Why do you believe in God?

Neirai the Forgiven

Neirai the Forgiven

Christian Guilds List Manager
Sorry, Randy, I'm reopening your closed thread -- after a fashion.

I'd like to know your reasons why you believe that God exists -- I mean, really exists. I think a random troller is a great excuse for us to communicate the wonderful things God has done for us.

I'll come back when I'm not using this as a procrastination.
 
I believe in God because doing otherwise is intellectually dishonest.

The real question is not whether God exists, but why, since God exists, is the world the way it is? Those answers differ between people. I have my own.
 
Can you prove that god(s) do not exist? In order to prove otherwise you have to find flaws in the laws that govern the universe. Things like the parting of the red sea, which defy natural laws point to a higher benefactor. People able to accurately predict the future, healing when there is certain death coming, etc. Those ideas/acts point to something that cannot be described via any scientific method.

Maybe it is the common will of the people for god(s) to exist and their believe lead to the creation thereof. Who is to say that God isn't a time paradox, wished into being after he created the said beings. Since he exists in all time and space once he was created he would have the ability to affect any portion of time, maybe even other "parallel universes".
[/conspiracy theorist][/analytical mind]
(none of the above represents my theology, just some random ideas)
 
At this point in my life, I believe that God exists because He is a tangible part of my daily reality. In other words, I experience a relationship with Him every day. Faith for me now isn't a matter of believing that He exists - that question has been settled in my mind for years and years. Faith to me now is a question of giving myself more completely to Him, believing that He can accomplish God sized things through me, and following John the Baptist in his desire that "I must decrease so that He may increase". True faith is doing these things and realizing that it's not a question of giving up my desires in order to live as some kind of Jesus-zombie, but that He is my creator and built into me the desire to live for Him. When I'm fulfilling that purpose, I realize that there truly is no better way to live.

Now, admittedly, it's taken me decades in my Christian walk to get to this point, and I'll be the first to say that I have FAR yet to go. But why did I first begin to believe that God existed? I took Him up on His invitation - "Taste and see that the Lord is good." I gave Him opportunities to reveal Himself to me and approached those with an open mind. And I saw Him answer. Doing things His way instead of my way made a difference. It wasn't always the difference that I expected, but it was clear that His invitation was to a better way of living. Not easy, not always happy, but clearly different. And those first, faltering steps led to further, more confident steps. And at each step, He continued to reveal that He was walking right alongside me. It took experience and repetition to recognize some of those signs, but small steps prepare us for larger steps, and seeing Him in small ways trains us in learning better how to see Him, at which point He reveals Himself in clearer and clearer ways.

I now can truly say that I'm beginning to understand what it means to 'live a conversation with God.' I do hear His voice in very clear ways. I do experience Him speaking in extremely clear ways - and not always telling me things that I really want to hear. :) I also have learned how much more there is for me to learn. Each step along the path shows me how much longer the path is than I had previously believed. But rather than finding that discouraging, I find that it's a beautiful reminder of how incredible God truly is, how perfect and holy, and how amazing it's going to be when I eventually stand face-to-face with Him. But, in the meantime, I'm finding living for Him here on earth is a pretty incredible experience, too. Life truly is abundant.

So, why do I believe in God? Because of the many ways in which I experience Him. You could more easily convince me that there's no such thing as the color red than that God doesn't exist.
 
Actually, I didn't lock the thread. I reported the post and then replied to it. It just so happens that I was the last one to post in it before it got locked.

As for why I believe? Well, I'm going to bore you with a lot of my backstory before first :)

I grew up believing in the possibility of a god. Not necessarily THE God, but a god nonetheless. I read the kiddie versions of Noah's Ark, Garden of Eden, and some of the other stories. I didn't fully understand what it all meant, just that there was a higher power out there.

We were C&Ers (Christmas and Easter) people...sometimes. I went with friends a few times to their churches, and was completely weirded out by some of the stuff that went on. Random people speaking in tongues, pastor "teaching" in a foreign language so we could hear the message in it's pure form... it didn't make sense, and it certainly didn't grip me.

Late in high school, I went with some buddies to a dance club. He told me that they played different music than what I had ever heard, and they took a little break in the middle of the night to talk. That's all he told me. Turns out it was a Christian dance club, with some kickin' music and the "little break" was a small Bible Study & prayer session. I'd been around church and other events, it didn't throw me or phase me. Instead, it actually showed me that Christians could still goof off, have fun. Big stereotype destroyed that night.

Fast forward a lot of years, friends, clubs, churches... and my dad (of all people...who NEVER wanted to go to church when I was younger) invited me to come to his church. I figured that if nothing else, I'd hear some tips on how to live a better life... and if there was a god (God) maybe I'd learn something about him.

I really liked the pastor - every single thing he says, he can back up with scripture. There's no guesswork on how he gets where he is, it's all in the Bible. He's a straight talker, does a lot of research on linguistics, backstory, etc... so he can explain what different words or phrases mean. So I kept going. I wanted to have God in my life, I'd even asked Him in several times. I really didn't feel anything different tho. Confused a bit, but not giving up.

Then a few years ago, one of my co-workers started talking about the missions trips that he was going on (he goes on 2-3 a year), how much fun he was having, how much he enjoying working for God. I asked a TON of questions, and he eventually invited me to come along. So I participated in one of the fund raisers to cover part of my expenses, but paid the rest out of pocket (he lives an hour away from me, so it was hard to drive over there for a 45 minute session about the fund raisers).

So we go to Philadelphia, and I'm a chaperone for a youth group. I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to be a guide for these kids, and I was terrified that one of them would either see right through me, or ask me a question I couldn't answer. A lot of them had been in the church their entire lives, and here I am a year in? Ugh!

But the 8 hour drive out there goes off without a hitch. Lots of cool teens, lots of cool adults. We get there early in the evening, and we're unloading the 2 vans and the truck we brought out full of our stuff & supplies (we were hosting a VBS for a local church that week). We go through our introductions to 3 other churches joining us, and then go up on a hill high above the city and have an opening prayer for the week. Man, that place was awesome. It rained like crazy, but we didn't care. If I've never mentioned it before - summer thunderstorms are one of my favorite things.

The next morning after breakfast, I start taking supplies down to the truck and see a homeless guy sleeping in the alley behind the church. He had literally piled trash all around him to keep warm through the night, and didn't have any signs of food around him. When I went back inside, we had another group session scheduled on safety. We were staying in the slums, dealing with drug dealers, prostitutes, homeless, addicts...you name it, we were going to see and talk to them. That really didn't worry me much. I work as a paramedic in a lower-end area. I see a lot of that stuff in my day-to-day work.

Then it happened. While I was in that meeting, I heard God speak to me. I thought it was my imagination at first, but He kept whispering, "feed him." I thought I had completely lost my mind. God only speaks to crazy people and makes them do stupid things like blow up buildings and kill kids, right? But He just kept telling me to feed him. My vision blurred and all I could see was an image of the guy in the alley. The site coordinator was talking, but all I could hear was God saying, "feed him." I honestly don't think I heard more than 3 or 4 sentences that the coordinator said the entire time. How could I pay attention to her when God was talking?

So I went up to her immediately after the meeting and told her what I had experienced. I think she could tell that the whole thing had me thrown because she asked if that was the first time that God had talked to me (and probably meant....is that the first time you listened to what God had to say?) She told me to go to the kitchens and find the guy some food. If God told me to feed him, who was she to say differently?

God hooked me in 15 minutes.

It took me going 400 miles away from home, so I wouldn't be completely comfortable in my surroundings, but God spoke to me, he showed me things. Some of the things make perfect sense. Other things, I still don't understand. The hungry guy had a good breakfast.

But the one thing I learned was that God exists. He is here, He can show and tell you things. He can act in your life in a way I never dreamed possible. I learned that if I just ask God, he'll give me answers....when He wants. But when I seek to do His work, I found that I always get an answer, even if it's not the one I'm looking for, or even if I don't know where to find it.

Our last day there, we had a "free morning". There was nothing specifically planned other than an "Ask The Lord" session. We prayerfully asked God what He wanted us to do that day. One person felt compelled to stay back and read his Bible. Others were given images, sounds, smells. One person had an image of the subway station a few blocks from where we were. Another smelled hot dogs, another saw a fountain, another heard running water, another said he felt that he needed to find love, another saw chevrons (like what military folks might have for their ranks). I saw stairs. Yep, some old concrete stairs - on a corner; they were rounded and had a rail going down the center, and a block wall on each side with a handrail. The third step was chipped on the left side, and the center rail was rusted near the bottom.

I was certain that I had never seen those stairs before, and it didn't make any sense. I asked God to show me again, to show me the building, the stuff around it...anything, but that I didn't understand. Nothing. That was the picture God gave me.

So we talked with the coordinator and told her the things we felt God had given us to work with. She broke us into a few groups and said we were all taking the subway from the station down the street, and then we were to put our trust in God and follow wherever we felt He wanted us to go.

We went to the subway and rode downtown. Immediately after coming up, we started hearing water, just as one heard. We followed the sound until we saw a fountain, just as was described. On the other side of the fountain was an artpiece in the park center... a LOVE statue (I don't mean anything pornographic, it quite literally was the word LOVE). Just like that, 4 of the 17 of us had already found what God meant for us to find.

We soon after found the hotdog stand, and decided to take a quick stop for lunch and say a prayer of thanks. We broke out into groups. I had three young guys with me. Two of them said they really didn't feel like God had shown them anything, the other was the guy that saw the "military chevrons". We stopped and prayed again, asking God where we were supposed to go. As we finished, one of the two that didn't have anything earlier, said he felt God telling him to go "that way". So we followed. A few blocks later, the other said he heard God tell him to turn. So we did. Then we walked right past a Navy building. We thought that was what God wanted for us, so we stopped, thanked God that He lead us there.

But I still hadn't seen my stairs. So now I was the only one in the group that hadn't contributed. I started to doubt myself. Maybe I walked past the stairs and didn't see? Maybe I remembered it wrong. Maybe I made the whole thing up because I wanted so badly for God to talk to me. I felt horrible. God left me out, and I wanted so much to find what He had shown me. So we prayed again. As we finished, the guy that saw the chevrons looked up and saw them again. We weren't in the right place after all, we were supposed to be further down the block. It wasn't a military chevron, it was a signboard.

So we went to the signboard (I prayed all the way down, thanking God for not letting the journey be finished yet). The same guy said he felt God telling him to cross the street and head back towards where we started. So we go up the block and I saw them. The stairs. Every detail was exactly how God showed me. The rails, the broken step, the rust, the wall. Everything. I looked around and was sure that I'd never been here before. I didn't recognize anything else, I was in a part of the city I'd never been in before. And yet here, 400 miles away from home, God showed me stairs. We checked the time, and we couldn't stay long, so we hurried and met the group to head back to the church.

It turns out that everyone had found what God wanted them to find. God gave me three guys (two of which that had no idea what they were doing) to show me another church. But I started getting a bit confused. Why were we there? Why did we go to that church? Was there something else to see? Something else to do? I started feeling like I had let God down because He took us there, and we didn't do anything.

My mood sullied a bit, and my co-worker's wife noticed it. When I explained all of that to her, she paused a moment, then said to me, "Maybe you weren't supposed to do anything there. God put you with (the three guys) so that you could see the steps. I think it was just God trying to strengthen your faith."

I think she was right. We spent the afternoon asking God "Okay, what next, where do we go?" and forgot to listen for God to say "Stop here, this is where I want you."

Sometimes, we have God's work to do right here, right now, wherever we are, and we forget to stop and look for the opportunities to serve God faithfully as opportunities present themselves. Like Baddwin said:

Baddwin said:
Faith to me now is a question of giving myself more completely to Him, believing that He can accomplish God sized things through me, and following John the Baptist in his desire that "I must decrease so that He may increase". True faith is doing these things and realizing that it's not a question of giving up my desires in order to live as some kind of Jesus-zombie, but that He is my creator and built into me the desire to live for Him. When I'm fulfilling that purpose, I realize that there truly is no better way to live.
Click to expand...

Man, that's just about perfect. I really think that God was just as thrilled as I was at the moment I found those stairs. It started a chain reaction in my life of me looking for the answers in Him instead of listening to the world.

Feeding the homeless man may have been the cornerstone to my learning for the week, but finding those stairs eventually became the keystone to my faith.

*edit*

Oh, the guy that stayed back to read his Bible - he had been really upset because he didn't know how to handle something, and when he opened his Bible, he opened right to the page that gave him the answer he needed. How awesome that God pointed him right to the answer just when he needed it most!
 
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My own view is thus:
I have a relationship with him and he works upon my life, thus I KNOW he exists.

But beyond that:
Why would the entire Universe suddenly come into existance out of nothing at all in a big flash of light? Why does Genesis of ALL religious texts start creation with the creation of light?

Why is there truth? Why is there mathematics? Why does mathematics so intimately describe the processes in our universe? Why is there intelligence and inquiry and a sense of the divine and why is it only found in humans? Why do humans need the spiritual? Why is it that of ALL religious texts the bible speaks of humanity being made by the creator of the universe such that it might be known by them, and have a relationship with it?

Why was Israel scattered to the corners of the earth, but now stands where it stood once as a nation, scattered and returned to the land as CLEARLY prophesied in the bible?

Those factors alone should be enough to generate Interest in the possible, indeed probable, reality of God.

No matter how much "rationalization" is applied against God, the things that are plainly in front of us, God's fingerprint as moses puts it, can not be done away with or hidden.
 
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I grew up knowing there was a god, not knowing him, but knowing he was there. As i got older, i got closer to him, and since then everything i see/know points him. There is no reason to believe there is no god.
 
I have found that people either believe or don't believe in God for three reasons:

1. It is a matter of truth either God is 100% provable or he is 100% disprovable. Such people use the words proof God exists or does not exist rather than evidence for or against. (Fundementalist Christians on one-side and Fundementalist Atheists - i.e. Richard Dawkins on the other are examples of this). This is problematic as such "proof' does not exist.

2. It is a matter of how it benifits ones life. If it benifits me then i will believe in God if it doesn't I wont (Pascaul's Wager is along these lines that he don't lose anything by not believing in God but you can stand to gain lots by believing in God). This is problematic when circumstances change i.e. if pursecution comes do you change you opinion on whether there is a God or not to make your life more convientient.

3. My self i believe in God because on the balance of evidence for and against God i believe the evidence points more for God than against him. This means I do have doubts about various aspects and the original thread that had troubeling verses from Psalms is one such doubt. However, I still believe in God because the evidence still points towards him regardless of whether there are some issues which I have concerns about.
 
I simply believe that our world and universe is intricate. Everything is made up by design and for a reason. God only knows the reasons and is the creator.
 
Because I can or not! Meaning, I know I differ from all God's other creations.
Look in a mirror and see inside, something one, can never hide, the breath within, that gave life, to all men.
 
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