Why I Believe: Ongoing Relationship With God

I am a believer in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in His son, Jesus Christ. This is the fifth of a six part series about Why I Believe.
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Forty-five years ago some people told me that I could have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I thought that was a weird idea, but deep down my soul hungered for it. They also shared with me a Bible verse, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33) In other words, if I would put God’s interests and goals first in my life, he would take care of my physical needs. So I decided to test this promise and made getting to know God and following His promptings the focus of my life. Since then my family and I have always had everything we needed, and at the same time, I have developed a close relationship with God and His son Jesus Christ.

For years God’s communication to me was through the words in the Bible, words of other followers of Christ, and gut feelings where I would have a vague, but strong sense of what God wanted me to do. Gradually I have learned to listen for and recognize direct communication from Him. 

When He talks to me, His utterances typically consist of very few non-audible words in my mind, but they are accompanied by very clear ideas that parallel and elaborate on the words. Sometimes these ideas are very complex. In His communication, His attitude and demeanor are very much like those of Jesus as revealed in the Bible.

I have learned that there are some topics that He is eager to talk about, which are very similar to what at Jesus tended to talk about in the Bible:

• God’s character
• My character
• What He is doing, and my part in it
• What the Bible says
• How I should treat others
• What or whom He wants me to pray for

Sometimes I wonder if God is really talking to me or whether I am just imagining it all. Then I think back and remember our many conversations, and the only way to explain them is that God has really been talking to me. Communications from God have a consistent high quality; they have a higher quality and a richer content than my own thoughts:

He knows me better than I know myself and loves me more than I love myself. When He confronts me about some of my poor choices, He does it in a way that I instantly know He is absolutely right. I know I was wrong, but I don't feel condemned.

He is smarter and wiser than I am, sometimes giving me complex plans or designs.

He cares about other people more than I do, showing me how He wants me to treat others. I was created in His image, and He expects me to live up to that high standard.

He frequently pushes me outside of my comfort zone to do things that either I don't want to do or I doubt are possible to do. When I do what He tells me to do, the outcomes are consistently good. There may be some discomfort and confusion in the short run, but the long term outcomes are good and sometimes amazing.

Of all the reasons I have for believing in God, my relationship with Him is the most important. He is my best friend. The reasons I related in previous posts got me started believing, but this ongoing relationship is the anchor of my faith.

Why I Believe: The Persistence of Israel

I am a believer in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in His son, Jesus Christ. This is the fourth of a six part series about Why I Believe.
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In the middle of the second millennium BC, the nation of Israel was born. God made a covenant with the people and gave them the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. But they have not always lived in their land.

Twice they were driven from their home country, first by the Assyrians and Babylonians in the sixth and eighth centuries BC, and then by the Romans in the first century AD. Since then there have been concerted efforts to get rid of them: Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Russian pogroms, and the German Holocaust, to name a few. Yet for nearly 1900 years, from AD 70 to 1948, the nation persisted without a home country. Even though they were scattered throughout the world, they maintained their religion, culture, language, alphabet, and ancient history books. Against all odds, they maintained their identity as a single people, a single nation, hoping to return to their homeland. That is miraculous. No other nation come close to this experience.

In the eighth century BC, the prophet Isaiah prophesied that God would bring back the scattered nation to their homeland from “the four corners of the earth.” During the 19th and 20th centuries, Jews returned to Israel from 77 different countries.

When Israel declared its independence in 1948, this tiny country was immediately invaded by armies from five neighboring countries, whose goal was to eradicate its people. They survived. Twice more they were attacked by an alliance of neighboring countries, and again they survived.

The Old Testament prophets declared that the land of Israel would become an arid wasteland, and then it would become fruitful again. When Mark Twain visited the land in the 1860’s, he reported that it was “desolate” and also “rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary.” Today it is extremely fruitful. Not only that, it is the most prosperous and stable country in the Middle East, defying all odds against it. This is a miracle.

Why I Believe: The Integrity of the Bible

I am a believer in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in His son, Jesus Christ. This is the third of a six part series about Why I Believe.
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The Bible, my primary source of information about God, has integrity. It has integrity in all three senses of the word: it is honest, it is an integrated whole, and it is sound.

The Bible is honest and authentic. The people in the stories are realistic in that they have real personalities and real problems. Even though the stories are thousands of years old, I can relate to many of them, because human nature has not changed. When the writers relate stories about people and nations, they are honest and include the bad along with the good. They faithfully record both moral victories and moral failures. The writers continually point out bad behavior in their own societies, and challenge people to change.

The Bible is an integrated whole, even though it is a collection of 66 smaller books written by over 40 writers over a period of 1300 years. The writings consistently build on common themes like justice and mercy, authority and submission, wisdom and foolishness, love and compassion, faithfulness and rebellion, and many more. The writings also include mysterious themes like the anointed one, the son of man, the son of God, the sacrificial lamb, and the Day of the Lord. Multiple authors contribute to these themes, but leave them partially developed until the time of Jesus Christ, when they all come together. There are other themes that are introduced in the early chapters of the first book and brought to closure in the last chapters of the last book.

The Bible is historically sound. It contains a continuous story stretching over thousands of years about a relationship between God and human beings. Each writer builds on what earlier writers have written and their stories mesh well with other histories of the Mideast. Since the lands of the Bible are extremely rich in archaeological treasures, there are many findings that give support or credence to the historical and cultural backgrounds presented in the Bible.

The Bible is unique. I have found nothing comparable to it.

Why I Believe: Miracles of Answered Prayer

I am a believer in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in His son, Jesus Christ. This is the second of a six part series about Why I Believe. 
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A friend of our family had been suffering from multiple sclerosis for a number of years and was slowly deteriorating. Many were praying for her. One Thursday my wife and I went to her home to visit her and saw that she was mostly bedridden because of the pain and the weakness caused by the disease. Three days later she came bounding into our Sunday school class full of energy and with no sign of the disease. She had been healed.

One of the reasons that I believe in God is because of miraculous healings like this that I have witnessed personally or heard about from reliable sources. The one thing the healings all had in common, was that they all followed prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, whether there had been many prayers or just a few. I have personally experienced sudden healing three times in my own life.

Twenty five years ago, I came down with a severe case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Among its many symptoms were extremely low energy and post exertional malaise (PEM). If I exerted too much energy at a time, within a few hours the PEM would set in with extreme weakness and virus like symptoms, that could last anywhere from a day or two to months. Many people prayed for me. Three years into the disease, a crew of young people volunteered to help replace the siding on the second story of our house, a week long project. They were eager, but unskilled so I had to invest energy in doing prep work and managing them. At the end of the first day of doing a little prep work, I expected to suffer severe PEM for several days. But the next morning, there was no PEM. So, I worked a little harder that day. For the rest of the week my energy steadily increased until I was working as hard as anyone else. I had been healed.

It is true that there are far more cases where people were not healed after many impassioned prayers, and I can't explain that, but I choose to base my faith on things that I see God doing rather than on what He doesn’t do.