Choosing To Believe

In 1991 I had an encounter with God. I met Him. I’ve been unable to doubt His existence since then.

I am 100% convinced of a number of things:

1. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the One True God who created Everything.
2. God Created Mankind (Adam and Eve) on this planet a long time ago, and He had a purpose for them.
3. Man blew it big time – and I mean really screwed up – by disobeying God in the Garden of Eden.
4. God holds man responsible for his choices and their are temporal and eternal consequences for those choices.
5. God did not want man to be lost.
6. God incarnated. Jesus Christ – 100% man and 100% God – was literally born to a young virgin girl named Mary about 2,000 years ago. He literally walked the earth and performed miracles and taught a new way of life. This all happened in real time/space/history – these events are not just inspiring fictional stories, they are true and factual.
7. Jesus literally was crucified by the Romans and paid off the wrath of God as well as the human conscience and satisfied eternal justice once and for all.
8. He literally came back to life and left the tomb 3 days later.
9. He appeared to his followers and proved He was alive.
10. He went to Heaven where He is right now, interceding for all of His followers.
11. He will literally return and complete the establishment of His Kingdom. All the Kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of God! This is not poetry. This is real.

Come Lord Jesus!

So… What in the world am I going on about all of that for?

Well, I have been reintroduced to the world of the Atheist and the Agnostic over the past several years. For many years previously I spent a lot of my time in 3rd world countries with people who are already convinced about the Supernatural World. But recently, via blogs and in person, I have been facing the kind of folks I knew back in the 1980’s.

I am clearly different now. I am not intimidated at all. I feel no obligation to prove anything to anyone. In fact, sometimes I just feel weary when I deal with those who claim their is no reason or evidence for Christian Faith.

Here is what it comes down to. Faith is not “blind.” Faith is based upon reasons and choices and everyone puts their faith in something! Everyone.

When you get up in the morning, every second of the day you are putting your faith in certain assumptions just to live! I need to wear clothing to keep warm. I need to eat food to have energy. I am unlikely to go floating off into the Universe because of gravity. Their are physical laws all around me that I am trusting – Friction, Inertia, etc.

For some bizarre reason Atheists have decided that only the Natural/Material world is real. They have chosen to have faith in the natural world. Of course, the ones that I have met are very convinced that their senses and “scientific” measurements and the like are “evidence” of what they have chosen to believe.

And indeed those things are reason and evidence.

So every human being puts his faith in certain thing based on various reasons and evidences. It could be as simple as “my dad told me and I believed him.” (Testimony is evidence!) It could be as ordinary as “the same thing happens over and over again so I believe it.”

If we wanted to, we could refuse to believe anything and fry our brains on chemicals because nothing is real anyway.

God has supplied us with plenty of evidence to follow Jesus Christ.

1. Creation – all of creation around us points to a Creator. We can choose to believe that, or choose to not believe it.
2. The Testimony of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is convicting the whole world. He is there testifying to everyone on the inside that God is and that God can be known.
3. The Testimony of the Historical Writings of the Holy Scriptures. They can be studied. They can be analyzed with questions like “do these documents really contain the thoughts of the alleged authors?” It can all be stacked up and thought through. Each one of us will make a choice as we investigate.
4. The Testimony of Changed Lives around us. People Changed by God.
5. If a miracle is seen or experienced, a miracle is a testimony.

So… Here we are reading this really long post together. Their is a ton of “evidence” out there to be investigated and considered. Each of us is able to make a choice: What will I believe?

I have thrown my lot in with God. The evidence is just too overwhelming for me. I feel compassion for those who choose to believe otherwise. The loud and powerful testimony of the Presence of the Holy Spirit speaks most eloquently of all.

In the end, God is obvious. His existence is obvious. His ways are displayed throughout the Universe. (Natural Law and the like!)

Every individual who has ever lived, lives now, or will live is bombarded with the Story of God all around.

What will you choose?

Choose God! Choose Jesus! Choose life!