It's important to step back in the midst of the confusion and craziness of every day life and reflect on what you feel, what you want and what you believe. Below, I've reflected on what I believe, why I believe it and when it has been challenged. I strongly encourage you to reflect in the same way after reading my reflections.

I believe in the power of love, leadership and pride. I believe that the importance is not what or whom one leads, but the positive imprints that are left behind when they have finished. I believe in Jesus and John 3:16. I believe in the power of salvation and the idea that achieving this salvation isn’t as difficult or scary as many people think. I believe in happiness, and I believe in the idea that full joy can be achieved. I believe that all of us need to believe in something, and use this belief to push us forward in our everyday lives. But overall, what I believe is that if our beliefs are truly our beliefs, then they should not be easily swayed. With that said, my core belief that I’ll be focusing on is the belief that I will always pick first in an order of importance: my faith.

Throughout my experience, I know that it isn’t easy to stick to one core belief. It’s often challenged, and people make your beliefs seems foolish. With that said, I will share an experience in which my beliefs have been challenged.

My Christian faith is something that is often a prime target for those looking for a target, or for someone who is closed off to the idea of this type of religion. As most everyone knows, kids in high school can be vicious. The things that they can say, do and spread around can truly be heartless. I’m very vocal about what I believe so that if someone were wrestling with their faith, they would know that they could always come to me. This happened often, but the contrary also happened – when people who were closed off to this decided to challenge my beliefs. People would provide me with “proof," that what I believed was wrong, and they would attempt to embarrass me with what they had to say. At first, it was definitely difficult to combat these various challenges, because as a freshman in high school, I didn’t have everything figured out religion-wise either, for I’m still always growing. I knew WHAT I believed, but I didn’t know how or why I believed it, so I was struggling with how to prove to others that I was in fact correct. One afternoon at school, there was a group of boys who now know Jesus in a similar way that I do, but didn’t at the time. They approached me, challenged me with words and actions that a sophomore in high school at the time shouldn’t have had to face, and asked me questions that I knew they truly wanted answers to – they just didn’t have the proper delivery. In addition to this, nobody around really cared to assist in the process either, for people seemed afraid to challenge this group with such strength and curiosity. However, at that point, I knew what I believed and I wasn’t about to show any signs of weakness in the process. So, I stuck to what I had told everyone, that I believed in what the Bible said, and that God’s not dead. I told them that regardless to what they believed, my beliefs weren’t going to be swayed. My persistence eventually caused them to back down out of weariness and they didn’t challenge my beliefs again after that incident. Hopefully, I was some sort of answer to questions they may have been having, for as I stated before, they now feel very differently about the beliefs they had at the time.

Through that occurrence, I gained another belief. Never allow someone’s inability to understand affect your confidence in what you believe. As I mentioned before, if our beliefs are truly our beliefs, then they should not be easily swayed. So, stand firm in your beliefs, and ensure that your beliefs are known, for great things can come out of the awareness that someone around you has strength in something that you have strength in as well.

This, I believe.