. That’s when I first picked up a Bible and started reading, not really knowing what I was looking for, but thinking that at least if I knew the passages, if I knew this, the story behind the book, so to speak, that it would give me something to hold on to.
Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of understanding who or what God was. I was raised very much without religion, so I knew God was there. I didn’t have a very strong foundation for my faith from my childhood. We didn’t go to church, really at all. My mother is a Roman Catholic, and my dad is a Nazarene. They wanted to raise me to know who God was, but for me to decide at some point which path I wanted to follow in terms of practicing faith.
I got some comfort out of knowing that God was there and that He did, in fact, have a plan and that He is the reason for everything happening the way it happens.
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Finding The Church
I was first introduced to the Church Of Christ by my friend in high school when she invited me to the Church’s Centennial Celebration. Shortly after, she invited me and encouraged me to go to a worship service in the local[congregation] in Oklahoma, and from there, a Bible study to really learn about what the Church was about and see where things went from there.
My first impression was very positive, if a little nerve-racking. The first lesson was a very intense one. It was about marriage in the Church Of Christ, and how members of the Church weren’t to be engaged in romantic relationships with those who were not members of the Church. I’d attended services for other churches before, and at those other churches, there’d be people talking in the background, whispering. That first impression of the Church [Of Christ], welcoming me, and they were there to worship. It was refreshing to see that everybody seemed to genuinely want to be there. Made me realize that this was going to be a commitment if I was going to be doing this.
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Facing Challenges
Some of the challenges that I faced before, before I got baptized in the Church [Of Christ], is when I joined the Army because of where my advanced training was, in San Angelo, Texas. There was only a group worship service there. The worship service was an hour after my curfew, and I couldn’t find anybody to go with me. So after 11 months in training, I finally got to go home for a couple of weeks to get ready for my first duty station, and I finally got to go back to a worship service.
All of the lessons or all of the worship services around the world, they’re all the same that anyone would be hearing in that same worship service anywhere else. The only apprehensions that I had was or stemmed from the resistance that I got from my parents about joining the Church.
They didn’t feel like I was making a good decision in it because the Church [Of Christ] was so young, so to speak, compared to other churches and religions. My mom, being Roman Catholic, definitely wasn’t a big fan of the idea of the Church [Of Christ] going so far against her beliefs that she was raised with.
I didn’t let my parents dissuade me from attending the Bible lessons and the worship services, regardless of what they said, because I told them that I had or that they had raised me to make my own choices and that this was what I was choosing. And I wanted to keep going to the Bible lessons and the worship services for the sake of learning more about God and the Church Of Christ. My ultimate goal was to eventually be baptized within the Church Of Christ.
Eventually, as I went through the Bible studies, as I went through the worship services, it very much became for my own salvation. And I realized just what a gift I had been handed that had been presented to me. This was definitely the right answer, and that regardless of whatever happened, I would make this commitment to joining the Church.
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Church That Feels Like Home
The Church Of Christ offered me stability, especially at the time I felt I was very much missing from my life. I felt very much like I needed something to hold on to, and that’s what led me to look for something more permanent than a place.
My Story of Faith is patience and perseverance. To the people who say that they don’t need a church as long as they believe in God, I say that I thought the same for quite a while. I thought that as long as I believed, as long as I knew who God was, at least that I would be saved.
I say to anybody who thinks that all they need is to believe, I would encourage them to give the Church Of Christ a chance to see what it’s like knowing God instead of just believing it.
Knowing that I’m not alone is a truly comforting experience, and it’s something that has gotten me through a lot of trials living in this world. It’s a feeling that I hope everyone comes to know.
It’s important for me to make it to heaven, because I feel like I’ve been through enough here, that the only place that’s left that’s good. I feel like I need to know that there is, in fact, something good at the end that we’re all waiting for you.
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STORIES OF FAITH
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