Welcome to Christianity.com. My name is Michelle Lazurek. I'm an author, a literary agent, and I am a Christian. Here’s why.
I was raised Catholic up until the age of 18. I went to Catholic school, attended Catholic church, and my grandmother had a big hand in raising me in the faith. But around my junior year of high school, I started having some questions. I wondered why I had to confess my sins to a priest, or why I needed to pay a quarter to pray for a sick relative.
These questions filled my mind, along with others—especially during a religion class where we were discussing Easter and Lent. These moments started drawing me closer to Jesus. Around that same time, I had a mutual friend who hadn’t been raised in any church at all, and he began to evangelize to me—or witness to me.
We had conversations—okay, maybe heated arguments—about Catholicism versus Christianity. But the one thing I couldn’t ignore, no matter what we debated, was how well he knew the Bible. I had been raised in the Catholic church and school my entire life, so why didn’t I know the Bible like he did?
I remember getting off the phone one night and thinking to myself, What else don’t I know about my own faith? Soon after, a woman from a Christian church invited me to her home for a Bible study. That experience became the catalyst for my faith journey.
During that Bible study, she showed me John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” Before that, in John 3:3, Nicodemus is asking questions, and Jesus tells him, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Nicodemus is confused—Why? How? He doesn’t understand why or how we need to be born again.
Then one day, during a service at that same Christian church, the pastor gave an altar call. I felt this strong compulsion to go up and pray. That same woman from the Bible study prayed with me, and I accepted Christ. That was 28 years ago—and I’ve never looked back.
It’s been an adventure—a ride full of ups and downs, sometimes more downs than ups—but I’m incredibly grateful to be a Christian.
When I was 20, two years after becoming a Christian, I told my parents. They were devastated. They wanted me to return to Catholicism, and when I said no, they threw me out of the house. For them, it wasn’t just religion—it was identity. Our family had deep roots in Irish Catholic tradition, and to them, I was turning my back on our heritage.
It all came to a head the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 1998, when they asked me to leave. But the same Christian church where I had given my life to the Lord stepped in. A family there welcomed me into their home and let me stay until I got married in 2000.
All that to say—I’ve learned firsthand that Jesus is real. He is a living God who loves, protects, and cares for His children. And I’ve seen the hands and feet of Jesus through His people.
Thank you for listening. Keep exploring Christianity.com. Be blessed—because God’s not finished with our stories.
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