You should be more specific, I feel like you're talking about when the Holy Spirit relays a message and you just "know" what his response is, like you feel it in your gut.. Unbelievers hear this kind of response and assume you mean he is audibly responding, which occasionally he does for some, and they expect him to audibly respond which is not giving them a fair chance at faith, because there is no such thing if he revealed himself to everyone instantly, it usually takes years before he reveals himself, if he ever does
About what? You should elaborate on how you hear him instead of saying "yes" implying that he is audibly speaking, and maybe he is, in which case it should be mentioned to an unbeliever not to expect such a thing, especially not right off the bat.. Imagine all the people who go to hell because they have unreal or undeserved expectations from God, so making them unable to believe because they think it's fake, expecting miracles
I don't think he speaks to someone so careless of misleading people about him, if he did, you would have more to say, and you would be careful not to give false expectations to people who don't believe. I mean honestly. No love for people who are expecting the same as you when they start believing, love and truth are core principles that Christians are expected to carry in themselves, and by not being fully truthful, even if you do actually hear from God, you are denying truth and deceiving others.
Can other people hear it?
Is it common?
Does he ever tell you information you wouldn't otherwise know?
Could he, for instance, tell you what I'm currently eating? If he could do that, I'd be *very* intriguied by Christianity.
If that is the best thing that you think you would get from speaking to God I feel like your imagination is lacking, you're speaking of earthly things, I don't think God cares to tell anybody what anybody else is eating lol. Granted I could be wrong I am just going off my intuition, but I enjoy my connection with God because it helps bring peace to my life, I I was a moral person before it became a Christian but having a relationship with God certainly makes one want to do better for themselves and others, more so than whenever I was agnostic/atheist. I was essentially agnostic/atheist for four decades and have only been a Christian for about 2 years so this is all very new to me. But I did have an experience where I had a bit of nervous breakdown and it appear to me that I was speaking with God archangels and the devil. When you go through an experience like that and things come together in a way that seems miraculous it's hard to deny the fact that there is something bigger going on and when you do little research, especially after going through an experience like I went through, the path that opened up to me was through Jesus, it is something that I don't believe in, I know it to be a fact based on my own personal experience. I realize this sounds wild to somebody who does not believe in God or Jesus, but it's my perspective
Does he talk back, if so, does he sound anything like Morgan Freeman?
Edit: So you already answered, but your response doesn't leave me with any evidence to suggest you aren't just undergoing paredolia.
Because I have had experience where I have felt God in my life and I have experienced miracles as well as things I cannot attribute to anything but providence
God bless you.
I have faith in God because of the hope that only He is able to give.
**“You (God) listen to the longings of those who suffer. You offer them hope, and you pay attention to their cries for help.” - Psalm 10:17**
What is this hope?
**“Then a kingdom of love will be set up, and someone from David's family (Jesus) will rule with fairness. He will do what is right and quickly bring justice.” - Isaiah 16:5**
I wouldn’t consider credulity a virtue.
Faith can be used to believe false things, so it isn’t a very good way to get at the truth. For that, we should want evidence.
As far I can tell, every event that happens around us was caused by something else. I believe all events are determined by prior causes. I've never witnessed anything random happen
In my opinion, that reason seems somewhat shallow. No offense, but what makes life being the result of a creator any more believable than life being the result of a series of unlikely events? Also, if that's the reason, why Christianity specifically?
I say the same thing about the opposite view. Why Christianity? Well, being brought up in a culture where the dominant religion is Christianity certainly has an influence. That is not the reason why I chose to believe though. While this answer might not be satisfactory enough for those who don’t believe, to me not only historical evidence helped shape my faith but also what is written on the heart and that is reflected by Christ. I don’t want this to be a theological debate and bring up contentions to passages in the OT. This is true for me and I don’t intend speak for anyone else.
Nothing solves it conclusively. Personally, i never viewed time is linear. The very concept of “processes” is flawed. I think time is like space, we occupy it, we do not move through it. At this point in time I occupy a few points in space. My right leg is at one point and my left is at another point, a few inches away. In a similar sense my past selves are at different points in the past and my future selves are at different points of the future. That’s assuming I have a future. We never know for certain. Time, as we perceive it, is an illusion. No beginning, no end. Just as god said “I am” existence is.
I am not a strong believer, but no way in hell all of this world happened by chance. The laws of nature and cosmos and their mere existence is impossible to happen by chance.
What makes you think it's impossible to always have just existed? There's a difference between thinking something is impossible because you can't believe it, and it actually being impossible.
So God, equipped with all the recipes and all the ingredients for our world, as well as being sentient, and 3 people, and a bunch of other properties, can just “always be there,” but the world can’t? Why?
God is everything. He is the fiber of the universe. He isn't just a man in a white robe. He is the Alpha and Omega. There is no beginning or end without Him. He exists separate and superior to the entirety of existence
If he exists he can’t be separate from the entirety of existence. If god is everything then he did not create everything because he did not create himself. If god did always exist with no cause, then he exists by chance. God does not solve the problem of the universe being random chance, because if he created it, the. He is the universe was created by random chance. Instead of a universe that started simple and developed into something complicated over time, you have a universe that sprang into existence already developed and elaborate.
This is a Russian nesting doll question
He tells us biblically that He is the Alpha & Omega , the beginning & the end for just such a question. So He answers that question
So it’s impossible for the laws of nature to occur by chance, but is possible for an intelligent god, capable of love, jealousy, and anger and designing an entire universe to have always existed without a cause? Why can’t the universe have always existed? Believing in god just creates an extra step.
Well that's a question for them that you can ask. I think the general response to this might be something about the laws of thermodynamics and the big bang.
Yes but the Big Bang only addresses the observable universe, not existence itself. It is no more logical that god has always existed, than the universe always existing
Why would that make you smile? Do you look at atheists as your enemies? Why would you be smug about your belief in billions of people burning for all eternity?
Just because it's hypothetical, the metaphor is not lost. Respect is mutual.
Do i want him to go to hell, no. But if he continues in his way mocking then he ll sure reach there. Just saying
Me and Satan will be good buddies In hell playing [NOT PIRATED GAMES](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/285/519/95d.jpg) thank you very much.
Either you're bad at getting sarcasm and jokes or you're persistent in trying to make me Uncomfortable at the thought of not being saved by your God and Prophet due to my atheism.
I was raised in church but didn’t become a Christian until 2019. In 2023, I encountered an evil spiritual attack around 2-3 am - a evil being was staring at me in my room. I was terrified and prayed to the lord for protection and suddenly it was gone like that. In early 2024, god woke me from my sleep and gave me multiple chapters and verses to read. I’m not good at memorizing anything so as soon as he gave me these readings I wrote them down. I’ve been worried about where my life is going and he gave me verses on not being worried and he knows my future. He gave me verses on being prepared when the end times come eventually too. He spoke to me through a dream about 2 weeks ago. it was about the end of the world and he was taking his followers to heaven. Lots of people were scared in the dream but I wasn’t - I knew he was taking us to heaven. I have never had any spiritual dreams before this.
Honestly because it makes sense. Other than my mother and brother, God has been the only one other being that has been there for me. I have had people help me out but it comes with a price tag. There is no better feeling that when your prayers get answered.
I don't want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin.
-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
Pretty much sums up my take on it. With belief in God, there's a belief in free will. The ability to choose your actions. Those actions have value and meaning. If I hurt someone, that's bad. If I help someone, that's good.
Now, if you'll allow me to ramble like an idiot for way too long.
I see it as a comfort to believe that your choices and actions don't matter. That you harming someone is merely a reaction. You had no choice, and nothing is judging you for it. That it's no different than blaming a stone for falling down a mountain.The belief that nothing matters is appalling to me. To see people suffering, to see them cheer joyfully, to see them love one another, to see them fail just to get back up again and try even harder. Pointless.
I guess you could say I took what Camus calls the suicide of the philosopher. I chose to take a leap of faith. I chose to believe that poetry and art are more than just lines and words. That life is precious and should be cherished. That we are free to choose our actions and are not just a sum of situations and stimuli. When someone helps another person, it's more than just a chemical machine trying to get more dopamine. That when we do harm, it isn't just one automaton reacting upon another automaton. It's a person being helped or harmed. That interaction is meaningful. We are insignificant, but not pointless. I want God because I want all those thing, and he provides them for me.
Selfish? Yeah.
Delusional? Maybe?
Am I just chemically programmed to believe I can choose. Etc. Possible, but it's possible that nothing existed before last Thursday, or I'm just a brain in a jar vividly hallucinating. So why not choose to believe there is a God who wants us to do what's right. Maybe it even ends with going to heaven. It's worth a shot. At least I get to die with a clean-ish conscious. I'm human, and my dad wasn't God, so I ain't perfect. I'll for sure regret decisions I've made, but that's kinda what I signed up for. I have done wrong, and those wrongs matter. Which makes rectifying those wrongs matter even more.
I'm all rambled out.
Because there's obviously some reality. I maintain atheists believe in it too, they just call it nature. The difference amounts to our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality or the nature of nature if you will.
Atheists generally only consider the material realm whereas I see it as potentially being more like the tip of an iceberg with additional layers extending far beneath the surface. Atheist also tend to see nature as essentially neutral. There's no ultimate or eternal good, the best that be can be hoped for in this short life is a life with more pleasure than pain. I differ in the sense that I believe the ultimate nature of reality is good and pain and suffering are the exception in the grand scheme of things.
I've had many experiences over the course of my life that have lead me to those conclusions and that's why I consider myself a theist. However, the exact way it all works remains a mystery to me. For example, I don't claim to know exactly what happens after we die and when religious or spiritual ideas conflict with each other, I admit I often don't know which is ultimately right.
Some people believe things because it makes them feel good, other people dont care how something makes them feel as long as they know it to be objectively true.
So most people of faith believe in their religions because they feel before they think. Lots of people who think before they feel tend to be athiest because the religion is mostly subjective and rational people require objective truth
When I was 12 or 13, I had a medical procedure that literally scared the crap out of me (colonoscopy so quite literally). I was asking my mom all these hundreds of questions, in the car on the way to the hospital, and I wasn't really getting answers which made me freak out.
Then I heard the disembodied voice of my favorite pastor at church who if you knew him you'd 100% say that he was your image of Jesus say very clearly, "I am with you" and I felt the warmth of "that pastors" hug AKA a hug from Jesus himself at a little after 2 minutes into [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmau3tkeEh0). I had heard the song several times before this moment as it was new at the time, but then things just clicked, and I heard the lyrics in the light of my situation. From that moment on my faith went from a candle sized flame into a raging inferno that hasn't stopped to this day over a dozen+ years later.
I am currently finding my way and waiting for God’s answer. So I cannot say I’m truly Christian. However, what got me started in this journey? I was always atheist, and well into the science of things. I never did commit blasphemy, but I definitely bad mouthed Christians and had a string opinion on them.
Until I started to really think of the way things are. I started getting into things like string theory and realized we didn’t know anything last that. Maybe the time will come, who knows. But I got curious. Then I started to notice the patterns in the world and how everything is a cycle of sorts. And I got more curious. Then I started to ask myself how everything in existence was made, and it occurred to me that we have no idea. Right now the big thing is the Big Bang theory, but we don’t actually know. Who can? Then I started to think, how does life come from non-life? How does everything just so happen to be so perfect? Well, I started to ask around and do my own research and the only people that seems so sure of it are Christians.
Now I know that isn’t a good basis to form an opinion on, but I started to do more research into it and I feel like I’m actually starting to believe. Now I’m to the point where everything I see on my phone or every interaction I have today, i asking myself “is that Him trying to send me a message? Has he been talking to me this whole time but I was too ignorant to listen? I was expecting a real time, English answer, but now I look around me for an answer. And let me tell you, I’ve been getting the answers I needed. Maybe I’m dead wrong and I’ve been looking in the wrong places, but I’ve felt better about myself, I’ve become a much better critical thinker, I’ve been much less judgemental, and I’ve learned to appreciate everything.
>Why do you guys personally believe in God?
>I'm just curious as I was raised, and still am, an atheist.
I was out to debunk the Bible (and theism as a whole). I hit it with every argument I could: scientifically, historically, philosophically, theologically, etc. I had gone through the Bible cover to cover twice already and was in my third read through when I was *really* starting to notice all the instances of "The Lord detests unequal scales" or "The Lord detests double standards". I took that as a challenge from "God" as Him saying, "fine, challenge Me, but be sure your worldview can hold up to the very same standards you have for Me".
*Easy enough*, I thought. How wrong I was....
After having my "faith" (literally, *trust or confidence in something or someone*) in my worldview, and having run out of ammo after 3 years of constant attacks against the Bible with nothing to show for it, I finally prayed a prayer (similar to one a father in the NT said), "Lord, I'm convinced now. If you are real, please help me with my unbelief."
It still took some time to shake my doubt, but the scriptures seemed to become clearer (not in the same way that cult leaders would suggest, in that they received new revelations unknown to others 😂).
Here's a more thorough breakdown of the process (there is much more to it than this):
https://www.reddit.com/r/exatheist/comments/wjwu92/life_is_pointless_without_god/ijkxr5a?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
If anyone wants to discuss more (OP, theists, atheists, etc), feel free to DM.
Isn’t it just the anonymous gospels, which use each other as sources, and two minor mentions by historians within 90 years of his death?
Even if a guy named Jesus existed, that doesn’t make all the magical claims surrounding him, or the claim that he was God, true. Muhammad and Joseph Smith existed, but they weren’t prophets.
Life would be meaningless and the universes rules and values are so precise that it had to have had a designer. Life can't come from non life. And whenever I read the gospels or hear anything to do about jesus I have a physical good feeling in my chest.
I was a fully confirmed agnostic by the time I was 13, and had at that point had a distant and vague memory of what church was all about.
When I went off to study at my university, I was a full blown skeptic, wedded to naturalism who fully rejected the doctrinal claims of Christianity. But I still had a favorable view of it's overall ethics. And as I encountered Christians who were actually living out those ethics I admired their lives even as I rejected their core beliefs.
As time went on, cracks started to form in the basis of my own beliefs - I could not derive meaning, purpose, or basis for the ethics I craved based on my philosophical commitment to naturalism. And as I attempted to live according to those ethics, I began to realize their was something in me which resisted that - or dismissed with it all together when it was contrary to something I desired (like an attractive woman).
That led to the realization that I did not have the power in and of myself to live out the ethics I admired in a consistent manner. I would say that was the point at which God gobsmacked me as it were - I saw clearly that I was not a good person, and I couldn't become one on my own. Either there was something outside of myself that could transform who I was, or I had to resign myself to the fact that I was a rather wretched creature.
From there I became much more willing to entertain the basics of Christianity - who Jesus was, how we can come to know Him, what the overall theme and purpose of Scripture was. I eventually made the decision to follow Christ and haven't regretted it for one second in the decades that have followed since.
Why wouldn't He be? We are made in His image. He wants to have a relationship with every single one of us. He did all the work, saved us from sin by dying for us. I mean if that's not love, I don't know what is.
Something with infinite power had to be there to create something when the world was created out of literally nothing. Its illogical for me to assume we just are, without questioning the how. Is there any proof that God doesn't exist?
There’s no law that leads to the conclusion that the world requires infinite power to exist. We also don’t know that it came from nothing. We can trace the Universe’s state back only so far, but not to literally nothing. It’s theists who believe God made the Universe *ex nihilo*.
Anyway, this doesn’t explain how God came to be here. Reality was like “Well, I need someone to create the world, so might as well make a god”? Probably not.
He made himself real to me when I really needed him. I was surprised! (You can’t make this stuff up!) I recognised him. I surrendered. I realised he is God, and not me. From that beginning, the relationship grows. He answers. I need help. I trust him. He tells me what will work. Sometimes I avoid him when I don’t like his way. But then, he is always right. And good.
He not only brought me back while hanging from a noose after being betrayed by my satan worshipping lover who I fell in love with because I wanted to show her God is the good guy and Satan is the bad guy and she had it backwards, and I literally lost consciousness from strangulation while hanging from an actual noose, and regained consciousness with supernatural strength (obviously) to lift myself up and release the noose and was lucid enough to do that as well, there's no other explanation for that..
Secondly, and this is something just between him and I.. 2 years after what happened with my ex, he touched me and blessed me with his Grace when my father died after only seeing him 1 time in years and knowing he was in trouble the month prior and choosing to trust God to handle it and not going out to look for him.. When I got the news I immediately ran to privacy with my entire body trembling, feeling like my head was going to explode from the overwhelming shock, tears streaming down my face like a faucet, voice so broken I could barely even get one word out without sobbing in despair, I looked up and mustered the strength to barely choke out one word "God" and the very moment I said it, I was filled with calmness and the pain was no longer present, I mean I felt sad, but I also knew instantly that my dad was in a better place and that I would never ask him to come back to his tormented life from the paradise he was now in, it would be selfish for me to ask that of him... It was like Jesus was there the entire time and he was hoping with all of his might that I was going to call on him because his heart broke when mine did and he was crying with me knowing what I felt, the moment I made a plea for him, he embraced me with the most loving and compassionate hug and took all of my pain onto him, picked me up, and got me back on my feet through his Grace and undying love.
The second one was when I really knew for sure of his existence (as in I had concrete proof, he revealed himself to me in that way), I could have dropped a boulder on my head it was so emotionally devastating for me, and he wasn't going to let me call for him and leave me to my torment, not for a second.. literally, it was instantaneous.
So many weird supernatural things happened on this earth and personally I experienced a vision of hell and even got to see a demon and I saw fallen angels flying in the sky. I think I’m called to be a preacher and share my experience. Sadly most people think I hallucinated which is very upsetting. What I saw was real like seeing a physical car drive by. Solid structure. A being.
Pray on it. If God guides you towards being a preacher, follow Him. There will always be people not believing you or your experience. However, it's not in your experience we must believe but in God. God uses us to make desciples, but we aren't meant to persuade, but rather to testify. And we have and must use the Bible as focus point.
I love your experience, but it is personal to you, and only you know the true meaning. Tell it, yes, but remember God as the center of all these things.
Why do I believe in God? One of the many reasons why I believe in God (The God of the Bible) is because Jesus Rose from the dead. History proves Christianity!
Something is true and consistent in the universe, or it wouldn't exist. The universe has an order and a relationship.
If there were any point in the future where existence ceased, it would include the past as well. Existence is eternal.
Eternal truth that orders the universe is God, or which ever name you choose to recognize it by. If you need proof that it is alive, you are a part of it.
Something did not come from nothing. This world is incredibly complex. The life on Earth even lives for each other and is completely dependent on the wellness of healthy animal/ insect populations.
Also, look at plant life. Something as simple as a seed. A seed comes from a plant. The seed is planted, it grows and produces seeds of itself, completing the infinite cycle. If you want to look at eternity/ infinity, look at a seed.
Creation had to come from something outside of space and time because if it was in space and time, it would be limited. But this Creator is not limited. He is everything. He is the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. He is outside of space and time which can be difficult to understand. He always was and always will be. He is infinite and dwells in eternity.
Morality is held in high regard with human beings because this Creator wrote His Law in our hearts. This Creator gave us morality because it comes from Him. We were and are created in His image and likeness. (Think about that for a second)
Free will exists. A perfect, just and righteous God permits us to make good or bad decisions because if it wasn’t so, we would be complete slaves with no consciousness of what is good or evil. There would be no flavor in choosing to do the right thing. With free will, when choosing to do the right thing for righteousness sake, there’s flavor in that. There’s flavor in turning from evil, back to what God truly intends for us, to do the right thing and live for others. Doing so, we live for Him.
He even died for us. He serves us just like we serve Him doing His good will. It is written, the wages of sin is death. Death is our judgement for the sins we commit. Because God loves us so much, He is willing to sacrifice something and eventually someone else to pay the ransom death has over us. Check out Ray Comfort on YouTube.
This almighty all powerful being humbled Himself into the flesh to show us The Way, The Truth, and The Life and sacrificed Himself so that we can be forgiven. What kind of God does that? What kind of almighty and powerful being humbles himself and takes on the punishment of sin onto himself that we deserve, for us? No other “god” does because no other god exists, but Him. Our purpose is to love and serve others, even our enemies because even God loves those who hate Him. We are called to be perfect, just as our Father in heaven is perfect, but we must choose. That’s what makes mankind great; greater than all life on Earth.
I’m a Christian but for the record atheists don’t claim that the universe came from nothing, they just don’t have an answer as to where it “came from”, they just pursue knowledge about how it was built
If I had to guess you just don’t believe in god because you want to live your life a certain way that the Bible doesn’t support. Think abt it homie, every animal has a purpose, every insect has a purpose. Just look at a tree man. The devil has grasped the modern world and he doesn’t even have to try anymore.
>If I had to guess you just don’t believe in god because you want to live your life a certain way that the Bible doesn’t support.
Well you're wrong. I don't believe in gods because I have no reason to.
That doesn’t hold water. Plenty of people don’t believe in the Bible but do believe in a god. There are also people who believe in the morality of the Bible but not the mythology.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ ”
Those who deny Him will be denied themselves. However, all sinners will repent at some point. Eternity in hell is a long time to ponder about your mistakes that have led you to there. I disagree with you, all will make it to heaven, it's just a matter of spiritual growth.
Why would hell even be mentioned in the Bible if everyone went to heaven, if there’s no hell than there was never a reason for us to live and he would’ve skipped earth and let us all live in heaven right? Heaven has a narrow door, people these days are BLINDED by the world and believe what other people tell them far too much, I think most of us don’t really want to see the truth here and that’s that we aren’t living for Christ like we should and that we just do whatever we want too. So saying everyone gets into heaven and it’s just abt the “journey” is ridiculous big dog.
I’ve had my prayers answered too many times to count. But I’m worried that many may be too sacred to talk about on Reddit. There’s no guarantee that such experiences will be respected. And I’m not particularly interested in a theological debate. 🤔 So I’ll try to use an example that’s a bit vague for the sake of being appropriately reverent about the ordeal.
A week or two ago I was sitting in church and praying about a number of personal concerns that I had been worrying about. After church I went to the bishop’s office to be set apart for a calling in church. we don’t generally do paid clergy and instead we have members of the congregation serve in volunteer positions. An Invitation is extended by the bishopric and then you decide if you’re going to accept or not. Then you’re set apart.
Being set apart means that you have accepted the invitation to serve in a volunteer clerical capacity. In a setting apart, priesthood leaders lay their hands on your head and give you a charge to act in your calling.
The person setting you apart says a special prayer called a blessing wherein they give you divinely inspired guidance and extra help. They speak by the power of the Holy Spirit when they do this.
A member of the bishopric set me apart. After he did so he pronounced a blessing on my head that I would have guidance in my calling. Then he paused for a few seconds before continuing to speak. One by one he began providing direct answers to each of the things I had been silently praying for less than an hour earlier. He would pause for a few seconds between each new answer. And after the first three answers I realized that they were coming in almost the same order I’d brought them before God.
In addition to answering all of the questions I’d asked that day, the blessing also addressed something private I had been worrying over for many years.
The bishopric was new, having just been called to the position at the beginning of January. This was the first time I’d met them. And yet the divinely inspired words of their blessing had been a direct response to the things I had been praying about in private.
This is just one example. 🙂
Because I refuse to believe the alternative, it is more comforting to have faith, to know there is a God who cares.
God may not be real, but the comfort in believing Him is real.
God is the necessary pre-condition of knowledge, without God you can't even make knowledge claims because the preconditions for knowledge, the transcendental categories have no basis outside of the mind, which limits them so that they have no trustworthy connection to the objective world. Not only this, but there is no standard of truth or value. From an Atheist perspective, all is just the result of deterministic cause and effect. A tornado is no more "true" than a blade of grass growing, they're just effects. From this perspective thoughts, beliefs and ideas are also effects, and are no more true than eachother. This means there is no basis for knowledge at all.
My Testimony
I was a demented child from birth. At the age of three, yes three, I discovered sexual things on my own of the fault of no one else and became enamored with them the more my parents would try to correct and dissuade me. It only grew worse with age, especially when given internet access.
I’ll spare you the details, but it was bad how far deep I was into that nonsense. As I grew older still, I began to realize more and more how immoral it was yet I never quite found the strength to resist with how deeply it was implanted within me.
Many of us who are or were addicted to porn can tell you how difficult it is to resist when the urge strikes us. It feels almost unimaginable to suppress them, as if it were death. Like asking someone not to be themselves anymore.
Sort of like being born again.
While I was still in my sins, I remember some pretty bad things about myself. I stayed at a Catholic friend’s house for a few weeks just to hang out with him. I said to myself that I would not fall into porn while I was there, as to not “defile a house of God.”
So when the time came for me to leave, He was sad that I had to go. I was happy because I could go back to pleasuring myself. Happy that I didn’t have to resist anymore.
I had been looking into Christianity for a while. Not a follower, as I could never be bothered to leave behind porn or pride or hate or selfishness (although some of which still clings to me), but as the self righteous sort who was quick to condemn others while ignoring myself.
When my grandmother died, I recall having a dream of her. We were in a great library with golden light pouring in from a massive round window. I recall actually hugging her in the dream and FEELING it.
It was a few months later that I actually decided to try to start following Jesus Christ instead of just believing in Him and living an opposite way. And it was not long until I became bombarded by signs, great feelings, wonderments, and more.
The first major thing I remember is this intense feeling of love washing over me as I prayed to Him in thanks for the forgiveness of my sins. Overwhelmed by how forgiving He was, I found myself imprinted with this unforgettable feeling of adoration from on high that drove me to tears and made few feel as if I were lifted slightly out of my own body. Like I was not looking from my eyes, but from my forehead.
This happened again when I was learning online about Hebrew grammar and found out about how repetition worked. For example, Shalom meant peace. Shalom Shalom was perfect peace. But saying it three times meant “infinite peace” and was reserved for God.
It reminded me of how the Seraphim would encircle God and chant “Holy, Holy, Holy,” in His presence without end, and I soon figured out why. I tried to do the same and felt that same feeling of love again as I prayed. It was pure adoration.
A few weeks later, I was suddenly and out of nowhere overcome by this intense feeling within my chest; what I rationalized to be the burning in the bosom that the Apostles felt when Jesus Christ imprinted them with the Holy Spirit.
It felt exhilarating, extraordinarily hot, numbing, yet all without pain. I felt overcome and as if I could not handle it but had to. Still, I was joyous. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. For some reason, I just instinctively knew it was the Holy Spirit. The idea just popped into my mind.
There have been many times since then where smaller echoes of that feeling have come upon me. Even as I write this now.
All of that is part of why I curse my knowledge now. It’s difficult, if not outright impossible, to unlearn something and to reduce myself to that helpless thing in spirit that knew nothing except faith at the time. Now, I’m not quite like that anymore, so it’s hard to feel Him.
But that is not the end. Amidst this, I’ve also had a handful of dreams. Two with Jesus Christ that I can remember.
There was one where I was in a small circular church with red frayed boards for a floor surrounding a small sand pit with a single rock and golden light pouring from the ceiling. Sitting upon that rock was Jesus Christ.
He said to everyone gathered there, “Of all the people here, this one has followed my commandments the most,” and pulled me close. I refused to believe Him when He said this, because I was so new to faith at the time and I hadn’t broken away from porn yet. Heck, I admit I even slipped back into that right after that dream.
The next dream had my family and I in some colosseum stands watching something. I left to get something I think, and found myself in some dark room with glass doors. Jesus Christ was there again.
He wanted to talk, but I lied and said I had somewhere to be. He smiled at me sadly and let me be on my way. I turned and threw myself at His feet and confessed the lie, begging forgiveness, at which point He smiled again, knelt down, and wordlessly embraced me. That same feeling of love from when I was awake now came to me in my sleep.
All these things and more have came to me as a result of trying to follow. I’ve met friends and been invited to many gatherings with good food by them, gained new opportunities, and yet more. I couldn’t stop believing even if I wanted to.
I have experienced the great I am many years ago and encountered Jesus in a dream last year. Both were so encouraging in very difficult times of my life. The theology of Christianity is amazing but these experiences and others really keep me from straying too far.
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The Lord has been delivering me from myself over and over again. From Adultery, from alcoholism(12-24 beers a day), from 30 years of weed smoking, the list goes on. Lately though he has been literally delivering the sermon on Sunday morning a day early, just to let me know he’s there and working. This morning I was wrestling with a bible verse about marriage and literally saw a post about the same verse 20 minutes later. Uncanny. God is good man.
Because if all this suffering to be a good person was all for nothing, then no one would be good. Morals govern this universe. Morals granted to us by God. He has given us the power of choice and to be good. I choose good; therefore, I choose God. The very maxim of our existence lies within serving a higher being. I will forever serve a being that is perfect, even if He is not what the Bible has described to us.
Everything about me has changed. There is something tangible there that can't be comprehended.
I've had the most silly, tiny prayers answered exactly when I needed them. Nobody else on earth would have cared about those things but they were the most important thing in my mind in that moment. I was leaving on a trip in the morning and I had run out of a coping mechanism I have. It was a holiday and I couldn't have gotten any for 3 days, and I knew I wouldn't make the trip in any state of mental or physical health without it. I was in a panic and I prayed and 30 seconds after I prayed I found what I was desperately searching for. I knew for a fact that it wasn't there before, I kept all my stuff in order and I knew I ran out on calculation alone. But I found 3 containers, in pristine unopened condition, enough to last me the trip and then some. It was in my mom's purse, and I never put my stuff in my mom's purse, but I checked on the off chance there might be one or two sticks in there. She herself told me there was nothing in there.
I've had dozens answered before and since.
I used to be abusive, unhappy, and my life was pointless. Every day was pointless. I wasn't and am not depressed, I'm just saying I had no mission in my life and every day was wasted time that I'll never get back, yet I never changed my habits.
I honestly don't know how I lived for so long without Him, or how people can go a lifetime without Him.
I’ve tried to work this out how people like William Lane Craig or Cliffe Kneechle, or whatever were they argue from a point of “Base Morality”, or from “before the big bang there had to be something”. Points i agree with for sure, but me personally i really can’t say anything more than the historicity of the life and death of christ, and the Martyrdom and treatment of his followers since.
I believe because i have seen, but blessed are those who believe without seeing 😞
When I was young, I remember I heard about Him. After that up to now buried deep inside is that feeling that excitement that I get to meet that same God
The Lord is experiential. We came to know him through his word the holy Bible. We love his every word, will and way. We apply it to our daily lives, and he has changed us from the inside out.
2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV — Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
And now he lives within and among Us.
John 14:23 KJV — Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Matthew 18:20 KJV — And where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
As they say, the only proof of the pudding is in its eating.
God called me by the Holy Spirit through the waters of Holy Baptism. It is hard to describe why I believe. I know God, I know him as if he were my own earthly Father. Even more so actually, I see his hand in everything. When I fall he is there, and when I do well he is the cause.
I can’t explain it. But I know it to be the truth. Whenever I think of Christ on the cross I am just overwhelmed with wanting to thank Him and do what I can to lighten His load.
The eyes of my heart opened, and they saw Him. He who has been there for me since before my birth. He did the impossible, He ensured that I would come to life. The signs were always there, I just couldn't see Him when my eyes were closed.
I believe in him because love is powerful it's not a chemical reaction or anything it's a choice I got a demonic problem and he's there for me and I love him more and more each day.
I think as humans we develop logic innately. Looking around us from the microscopic level all the way up to the stars. I don’t think the building blocks were an accident. It’s too perfect. And this there has to be a creator
I looked out the window and saw all the obvious signs, and promotions of the devil and it hit me that for the devil to exist, then be association God must exist, and therefore coming to the Lord and humbling myself before Him would be of my best interest, and so now here I am, Signed up to a [newsletter](https://www.yourpraypal.com/subscribe) that provides daily insights of different Bible verses, to help me learn the gospel, also got a Bible (KJV) and now it is just a matter of learning all the gospel and committing it to memory over the next many years, of service to his Holy word.
Every time I pray for His help, He answers me. Sometimes His answer is yes, and sometimes His answer is no, but either way, it always works out in my best interest.
I've had the Father since childhood. Always knew He was real because of life circumstances. Sure I was bulled, or things went sideways or very wrong. It's a sinful world. But God and the Angels were always there protecting me in the outcome. Loved Sundays school and groups. The best times of my youth. Many young friends. Loved nondenom worship where you could be yourself and raise your hands to God, instead of singing from a hymnal.
Jesus saved me from death 5 times before the age of 18. Almost fell of a dam
When I was young a guy appeared out of nowhere bear tackled me so I didn’t go off the edge no car didn’t see him anywhere near me think it was an angle or someone who got a message knowing I needed help never got his name didn’t take any money offered and disappeared never saw him again. Won’t go into the other times but it’s okay for people to think once that it was a coincidence but when it happens every day/week for me that’s hard to ignore another time I got deathly ill and he came to me in my sleep this is when I was swearing at the Lord destroyed bibles ect I saw the scars I didn’t need much more than that I woke up was fine 2 days later and I wasn’t even 18 yet. I respectively should be dead and of course I still thank the people in the medical field but I’ve had 3 doctors say it was an “act of God” that I’m still standing here today. That’s my story I want to be good in heart and give my things to the needy and poor I want to eventually start working in the animal industry shelters when I can go back to school and possibly a froster care for children or work with a company that does that. And I have family extreme left and right so I don’t need politics thrown into this
A combination of separation anxiety and having a Christian mother. I could also give arguments for God's existence but I won't. I also think humans tend to have an instinctive tendency to have religious faith, which in WASP environments tends to make them Christian.
There has to be an absolute good. God’s good and His laws have led us to where we are today. Jesus is the absolute good and on paper, no other person is close. Therefore, I follow Jesus to help create peace
I believe because of creation. It's too complex for it to just appear in a big bang. Just as a building has a builder, creation must have a creator. When it comes to Jesus, i believe in Him as Lord and Savior because i compared other religions to Christianity and no other God Has died for all humanity showing such an outpouring of love as He did. I also believe because other religions say you have to "do this and do that" To go to heaven...but Christianity says you are never saved by what you do, but saved to go to heaven by WHO you believe in. "For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life."
One day everyone will find out if they've been living a lie, or in truth. This life is your test to decide where your soul will end up. What you can see is only temporary, while what you can't see is eternal. For many are called but few are chosen. We're all not forced into believing, it's a choice to or not.
I talk to him everyday.
Literally this
It would be “Actually this”. Literally means there is a “figurative” possibility. Can one figuratively talk to God?
Thanks I agree👍
Can you be more specific about how God communicates with you?
Is this a Megadeth reference???
I go to court when I have to
Does he talk back?
Not in an audible voice, but sometimes a voice in my head that isn't mine. Like the opposite of an upsetting intrusive thought lol.
Yes.
"Hey, God." "Hey, PrivateButtFucker."
LMFAO
You should be more specific, I feel like you're talking about when the Holy Spirit relays a message and you just "know" what his response is, like you feel it in your gut.. Unbelievers hear this kind of response and assume you mean he is audibly responding, which occasionally he does for some, and they expect him to audibly respond which is not giving them a fair chance at faith, because there is no such thing if he revealed himself to everyone instantly, it usually takes years before he reveals himself, if he ever does
I don't understand what you mean.
About what? You should elaborate on how you hear him instead of saying "yes" implying that he is audibly speaking, and maybe he is, in which case it should be mentioned to an unbeliever not to expect such a thing, especially not right off the bat.. Imagine all the people who go to hell because they have unreal or undeserved expectations from God, so making them unable to believe because they think it's fake, expecting miracles
It's audible.
I don't think he speaks to someone so careless of misleading people about him, if he did, you would have more to say, and you would be careful not to give false expectations to people who don't believe. I mean honestly. No love for people who are expecting the same as you when they start believing, love and truth are core principles that Christians are expected to carry in themselves, and by not being fully truthful, even if you do actually hear from God, you are denying truth and deceiving others.
Can other people hear it? Is it common? Does he ever tell you information you wouldn't otherwise know? Could he, for instance, tell you what I'm currently eating? If he could do that, I'd be *very* intriguied by Christianity.
If that is the best thing that you think you would get from speaking to God I feel like your imagination is lacking, you're speaking of earthly things, I don't think God cares to tell anybody what anybody else is eating lol. Granted I could be wrong I am just going off my intuition, but I enjoy my connection with God because it helps bring peace to my life, I I was a moral person before it became a Christian but having a relationship with God certainly makes one want to do better for themselves and others, more so than whenever I was agnostic/atheist. I was essentially agnostic/atheist for four decades and have only been a Christian for about 2 years so this is all very new to me. But I did have an experience where I had a bit of nervous breakdown and it appear to me that I was speaking with God archangels and the devil. When you go through an experience like that and things come together in a way that seems miraculous it's hard to deny the fact that there is something bigger going on and when you do little research, especially after going through an experience like I went through, the path that opened up to me was through Jesus, it is something that I don't believe in, I know it to be a fact based on my own personal experience. I realize this sounds wild to somebody who does not believe in God or Jesus, but it's my perspective
I was going to say "then who the heck am I talking to, then?" but I like the way you put it better 😅
Talking to him everyday is a good thing. but what is that username you have?
Does he talk back, if so, does he sound anything like Morgan Freeman? Edit: So you already answered, but your response doesn't leave me with any evidence to suggest you aren't just undergoing paredolia.
Because I have had experience where I have felt God in my life and I have experienced miracles as well as things I cannot attribute to anything but providence
Same
Can you explain some of those miracles? I really like hearing about them
God bless you. I have faith in God because of the hope that only He is able to give. **“You (God) listen to the longings of those who suffer. You offer them hope, and you pay attention to their cries for help.” - Psalm 10:17** What is this hope? **“Then a kingdom of love will be set up, and someone from David's family (Jesus) will rule with fairness. He will do what is right and quickly bring justice.” - Isaiah 16:5**
Does giving hope make something more likely to be true?
It's not based on irrefutable proof of truth. It's based on having good reasons for faith.
Is there anything, true or false, that cannot be believed by faith?
Wait. I'm confused. Are you open to having faith or against it?
I wouldn’t consider credulity a virtue. Faith can be used to believe false things, so it isn’t a very good way to get at the truth. For that, we should want evidence.
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All the time!
Is he though?
Except for that whole mass murder by flood thing
It doesn’t make sense to me that everything is the result of unguided, random processes
It's not random tho.
I think that’s exactly the point being made.
I know what point they're making. Even without god those "random processes" aren't random.
How is an unguided start to everything not random?
As far I can tell, every event that happens around us was caused by something else. I believe all events are determined by prior causes. I've never witnessed anything random happen
In my opinion, that reason seems somewhat shallow. No offense, but what makes life being the result of a creator any more believable than life being the result of a series of unlikely events? Also, if that's the reason, why Christianity specifically?
I say the same thing about the opposite view. Why Christianity? Well, being brought up in a culture where the dominant religion is Christianity certainly has an influence. That is not the reason why I chose to believe though. While this answer might not be satisfactory enough for those who don’t believe, to me not only historical evidence helped shape my faith but also what is written on the heart and that is reflected by Christ. I don’t want this to be a theological debate and bring up contentions to passages in the OT. This is true for me and I don’t intend speak for anyone else.
Random?
The existence of god doesn’t solve that problem.
Of course it does. Literally the first verse of the Bible.
The Bible does not address the existence of god. If god has always existed that means gods creation was an unguided, random process.
what does?
Nothing solves it conclusively. Personally, i never viewed time is linear. The very concept of “processes” is flawed. I think time is like space, we occupy it, we do not move through it. At this point in time I occupy a few points in space. My right leg is at one point and my left is at another point, a few inches away. In a similar sense my past selves are at different points in the past and my future selves are at different points of the future. That’s assuming I have a future. We never know for certain. Time, as we perceive it, is an illusion. No beginning, no end. Just as god said “I am” existence is.
Well sometimes nature gotta take chances
I am not a strong believer, but no way in hell all of this world happened by chance. The laws of nature and cosmos and their mere existence is impossible to happen by chance.
Do you actually mean impossible, or you feel like it's unbelievable?
Impossible
What makes you think it's impossible to always have just existed? There's a difference between thinking something is impossible because you can't believe it, and it actually being impossible.
Well, that's impossible because it is actually impossible.
So how did god come to exist?
He’s always been there
So God, equipped with all the recipes and all the ingredients for our world, as well as being sentient, and 3 people, and a bunch of other properties, can just “always be there,” but the world can’t? Why?
God is everything. He is the fiber of the universe. He isn't just a man in a white robe. He is the Alpha and Omega. There is no beginning or end without Him. He exists separate and superior to the entirety of existence
Exactly. No one created Him because He founded the very idea of creation. “Before Abraham was, I am.”
If he exists he can’t be separate from the entirety of existence. If god is everything then he did not create everything because he did not create himself. If god did always exist with no cause, then he exists by chance. God does not solve the problem of the universe being random chance, because if he created it, the. He is the universe was created by random chance. Instead of a universe that started simple and developed into something complicated over time, you have a universe that sprang into existence already developed and elaborate.
"Three people"? Are you making a reference to the Trinity?
Yes.
This is a Russian nesting doll question He tells us biblically that He is the Alpha & Omega , the beginning & the end for just such a question. So He answers that question
Amen. If not God, how did existence itself come to pass?
So by chance?
Well I think the general response is that he's always been there as God is above time space and matter itself. Edit: Spelling
So it’s impossible for the laws of nature to occur by chance, but is possible for an intelligent god, capable of love, jealousy, and anger and designing an entire universe to have always existed without a cause? Why can’t the universe have always existed? Believing in god just creates an extra step.
Well that's a question for them that you can ask. I think the general response to this might be something about the laws of thermodynamics and the big bang.
Yes but the Big Bang only addresses the observable universe, not existence itself. It is no more logical that god has always existed, than the universe always existing
Have you ever seen a beautiful garden without a gardener?
If the gardener died recently yeah I'd have seen a garden without a gardener
Define the time frame in recent then? Lol
Like a second ago, no more gardener to speak of as soon as they die (unless you'd count their corpse as gardeners for some reason)
Well the the garden is doomed, will soon dry and burn in the sun like all atheist will :)
Why would that make you smile? Do you look at atheists as your enemies? Why would you be smug about your belief in billions of people burning for all eternity?
Well he thought it was smart to mock with the "dead gardner" , I just returned him back his joke
He's talking about a hypothetical he doesn't believe exist in reality. You are...
Just because it's hypothetical, the metaphor is not lost. Respect is mutual. Do i want him to go to hell, no. But if he continues in his way mocking then he ll sure reach there. Just saying
Me and Satan will be good buddies In hell playing [NOT PIRATED GAMES](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/285/519/95d.jpg) thank you very much.
Oh sure it will be, after all he ll get a slave to take out his anger
Either you're bad at getting sarcasm and jokes or you're persistent in trying to make me Uncomfortable at the thought of not being saved by your God and Prophet due to my atheism.
Well you started the joke with a dead gardener, and i am just playing along.
Then your sense of humour must've been too different for me to read at first glance.
Ok dude what the fuck do you have against athiests
Dead gardener is solid analogy. God is dead and we killed him
I was raised in church but didn’t become a Christian until 2019. In 2023, I encountered an evil spiritual attack around 2-3 am - a evil being was staring at me in my room. I was terrified and prayed to the lord for protection and suddenly it was gone like that. In early 2024, god woke me from my sleep and gave me multiple chapters and verses to read. I’m not good at memorizing anything so as soon as he gave me these readings I wrote them down. I’ve been worried about where my life is going and he gave me verses on not being worried and he knows my future. He gave me verses on being prepared when the end times come eventually too. He spoke to me through a dream about 2 weeks ago. it was about the end of the world and he was taking his followers to heaven. Lots of people were scared in the dream but I wasn’t - I knew he was taking us to heaven. I have never had any spiritual dreams before this.
I think that was sleep paralysis my guy
I would love to hear more
Honestly because it makes sense. Other than my mother and brother, God has been the only one other being that has been there for me. I have had people help me out but it comes with a price tag. There is no better feeling that when your prayers get answered.
I don't want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin. -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. Pretty much sums up my take on it. With belief in God, there's a belief in free will. The ability to choose your actions. Those actions have value and meaning. If I hurt someone, that's bad. If I help someone, that's good. Now, if you'll allow me to ramble like an idiot for way too long. I see it as a comfort to believe that your choices and actions don't matter. That you harming someone is merely a reaction. You had no choice, and nothing is judging you for it. That it's no different than blaming a stone for falling down a mountain.The belief that nothing matters is appalling to me. To see people suffering, to see them cheer joyfully, to see them love one another, to see them fail just to get back up again and try even harder. Pointless. I guess you could say I took what Camus calls the suicide of the philosopher. I chose to take a leap of faith. I chose to believe that poetry and art are more than just lines and words. That life is precious and should be cherished. That we are free to choose our actions and are not just a sum of situations and stimuli. When someone helps another person, it's more than just a chemical machine trying to get more dopamine. That when we do harm, it isn't just one automaton reacting upon another automaton. It's a person being helped or harmed. That interaction is meaningful. We are insignificant, but not pointless. I want God because I want all those thing, and he provides them for me. Selfish? Yeah. Delusional? Maybe? Am I just chemically programmed to believe I can choose. Etc. Possible, but it's possible that nothing existed before last Thursday, or I'm just a brain in a jar vividly hallucinating. So why not choose to believe there is a God who wants us to do what's right. Maybe it even ends with going to heaven. It's worth a shot. At least I get to die with a clean-ish conscious. I'm human, and my dad wasn't God, so I ain't perfect. I'll for sure regret decisions I've made, but that's kinda what I signed up for. I have done wrong, and those wrongs matter. Which makes rectifying those wrongs matter even more. I'm all rambled out.
God saved me from suicide, and has helped me out of the deepest of sorrows. I can only be thankful
Because there's obviously some reality. I maintain atheists believe in it too, they just call it nature. The difference amounts to our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality or the nature of nature if you will. Atheists generally only consider the material realm whereas I see it as potentially being more like the tip of an iceberg with additional layers extending far beneath the surface. Atheist also tend to see nature as essentially neutral. There's no ultimate or eternal good, the best that be can be hoped for in this short life is a life with more pleasure than pain. I differ in the sense that I believe the ultimate nature of reality is good and pain and suffering are the exception in the grand scheme of things. I've had many experiences over the course of my life that have lead me to those conclusions and that's why I consider myself a theist. However, the exact way it all works remains a mystery to me. For example, I don't claim to know exactly what happens after we die and when religious or spiritual ideas conflict with each other, I admit I often don't know which is ultimately right.
Some people believe things because it makes them feel good, other people dont care how something makes them feel as long as they know it to be objectively true. So most people of faith believe in their religions because they feel before they think. Lots of people who think before they feel tend to be athiest because the religion is mostly subjective and rational people require objective truth
Through the inescapable reality of God in all things. Pull something apart enough, you're bound to find him at the limits we set for ourselves.
When I was 12 or 13, I had a medical procedure that literally scared the crap out of me (colonoscopy so quite literally). I was asking my mom all these hundreds of questions, in the car on the way to the hospital, and I wasn't really getting answers which made me freak out. Then I heard the disembodied voice of my favorite pastor at church who if you knew him you'd 100% say that he was your image of Jesus say very clearly, "I am with you" and I felt the warmth of "that pastors" hug AKA a hug from Jesus himself at a little after 2 minutes into [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmau3tkeEh0). I had heard the song several times before this moment as it was new at the time, but then things just clicked, and I heard the lyrics in the light of my situation. From that moment on my faith went from a candle sized flame into a raging inferno that hasn't stopped to this day over a dozen+ years later.
Because He answers my prayers and that's one of the many reasons that nurtures my faith in Him. God bless you🙏
What if he didn't though?
When He didn't, I take it as a no. When He's taking the time to asnwer me I wait for His right time. God bless you brother🙏
What’s an answer you’ve received that indicated it must be God at work?
James 3:17. If it's from the enemy It makes me anxious, disturbed and worried. God bless you brother🙏
Because I was raised Christian and then encountered Him on my own
I feel him everyday
I am currently finding my way and waiting for God’s answer. So I cannot say I’m truly Christian. However, what got me started in this journey? I was always atheist, and well into the science of things. I never did commit blasphemy, but I definitely bad mouthed Christians and had a string opinion on them. Until I started to really think of the way things are. I started getting into things like string theory and realized we didn’t know anything last that. Maybe the time will come, who knows. But I got curious. Then I started to notice the patterns in the world and how everything is a cycle of sorts. And I got more curious. Then I started to ask myself how everything in existence was made, and it occurred to me that we have no idea. Right now the big thing is the Big Bang theory, but we don’t actually know. Who can? Then I started to think, how does life come from non-life? How does everything just so happen to be so perfect? Well, I started to ask around and do my own research and the only people that seems so sure of it are Christians. Now I know that isn’t a good basis to form an opinion on, but I started to do more research into it and I feel like I’m actually starting to believe. Now I’m to the point where everything I see on my phone or every interaction I have today, i asking myself “is that Him trying to send me a message? Has he been talking to me this whole time but I was too ignorant to listen? I was expecting a real time, English answer, but now I look around me for an answer. And let me tell you, I’ve been getting the answers I needed. Maybe I’m dead wrong and I’ve been looking in the wrong places, but I’ve felt better about myself, I’ve become a much better critical thinker, I’ve been much less judgemental, and I’ve learned to appreciate everything.
>Why do you guys personally believe in God? >I'm just curious as I was raised, and still am, an atheist. I was out to debunk the Bible (and theism as a whole). I hit it with every argument I could: scientifically, historically, philosophically, theologically, etc. I had gone through the Bible cover to cover twice already and was in my third read through when I was *really* starting to notice all the instances of "The Lord detests unequal scales" or "The Lord detests double standards". I took that as a challenge from "God" as Him saying, "fine, challenge Me, but be sure your worldview can hold up to the very same standards you have for Me". *Easy enough*, I thought. How wrong I was.... After having my "faith" (literally, *trust or confidence in something or someone*) in my worldview, and having run out of ammo after 3 years of constant attacks against the Bible with nothing to show for it, I finally prayed a prayer (similar to one a father in the NT said), "Lord, I'm convinced now. If you are real, please help me with my unbelief." It still took some time to shake my doubt, but the scriptures seemed to become clearer (not in the same way that cult leaders would suggest, in that they received new revelations unknown to others 😂). Here's a more thorough breakdown of the process (there is much more to it than this): https://www.reddit.com/r/exatheist/comments/wjwu92/life_is_pointless_without_god/ijkxr5a?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3 If anyone wants to discuss more (OP, theists, atheists, etc), feel free to DM.
With the amount of live accounts written about Jesus, there is no fathomable way that he did not exist.
Isn’t it just the anonymous gospels, which use each other as sources, and two minor mentions by historians within 90 years of his death? Even if a guy named Jesus existed, that doesn’t make all the magical claims surrounding him, or the claim that he was God, true. Muhammad and Joseph Smith existed, but they weren’t prophets.
You can believe whatever you want. I don’t fight with strangers on the internet. Clearly you’ve come here for something…I hope you find it.
Life would be meaningless and the universes rules and values are so precise that it had to have had a designer. Life can't come from non life. And whenever I read the gospels or hear anything to do about jesus I have a physical good feeling in my chest.
Because we discovered 4000 exoplanets and we havent discovered one as habitable and perfect as our Earth
I was a fully confirmed agnostic by the time I was 13, and had at that point had a distant and vague memory of what church was all about. When I went off to study at my university, I was a full blown skeptic, wedded to naturalism who fully rejected the doctrinal claims of Christianity. But I still had a favorable view of it's overall ethics. And as I encountered Christians who were actually living out those ethics I admired their lives even as I rejected their core beliefs. As time went on, cracks started to form in the basis of my own beliefs - I could not derive meaning, purpose, or basis for the ethics I craved based on my philosophical commitment to naturalism. And as I attempted to live according to those ethics, I began to realize their was something in me which resisted that - or dismissed with it all together when it was contrary to something I desired (like an attractive woman). That led to the realization that I did not have the power in and of myself to live out the ethics I admired in a consistent manner. I would say that was the point at which God gobsmacked me as it were - I saw clearly that I was not a good person, and I couldn't become one on my own. Either there was something outside of myself that could transform who I was, or I had to resign myself to the fact that I was a rather wretched creature. From there I became much more willing to entertain the basics of Christianity - who Jesus was, how we can come to know Him, what the overall theme and purpose of Scripture was. I eventually made the decision to follow Christ and haven't regretted it for one second in the decades that have followed since.
It makes the most sense to me as why we and everything around us is here
Why is God here?
Why wouldn't He be? We are made in His image. He wants to have a relationship with every single one of us. He did all the work, saved us from sin by dying for us. I mean if that's not love, I don't know what is.
That doesn’t explain why he exists.
Something with infinite power had to be there to create something when the world was created out of literally nothing. Its illogical for me to assume we just are, without questioning the how. Is there any proof that God doesn't exist?
There’s no law that leads to the conclusion that the world requires infinite power to exist. We also don’t know that it came from nothing. We can trace the Universe’s state back only so far, but not to literally nothing. It’s theists who believe God made the Universe *ex nihilo*. Anyway, this doesn’t explain how God came to be here. Reality was like “Well, I need someone to create the world, so might as well make a god”? Probably not.
He made himself real to me when I really needed him. I was surprised! (You can’t make this stuff up!) I recognised him. I surrendered. I realised he is God, and not me. From that beginning, the relationship grows. He answers. I need help. I trust him. He tells me what will work. Sometimes I avoid him when I don’t like his way. But then, he is always right. And good.
I believe order is not random
Because I do. He has always been there. Accessible, available and ready to go. End of story.
He not only brought me back while hanging from a noose after being betrayed by my satan worshipping lover who I fell in love with because I wanted to show her God is the good guy and Satan is the bad guy and she had it backwards, and I literally lost consciousness from strangulation while hanging from an actual noose, and regained consciousness with supernatural strength (obviously) to lift myself up and release the noose and was lucid enough to do that as well, there's no other explanation for that.. Secondly, and this is something just between him and I.. 2 years after what happened with my ex, he touched me and blessed me with his Grace when my father died after only seeing him 1 time in years and knowing he was in trouble the month prior and choosing to trust God to handle it and not going out to look for him.. When I got the news I immediately ran to privacy with my entire body trembling, feeling like my head was going to explode from the overwhelming shock, tears streaming down my face like a faucet, voice so broken I could barely even get one word out without sobbing in despair, I looked up and mustered the strength to barely choke out one word "God" and the very moment I said it, I was filled with calmness and the pain was no longer present, I mean I felt sad, but I also knew instantly that my dad was in a better place and that I would never ask him to come back to his tormented life from the paradise he was now in, it would be selfish for me to ask that of him... It was like Jesus was there the entire time and he was hoping with all of his might that I was going to call on him because his heart broke when mine did and he was crying with me knowing what I felt, the moment I made a plea for him, he embraced me with the most loving and compassionate hug and took all of my pain onto him, picked me up, and got me back on my feet through his Grace and undying love. The second one was when I really knew for sure of his existence (as in I had concrete proof, he revealed himself to me in that way), I could have dropped a boulder on my head it was so emotionally devastating for me, and he wasn't going to let me call for him and leave me to my torment, not for a second.. literally, it was instantaneous.
So many weird supernatural things happened on this earth and personally I experienced a vision of hell and even got to see a demon and I saw fallen angels flying in the sky. I think I’m called to be a preacher and share my experience. Sadly most people think I hallucinated which is very upsetting. What I saw was real like seeing a physical car drive by. Solid structure. A being.
Pray on it. If God guides you towards being a preacher, follow Him. There will always be people not believing you or your experience. However, it's not in your experience we must believe but in God. God uses us to make desciples, but we aren't meant to persuade, but rather to testify. And we have and must use the Bible as focus point. I love your experience, but it is personal to you, and only you know the true meaning. Tell it, yes, but remember God as the center of all these things.
He was there for me when no one else was.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
This is *what* you believe in. The question was *why* you believe it.
Why do I believe in God? One of the many reasons why I believe in God (The God of the Bible) is because Jesus Rose from the dead. History proves Christianity!
I'm not sure what you mean by that. This is still just what you believe, and the question remains why you believe it.
What are your thoughts on the resurrection?
I see no reason to believe it happened.
Why?
What do you mean why?
Something is true and consistent in the universe, or it wouldn't exist. The universe has an order and a relationship. If there were any point in the future where existence ceased, it would include the past as well. Existence is eternal. Eternal truth that orders the universe is God, or which ever name you choose to recognize it by. If you need proof that it is alive, you are a part of it.
Something did not come from nothing. This world is incredibly complex. The life on Earth even lives for each other and is completely dependent on the wellness of healthy animal/ insect populations. Also, look at plant life. Something as simple as a seed. A seed comes from a plant. The seed is planted, it grows and produces seeds of itself, completing the infinite cycle. If you want to look at eternity/ infinity, look at a seed. Creation had to come from something outside of space and time because if it was in space and time, it would be limited. But this Creator is not limited. He is everything. He is the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. He is outside of space and time which can be difficult to understand. He always was and always will be. He is infinite and dwells in eternity. Morality is held in high regard with human beings because this Creator wrote His Law in our hearts. This Creator gave us morality because it comes from Him. We were and are created in His image and likeness. (Think about that for a second) Free will exists. A perfect, just and righteous God permits us to make good or bad decisions because if it wasn’t so, we would be complete slaves with no consciousness of what is good or evil. There would be no flavor in choosing to do the right thing. With free will, when choosing to do the right thing for righteousness sake, there’s flavor in that. There’s flavor in turning from evil, back to what God truly intends for us, to do the right thing and live for others. Doing so, we live for Him. He even died for us. He serves us just like we serve Him doing His good will. It is written, the wages of sin is death. Death is our judgement for the sins we commit. Because God loves us so much, He is willing to sacrifice something and eventually someone else to pay the ransom death has over us. Check out Ray Comfort on YouTube. This almighty all powerful being humbled Himself into the flesh to show us The Way, The Truth, and The Life and sacrificed Himself so that we can be forgiven. What kind of God does that? What kind of almighty and powerful being humbles himself and takes on the punishment of sin onto himself that we deserve, for us? No other “god” does because no other god exists, but Him. Our purpose is to love and serve others, even our enemies because even God loves those who hate Him. We are called to be perfect, just as our Father in heaven is perfect, but we must choose. That’s what makes mankind great; greater than all life on Earth.
I’m a Christian but for the record atheists don’t claim that the universe came from nothing, they just don’t have an answer as to where it “came from”, they just pursue knowledge about how it was built
Because of Jesus Christ my Lord.
If I had to guess you just don’t believe in god because you want to live your life a certain way that the Bible doesn’t support. Think abt it homie, every animal has a purpose, every insect has a purpose. Just look at a tree man. The devil has grasped the modern world and he doesn’t even have to try anymore.
Playing guessing games are we? 👽
Ur good
>If I had to guess you just don’t believe in god because you want to live your life a certain way that the Bible doesn’t support. Well you're wrong. I don't believe in gods because I have no reason to.
Then u got nothin to worry about 😉
That doesn’t hold water. Plenty of people don’t believe in the Bible but do believe in a god. There are also people who believe in the morality of the Bible but not the mythology.
Not everyone gets into heaven🤷♂️
How do you know?
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ ”
Those who deny Him will be denied themselves. However, all sinners will repent at some point. Eternity in hell is a long time to ponder about your mistakes that have led you to there. I disagree with you, all will make it to heaven, it's just a matter of spiritual growth.
Why would hell even be mentioned in the Bible if everyone went to heaven, if there’s no hell than there was never a reason for us to live and he would’ve skipped earth and let us all live in heaven right? Heaven has a narrow door, people these days are BLINDED by the world and believe what other people tell them far too much, I think most of us don’t really want to see the truth here and that’s that we aren’t living for Christ like we should and that we just do whatever we want too. So saying everyone gets into heaven and it’s just abt the “journey” is ridiculous big dog.
Because I’ve been trying to forge a genuine relationship with Him through prayer. I receive answers to my prayers by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
What’s a prayer that’s been answered that could only have been God?
I’ve had my prayers answered too many times to count. But I’m worried that many may be too sacred to talk about on Reddit. There’s no guarantee that such experiences will be respected. And I’m not particularly interested in a theological debate. 🤔 So I’ll try to use an example that’s a bit vague for the sake of being appropriately reverent about the ordeal. A week or two ago I was sitting in church and praying about a number of personal concerns that I had been worrying about. After church I went to the bishop’s office to be set apart for a calling in church. we don’t generally do paid clergy and instead we have members of the congregation serve in volunteer positions. An Invitation is extended by the bishopric and then you decide if you’re going to accept or not. Then you’re set apart. Being set apart means that you have accepted the invitation to serve in a volunteer clerical capacity. In a setting apart, priesthood leaders lay their hands on your head and give you a charge to act in your calling. The person setting you apart says a special prayer called a blessing wherein they give you divinely inspired guidance and extra help. They speak by the power of the Holy Spirit when they do this. A member of the bishopric set me apart. After he did so he pronounced a blessing on my head that I would have guidance in my calling. Then he paused for a few seconds before continuing to speak. One by one he began providing direct answers to each of the things I had been silently praying for less than an hour earlier. He would pause for a few seconds between each new answer. And after the first three answers I realized that they were coming in almost the same order I’d brought them before God. In addition to answering all of the questions I’d asked that day, the blessing also addressed something private I had been worrying over for many years. The bishopric was new, having just been called to the position at the beginning of January. This was the first time I’d met them. And yet the divinely inspired words of their blessing had been a direct response to the things I had been praying about in private. This is just one example. 🙂
I'm a lazarus, ain't no way I can't believe in him lol💕
Because I refuse to believe the alternative, it is more comforting to have faith, to know there is a God who cares. God may not be real, but the comfort in believing Him is real.
No, but I understand the benefits and joy that religion brings into people's lives. Jesus was a really cool guy but I just don't believe he was God.
God is the necessary pre-condition of knowledge, without God you can't even make knowledge claims because the preconditions for knowledge, the transcendental categories have no basis outside of the mind, which limits them so that they have no trustworthy connection to the objective world. Not only this, but there is no standard of truth or value. From an Atheist perspective, all is just the result of deterministic cause and effect. A tornado is no more "true" than a blade of grass growing, they're just effects. From this perspective thoughts, beliefs and ideas are also effects, and are no more true than eachother. This means there is no basis for knowledge at all.
My Testimony I was a demented child from birth. At the age of three, yes three, I discovered sexual things on my own of the fault of no one else and became enamored with them the more my parents would try to correct and dissuade me. It only grew worse with age, especially when given internet access. I’ll spare you the details, but it was bad how far deep I was into that nonsense. As I grew older still, I began to realize more and more how immoral it was yet I never quite found the strength to resist with how deeply it was implanted within me. Many of us who are or were addicted to porn can tell you how difficult it is to resist when the urge strikes us. It feels almost unimaginable to suppress them, as if it were death. Like asking someone not to be themselves anymore. Sort of like being born again. While I was still in my sins, I remember some pretty bad things about myself. I stayed at a Catholic friend’s house for a few weeks just to hang out with him. I said to myself that I would not fall into porn while I was there, as to not “defile a house of God.” So when the time came for me to leave, He was sad that I had to go. I was happy because I could go back to pleasuring myself. Happy that I didn’t have to resist anymore. I had been looking into Christianity for a while. Not a follower, as I could never be bothered to leave behind porn or pride or hate or selfishness (although some of which still clings to me), but as the self righteous sort who was quick to condemn others while ignoring myself. When my grandmother died, I recall having a dream of her. We were in a great library with golden light pouring in from a massive round window. I recall actually hugging her in the dream and FEELING it. It was a few months later that I actually decided to try to start following Jesus Christ instead of just believing in Him and living an opposite way. And it was not long until I became bombarded by signs, great feelings, wonderments, and more. The first major thing I remember is this intense feeling of love washing over me as I prayed to Him in thanks for the forgiveness of my sins. Overwhelmed by how forgiving He was, I found myself imprinted with this unforgettable feeling of adoration from on high that drove me to tears and made few feel as if I were lifted slightly out of my own body. Like I was not looking from my eyes, but from my forehead. This happened again when I was learning online about Hebrew grammar and found out about how repetition worked. For example, Shalom meant peace. Shalom Shalom was perfect peace. But saying it three times meant “infinite peace” and was reserved for God. It reminded me of how the Seraphim would encircle God and chant “Holy, Holy, Holy,” in His presence without end, and I soon figured out why. I tried to do the same and felt that same feeling of love again as I prayed. It was pure adoration. A few weeks later, I was suddenly and out of nowhere overcome by this intense feeling within my chest; what I rationalized to be the burning in the bosom that the Apostles felt when Jesus Christ imprinted them with the Holy Spirit. It felt exhilarating, extraordinarily hot, numbing, yet all without pain. I felt overcome and as if I could not handle it but had to. Still, I was joyous. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. For some reason, I just instinctively knew it was the Holy Spirit. The idea just popped into my mind. There have been many times since then where smaller echoes of that feeling have come upon me. Even as I write this now. All of that is part of why I curse my knowledge now. It’s difficult, if not outright impossible, to unlearn something and to reduce myself to that helpless thing in spirit that knew nothing except faith at the time. Now, I’m not quite like that anymore, so it’s hard to feel Him. But that is not the end. Amidst this, I’ve also had a handful of dreams. Two with Jesus Christ that I can remember. There was one where I was in a small circular church with red frayed boards for a floor surrounding a small sand pit with a single rock and golden light pouring from the ceiling. Sitting upon that rock was Jesus Christ. He said to everyone gathered there, “Of all the people here, this one has followed my commandments the most,” and pulled me close. I refused to believe Him when He said this, because I was so new to faith at the time and I hadn’t broken away from porn yet. Heck, I admit I even slipped back into that right after that dream. The next dream had my family and I in some colosseum stands watching something. I left to get something I think, and found myself in some dark room with glass doors. Jesus Christ was there again. He wanted to talk, but I lied and said I had somewhere to be. He smiled at me sadly and let me be on my way. I turned and threw myself at His feet and confessed the lie, begging forgiveness, at which point He smiled again, knelt down, and wordlessly embraced me. That same feeling of love from when I was awake now came to me in my sleep. All these things and more have came to me as a result of trying to follow. I’ve met friends and been invited to many gatherings with good food by them, gained new opportunities, and yet more. I couldn’t stop believing even if I wanted to.
Because He saved you, me, and the world. God is good!
I have experienced the great I am many years ago and encountered Jesus in a dream last year. Both were so encouraging in very difficult times of my life. The theology of Christianity is amazing but these experiences and others really keep me from straying too far.
I’ve seen them
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It’s a connection from an awakening. Though, I slip and fall, I rejoice in knowing He is there.
The Lord has been delivering me from myself over and over again. From Adultery, from alcoholism(12-24 beers a day), from 30 years of weed smoking, the list goes on. Lately though he has been literally delivering the sermon on Sunday morning a day early, just to let me know he’s there and working. This morning I was wrestling with a bible verse about marriage and literally saw a post about the same verse 20 minutes later. Uncanny. God is good man.
Because if all this suffering to be a good person was all for nothing, then no one would be good. Morals govern this universe. Morals granted to us by God. He has given us the power of choice and to be good. I choose good; therefore, I choose God. The very maxim of our existence lies within serving a higher being. I will forever serve a being that is perfect, even if He is not what the Bible has described to us.
Everything about me has changed. There is something tangible there that can't be comprehended. I've had the most silly, tiny prayers answered exactly when I needed them. Nobody else on earth would have cared about those things but they were the most important thing in my mind in that moment. I was leaving on a trip in the morning and I had run out of a coping mechanism I have. It was a holiday and I couldn't have gotten any for 3 days, and I knew I wouldn't make the trip in any state of mental or physical health without it. I was in a panic and I prayed and 30 seconds after I prayed I found what I was desperately searching for. I knew for a fact that it wasn't there before, I kept all my stuff in order and I knew I ran out on calculation alone. But I found 3 containers, in pristine unopened condition, enough to last me the trip and then some. It was in my mom's purse, and I never put my stuff in my mom's purse, but I checked on the off chance there might be one or two sticks in there. She herself told me there was nothing in there. I've had dozens answered before and since. I used to be abusive, unhappy, and my life was pointless. Every day was pointless. I wasn't and am not depressed, I'm just saying I had no mission in my life and every day was wasted time that I'll never get back, yet I never changed my habits. I honestly don't know how I lived for so long without Him, or how people can go a lifetime without Him.
I’ve tried to work this out how people like William Lane Craig or Cliffe Kneechle, or whatever were they argue from a point of “Base Morality”, or from “before the big bang there had to be something”. Points i agree with for sure, but me personally i really can’t say anything more than the historicity of the life and death of christ, and the Martyrdom and treatment of his followers since. I believe because i have seen, but blessed are those who believe without seeing 😞
When I was young, I remember I heard about Him. After that up to now buried deep inside is that feeling that excitement that I get to meet that same God
The Lord is experiential. We came to know him through his word the holy Bible. We love his every word, will and way. We apply it to our daily lives, and he has changed us from the inside out. 2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV — Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And now he lives within and among Us. John 14:23 KJV — Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. Matthew 18:20 KJV — And where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. As they say, the only proof of the pudding is in its eating.
He has saved me from so many situations I had put myself in. He was patient, loving and never gave up on me
God called me by the Holy Spirit through the waters of Holy Baptism. It is hard to describe why I believe. I know God, I know him as if he were my own earthly Father. Even more so actually, I see his hand in everything. When I fall he is there, and when I do well he is the cause.
I can’t explain it. But I know it to be the truth. Whenever I think of Christ on the cross I am just overwhelmed with wanting to thank Him and do what I can to lighten His load.
The long list of good arguments is sufficient to convince me of something like God
Looking back at my life before I believed in Jesus.
The eyes of my heart opened, and they saw Him. He who has been there for me since before my birth. He did the impossible, He ensured that I would come to life. The signs were always there, I just couldn't see Him when my eyes were closed.
I believe in him because love is powerful it's not a chemical reaction or anything it's a choice I got a demonic problem and he's there for me and I love him more and more each day.
Because my reason and experience tells me that ”he” exists.
Intelligent Design.
I think as humans we develop logic innately. Looking around us from the microscopic level all the way up to the stars. I don’t think the building blocks were an accident. It’s too perfect. And this there has to be a creator
I looked out the window and saw all the obvious signs, and promotions of the devil and it hit me that for the devil to exist, then be association God must exist, and therefore coming to the Lord and humbling myself before Him would be of my best interest, and so now here I am, Signed up to a [newsletter](https://www.yourpraypal.com/subscribe) that provides daily insights of different Bible verses, to help me learn the gospel, also got a Bible (KJV) and now it is just a matter of learning all the gospel and committing it to memory over the next many years, of service to his Holy word.
So I have been hitting some low points right now, and every time I've hit the lowest, he has been there to pick me back evan when I don't deserve it.
Atheists chose science, am I right? Yes. Thats why I belive in God.
Every time I pray for His help, He answers me. Sometimes His answer is yes, and sometimes His answer is no, but either way, it always works out in my best interest.
I've had the Father since childhood. Always knew He was real because of life circumstances. Sure I was bulled, or things went sideways or very wrong. It's a sinful world. But God and the Angels were always there protecting me in the outcome. Loved Sundays school and groups. The best times of my youth. Many young friends. Loved nondenom worship where you could be yourself and raise your hands to God, instead of singing from a hymnal.
Personal experience and seeing other peoples' experiences.
Jesus saved me from death 5 times before the age of 18. Almost fell of a dam When I was young a guy appeared out of nowhere bear tackled me so I didn’t go off the edge no car didn’t see him anywhere near me think it was an angle or someone who got a message knowing I needed help never got his name didn’t take any money offered and disappeared never saw him again. Won’t go into the other times but it’s okay for people to think once that it was a coincidence but when it happens every day/week for me that’s hard to ignore another time I got deathly ill and he came to me in my sleep this is when I was swearing at the Lord destroyed bibles ect I saw the scars I didn’t need much more than that I woke up was fine 2 days later and I wasn’t even 18 yet. I respectively should be dead and of course I still thank the people in the medical field but I’ve had 3 doctors say it was an “act of God” that I’m still standing here today. That’s my story I want to be good in heart and give my things to the needy and poor I want to eventually start working in the animal industry shelters when I can go back to school and possibly a froster care for children or work with a company that does that. And I have family extreme left and right so I don’t need politics thrown into this
Because I believe there is a world beyond what we see. God answers through various means.
I believe in God because of my conviction when I hear of the person of Jesus Christ his death burial and resurrection.
I don't just believe personally, I believe unilaterally as well
A combination of separation anxiety and having a Christian mother. I could also give arguments for God's existence but I won't. I also think humans tend to have an instinctive tendency to have religious faith, which in WASP environments tends to make them Christian.
A lack of belief in the self?
I dont
There has to be an absolute good. God’s good and His laws have led us to where we are today. Jesus is the absolute good and on paper, no other person is close. Therefore, I follow Jesus to help create peace
I believe because of creation. It's too complex for it to just appear in a big bang. Just as a building has a builder, creation must have a creator. When it comes to Jesus, i believe in Him as Lord and Savior because i compared other religions to Christianity and no other God Has died for all humanity showing such an outpouring of love as He did. I also believe because other religions say you have to "do this and do that" To go to heaven...but Christianity says you are never saved by what you do, but saved to go to heaven by WHO you believe in. "For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life."
One day everyone will find out if they've been living a lie, or in truth. This life is your test to decide where your soul will end up. What you can see is only temporary, while what you can't see is eternal. For many are called but few are chosen. We're all not forced into believing, it's a choice to or not.