Feeding Your Faith Online

By Gary Orlando

If your life is so full of worldly pursuits that you barely have enough time to make it to church on Sunday, you can still spend time studying, learning, and strengthening your faith. Bible study, religious studies, and even fellowship organizations can be searched for and researched on the Internet in the comfort of your own home, according to your own schedule. With all the churches, organizations, and material available on the Internet for people to learn about religion, it is easiest done online. In our busy lives today it can be very difficult to set schedules to attend Bible study group meetings, seminars, or classes dealing with religious topics. With long hours at jobs, family obligations, and the kids’ school and sporting events schedules, it may be darn near impossible even though it may be quite important to you. And some Bible study programs can be almost militant if you have a lot of irons in the fire outside of religious studies. There is even one very prominent Bible study group that says that if you miss more than two classes, you’re out—finished! You have to wait a whole year before you can rejoin the class and restart where you left off. Their opinion is that you must not be interested and committed enough to learning if you have to miss more than two classes, and there are no exceptions.

So what is the best way for a person to fit religious study into a hectic schedule? The Internet can come to the rescue by helping you learn about various philosophies, histories, and opinions, and using that information to strengthen your religious beliefs. In other words, you can find others out there that may feel the same way you do. It is so much easier and faster to search through online Bibles and concordances than it could ever be to thumb through the pages of a book. Online concordances and dictionaries are free, and have excellent search utilities to help you find exactly the information you’re looking for very quickly You can also find every popular version of the Bible posted on the Internet in its entirety, whether it is NIV, St. James, The Living Bible, or that old standard, the King James—it is all out there just for the perusing. A lot of local churches also have an Internet presence, which would save you some time if you’re looking for a local church. You can spend some time online to see if they measure up to your own ideals and beliefs before you visit in person.

Many of the best and most popular religious programs on TV and the radio, such as Focus on the Family and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, also have good websites. The more well known organizations on the Internet are genuinely interested in the social well being of everyone, so they are packed full of information to get your spiritual side thinking. So even with your busy schedule, you can study and learn at night when the kids are in bed or before you go to work. Thanks to the Internet, learning about God and Jesus to strengthen your faith and continue your spiritual growth has never been easier. The links shown below will give you a starting point. From there, the rest is up to you.