FOR STARTERS
The distorted and damaging lies about Jesus that convince nonbelievers to reject the free gift of salvation through the grace of God are reasons in themselves to write passionately about the truth of Christianity. Spiritual rebirth (which occurs by faith in Christ leading to receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit through water baptism) completely changes our spiritual sense of sight in which we view ourselves and others, and is a prerequisite to understanding the Word of God as He intended it. Christianity (salvation through Christ’s resurrection) begins there—not with rituals or doing good works.
INCENTIVIZED BY DOUBT AND QUESTIONS TO SEEK OUT GOD
We all have questions, we all experience doubt, and we all feel strong emotions about some of what we read in the Bible. This is not only a healthy response, it’s also very human; however, our questions should lead us to seek answers, not cause us to run away from what stirred the questions in the first place. Our doubts should incentivize us to dive as deep as the rabbit hole goes to find what God has for us to know about Himself and His love for us. It’s truly unnecessary for doubt, on its own, to be the end-all-be-all reason to believe God doesn’t exist, or that the Bible is false. Our feelings about what we read should be challenging us to prayerfully reflect and acknowledge that not only are feelings not facts, but if God’s truth is causing difficult feelings to rise up within us, there may be something more important deep down that God is trying to bring to the light.
Ultimately, we’re resisting having difficult issues exposed before God because it hurts to have lies pulled out of us that we’ve been convinced were truths all along.
A NEW HEART, A GIFT FROM GOD
To have our reality pulled out from under us is… I think fair to say in some sense—traumatizing. But God doesn’t leave us without a foundation. He simply wants us to see that we are made by Him, that we need Him, and that without Him we are already without foundation (1 Corinthians 3:11).
Resisting God is like delaying, or altogether rejecting—a heart transplant when we’re told we’ll die without a new one, even when we’re informed that the new heart is free.
Why would anyone say no to a free new heart to prevent premature death? Why would we want to die when God has created us to live and has even granted us the free gift of salvation by placing faith in Jesus Christ? The two examples are analogously parallel, and yet many of us treat the invitation to faith in Christ as though it were a bribe, meant to fool us into being naive enough to drink poison. The real poison, however, is disbelieving God is real when we are told we have the choice to read the Bible and believe for ourselves whether the invitation is a bribe, or oppositely, a warning from God that without Him, we are eternally condemned by our sin already (John 3:18).
SOME RABBIT-HOLE QUESTIONS
As a Christian, I ponder and meditate on heavy-hitting questions every single day (not only these, but here’s a good start):
What does God want from me today?
How can I be closer to God through my faith in Jesus today in a way that’s different from yesterday?
Is what I’m doing and the ways I’m failing hurting my relationship more than I realize, or am I just listening to the Devil more than the Holy Spirit?
Do people reject Jesus because of stigmas and lies, or because they have been convinced it’s more important to have what they want while disregarding the ‘whys’ behind all that they do?
Do others not consider the possibility that if life after death exists, then our beliefs and actions here directly impact the destination of the part of us that lives on?
SELF-APPOINTED PURPOSE VS GOD’S SOVEREIGN PLAN
If we won’t choose to hold onto a belief that causes us to fight for a reason to live for God—and not for ourselves—won’t we end up living in the spiritual blindness of a monotonous day-after-day lifestyle, disregarding the contemplation of what a future holds for such a purposeless existence? Is life not truly purposeless without God? Were we really born into an existence to please ourselves at any cost, even at the cost of others’ quality of life—just to end up back in the ground? Do we really make up our own purpose by believing we’re capable of choosing a purpose that’s not narcissistic at best, or depraved at worst? Isn’t our only hope at living a genuinely meaningful life directed by leaning into the truth that a personal, loving, righteous God is in control and has created a purpose for each of us from before the beginning of time (Ephesians 1:4)?
Think about this: our refusal to acknowledge that God planned out our purpose for us not only reduces the quality of our lives, but it negatively impacts all the lives that God had planned for us to positively impact while giving glory to Him and not to any other false god that we place our worship in. We fail to glorify the one true God by thinking ourselves wise, and foolishly assuming our flawed nature has some sort of built-in capacity to know better than God’s omniscience.
HOW MANY EXCUSES BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE?
How lost must we be to pull away from these questions and think just any lifestyle will do. How many excuses must we make in order to numb out of view the perspective that God’s purpose for us is more meaningful than any self-appointed purpose we could believe in, even if God’s plan for us involves pain and suffering (biblically referred to as “pruning” (see John 15:2)) so that we can bless others and know God more intimately as a result?
We could say, “Yeah, but—” all day and one day we don’t wake up in our physical bodies—instead, we wake up in Hades (a place of torment prior to the lake of fire in Revelation, after the White Throne Judgment) because we chose not to believe in Jesus, and we made every excuse under the sun to push away our Creator and not know His love for us or understand the nature of His love for everyone else. Every day God knocks on the door of our spirit, and each day we deny Him, our heart hardens (Revelation 3:20). And… God allows it, because He loves us enough to let us hate Him or ignore Him, even for decades and decades, because that’s what unconditional love looks like when we understand it from God’s point of view. He doesn’t force us to love Him back when we feel merit in denying Him. He loves us by letting us make our choice.
GOD ALLOWS US TO REJECT HIM BY HIS LOVE
Nonbelievers say God isn’t all-good despite the fact that He allows us to deny Him. He allows this, even after He sent Jesus to die in order to save us from eternal separation from Him. Hell is not an eternal destination He created us for, but it’s the one we deserve, even as it’s not the one He wants us to have.
When we deny Him day after day, scoffing at the Bible and blaming historical apostates for abusing people in the name of God, many of us consider our reasons to be sound enough to claim there must not be a God… but, do we even consider for a moment the role of our choice to sin over our choice to be made righteous through faith? Even further, do we consider the influence of the Devil on that choice we each make?
GOD DID EVERYTHING HE COULD DO, EVEN FROM OUTSIDE OF TIME
Many of us toss the Bible aside and refuse to be humbled. We act like the Israelites themselves who were continually disciplined by the Lord, time after time as He convicted them to repent. Finally they would listen and come back to Him, only to fall away again with some recycled false god worship. We are the same today! And yet, He sent Jesus despite our consistent failures—because of His love and mercy. He never gives up on us even though we give up on Him, time and again. We mistakenly think God doesn’t care, or that He doesn’t exist, or we question whether He is actually all-powerful—even though He made His plans for us before the creation of the world, and already decided how to save as many souls as possible without forcing us to love Him back, even though He knew choosing Him was better for us.
CHRISTIANITY CANNOT BE FAKED IF WE KNOW GOD
Christianity is not complex, it’s simple. But in order to understand its simplicity, we must read the Bible. We must know God, and we must be humbled into recognizing where we stand as flawed, sinful beings who are more easily swayed towards sin than righteousness.
Christianity is not defined by church attendance or Bible studies. It’s the way we pursue God in our hearts and the way we love others, no matter where we are or who we’re around. How we love others is the floorboard of Christianity, based on Christ’s love for us. Christianity isn’t just Sunday service, and it’s not just the fact that we pray; it’s a lifestyle, an identity, and it’s something one cannot fake! No one can fake Christianity, because no one will genuinely love another person and hate God. No one will go out of their way to serve another person and despise the essence of God, because God is love (1 John 4:7-8). The difference is that the people who love others but claim not to believe in God simply don’t understand Him. They think God is like the Devil, because the Devil has twisted God’s truth, and they took the bait (because they didn’t know God’s Word).
MISTAKING THE DEVIL FOR GOD
When people claim to know how to love without believing in God, we’re merely (and falsely) presupposing, or projecting, the Devil’s attributes on God, thinking we’ve discovered God’s character flaw and are finally identifying the correct enemy. But if we set the enemy free, and then turn, reject and condemn the innocent one to death, does that make us innocent even if we feel convinced we’re right? Isn’t that what happens when we condemn the notion of God’s existence and deny Him based on the lies of Satan?
If someone has questions about the faith, we should be lovingly yet boldly encouraged to find the answers from the Bible. Let us accept Jesus as Lord because we recognize our need for a Savior is more important than our personal agendas. Let us be honest and accept that we don’t know everything, but we know of the God who does, and His name is Jehovah, Jesus the Christ; Yahweh, and He is sovereign over all creation (aka “firstborn”). Let us come to our knees and finally commit to stop letting our stubborn hearts lose sight of the only love that saves. Jesus Christ is King over all; by His name, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess His Lordship (Philippians 2:10-11).
SEEK HIM WHILE HE IS NEAR
Let us not wait until it’s too late to give our lives to Him. He is worthy of our praise and our worship. He is worthy! Praise His name—no other God but Jehovah.
Isaiah 55:6-7
“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.”
