Apologetics
Letter to atheists, skeptics, and those fed up with Christians and their message
I want to challenge you with the following statement.
God does not need nor does He even desire to prove His existence to you.
That statement may sound a bit arrogant. It might solicit all kinds of responses. Nevertheless, those trusting in their own ability to scrutinize the existence of God may need to embrace that statement before it is even possible to come to the truth concerning God’s existence.
The entire subject concerning God’s existence must be approached from an entirely different paradigm than the one most skeptics use in drawing their conclusions.
Approaching a subject from a different paradigm will often bring clarity along with a new perspective. Consider the magician who has you completely stumped by his sleight of hand. You spend hours wracking your brain but to no avail. Then comes the “ah ha” moment when the illusionist reveals the secret. He provided a new paradigm and suddenly the seemingly impossible is perfectly obvious. Simply put, one must examine an issue, problem, challenge, or belief from a completely different point of view before ascertaining the definitive truth. Until the paradigm and method of examining a situation changes, a comprehension of the truth may not occur. In a sense, that is the challenge I am making.
Proving God’s existence is not the issue.
When it comes to resolving the existence of God, the false assumption is that a person must somehow obtain enough evidence to convince himself or herself that God exists. That is the old paradigm and it must shift before a realization of the truth is even possible. The problem is not for lack of evidence. The evidence is overwhelming. So much more could be brought forward on the evidence for God. The snag comes in our reliance upon a 4 pound mass of tissue between our ears as our final authority in judging the truth of God’s existence. How much evidence is enough to satisfy you? How much evidence is enough to satisfy someone else? Maybe you would disagree. In fact, you are quite certain that God does not exist and wonder how any intelligent person could conclude otherwise. Believers in God are delusional you say. If God were real, then surely He would supply enough evidence to make his existence apparent to everyone (I am not claiming that God has not made his existence clear to all). Then perhaps intelligent and rational thinking would prevail and resolve the whole issue. Or perhaps you feel that modern science and technology along with centuries of knowledge is enough to disprove the existence of God. I would suggest to you that that all of our greatest tools of discovery and even God’s best undeniable and verifiable evidence is still not enough to “prove” God’s existence. Once the issue is approached from a different paradigm, you may come to realize that God planned it that way all along. Perhaps at this point you are expecting me to say something to the effect that, “therefore we must just have faith that he exists.” Actually, no, that is not going to be my argument. And that is because the problem has absolutely nothing to do with proof of God’s existence. Keep tracking with me. For those who make the paradigm shift, the truth becomes a marvelous thing to behold.
The difficulty in discovering God stems for our inward nature.
In other words, (and this is an easy one to believe) people everywhere are messed up. Our inborn nature has tainted our minds, our choices, our affections, and our emotions. On top of that, everyone is left with his or her own interpretation of the truth. Much of the world’s problems are in part, due to this fact. My assertion is that all of mankind does not have the ability to make a grand, unified truthful and good conclusion about anything. ANYTHING! God alone is totally good and true. Not us. In mankind’s thinking, one man’s right is another man’s wrong. One man’s truth is another man’s error. I would suggest that this is an obvious truth, but even that would be challenged by someone.
I am hoping that you and I can at least agree on that. And yes, I am going to stand on my statement that God planned it that way. So shame on Him. Or maybe not.
Who is on the throne?
Picture this. One day you are going about your daily routine when suddenly a massive glowing being standing thousands of feet high, well up into the clouds, appears before you. Maybe He appears before everyone. Doesn’t really matter one way or the other; just keep tracking with me here. Anyway, his majesty is so great that it knocks you to your knees. You are blinded by the glorious light. You fear for your life but then he suddenly smiles at you and it’s even kind of reassuring. You might be thinking to yourself, “Hey, self, could this be God?” And then he opens his mouth to speak. His voice is so loud that you have to hold your hands over your ears. It’s like thunder. And he says, “I am God!!!” By this point you are thinking that maybe he is who he says he is. But you’re still not totally convinced so you think, “well, maybe he should perform a few miracles.” That might just do the trick in convincing you he is God. So you dream up your best set of miracles (one of which is that he must know what you are thinking and tell you so.) And sure enough, he knows what you are thinking and performs the miracles which you were thinking should nail down the coffin in the unbelief department. He even goes well beyond your expectations. He creates another moon right in front of you. Then he explains all of history to you to the extent that you are saying to yourself, “Oh now I get it. He has explained everything, answered all my hard questions and now I finally have all the criteria I need to believe that he exists.” So you tell him so. You let him know that he has finally convinced you as to his existence. You even shout it from the mountain top. “I BELIEVE THAT GOD EXISTS.” Hallelujah and all that stuff. But then he does something totally unexpected. He suddenly looks at you sternly and says in his great thunderous voice, “I BANISH YOU TO HELL.” And so…now you’re in hell. WHAT THE …
Who is submitting to who?
Wow, some loving good God he turned out to be. But in case you haven’t figured it out yet, in this particular scenario, who was on the throne of judgment? Or should I say, who was the one taking the place of god? Who was submitting to whom? I would suggest to you that you, in fact, were taking the place of God. You were acting as judge over God, expecting him to meet your particular criteria for belief. So the fact is that you were not submitting to God at all, but were expecting him to have to submit to you. You had your criteria for belief, he met it, and then you decided for yourself that He was worthy of your belief. It might be compared to a two year old requiring the parent to submit to his authority and way of thinking. The parent doesn’t have to “prove” anything to the two year old. Keep in mind that you are relying upon a 4 pound mass of tissue between your ears in making this judgment. And keep in mind that if God was the one who gave you that brain, then he still gets to make the call. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows what’s going on inside that brain. He knows just how messed up you really are. Do you?
So again, I ask you, who was submitting to whom? Oh, and by the way, all those thousands, or perhaps millions or billions of others who saw all of this and were saying to themselves, “he better meet my criteria for belief or I’m not going to believe.” They too were relying on that 4 pound mass of tissue between their ears as their final authority for determining the truth. I will even go so far as to say that if God had to prove his existence then he would no longer be God. Even still, the Bible states that God has given us all the evidence we need so that all of creation is silenced and everyone is without excuse. Here’s one such passage from the book of Romans, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:18-20)
This inborn nature which keeps men from accepting the evidence for God has a name. It’s called the “sin nature“. The word “sin“is defined as “missing the mark.” Each of us has been born with a soul that is way off target. Well, then, isn’t God to blame for this? Hold that thought. We’ll come back to that.
The Bible describes God as both totally just and totally loving. Most unbelievers would scoff at this characterization. They do so because they look at the world around them with all the pain and suffering and tragedy and can only conclude that it must mean that there is no such thing as a perfect loving God. How could a loving, perfect God have allowed all the injustice, death and pain in the world? This needs to be addressed. But let’s stay on point for now.
God said, “It is good.”
Here’s another illustration. The first book of the Bible, Genesis, begins by describing God’s act of creation. (Genesis chapter 1) After he makes the earth, he says it is “good.” After he makes the heavens he says it is “good.” Each time something else is created it is always followed by the statement, “it is good.” The account ends by declaring, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31) So far all of what God created might be compared to a pure glass of water. There are no impurities in it whatsoever. It is a pure glass of water and it is “good.” God eventually created the man and woman and clearly states his rules governing His creation, which He knows, as long as they are followed, everything he created will continue to remain good, whole and in perfect harmony. That perfect world we all yearn for today and then blame God for when we see that it isn’t… it once was absolutely totally pure, loving, whole, and… “Good.” But then there is that whole episode in the Garden of Eden. Don’t write off this subject as some fairy tale without examining closely the implications. The fact is, God actually gave our distant relatives, Adam and Eve, a choice. HE GAVE THEM A WHAT? That’s right… a choice to obey him or not. But then that fateful hour occurred when they disobeyed. But couldn’t God have just let it go? Surely it was no big thing. Now back to the water. I don’t care how big and pure that glass of water is. If you were to drop even the tiniest drop of sulfuric acid into it… then it is no longer perfect, whole, and “good.” That impurity will always be there. Nothing anybody can do about it. (well, okay, maybe the water department folks know how to do it). Anyway, you get the point. Fact is, that act by Adam and Eve changed everything from there on out and is still playing itself out today. By the way, look at the reasoning by Eve. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” (Genesis 3:6) Same thing is still going on today. Except we might call it “the lust of the eyes (that thing sure looks good to me), the lust of the flesh (that thing sure makes me feel good.), and the pride of life (that position of power and success sure would make me feel significant.) Or maybe pride might come off as “I am going to do things my way because, well, I am the captain of my soul.” At the heart of each of these desires, is the dissatisfaction with the good which God provides. Lust takes over and pushes God’s provision aside. The Bible goes on to explain that since God is totally pure, righteous, just, loving, holy and such, he simply cannot allow anything impure or unrighteous to be tolerated. It would be as if a cancer has invaded the body and must be eliminated or death will occur. The condition of the world and society all throughout history attest to the fact that things are pretty messed up and God’s perfect holiness cannot allow it to remain so forever in His presence. His laws and his very being are so absolutely holy and perfect that we simply could not stand in his presence. We would be consumed by that holiness and be destroyed just as a fire consumes all impurities. He is so righteous and just that he can do no wrong. He is the perfect Creator and Judge. If he says we are guilty and sinful, then we are. We try and rationalize and come up with some other explanation. We may want to try and give God some sort of human characteristics to conform to our way of thinking. We reach up and try and bring God down to our level. Okay, here I go again with another illustration.
Man is finite. God is infinite.
Let’s imagine that we all live on a two dimensional plane. Three dimensions do not exist in our world. We are like line drawings on a piece of paper. That is all our brains and our world will allow us to conceive. But now what if a finger were to come down on that two dimensional field. Keep in mind we cannot see that it is anything other than a big flat blob on our two dimensional world. And yet, that is exactly what we try and do with God. We try and use the limited resources he has given us in our physical world to try and explain something our minds cannot conceive of. And it drives us crazy. Where did time begin? How can it possibly end? Where does the universe begin? How can it possibly end? Yea, go ahead and chew on those for awhile. So when it comes to the eternal God, why do we still continue to think that we can figure Him out? If he doesn’t stand up to our own criteria for rational thinking, then we figure this 4 pound mass of tissue between our ears (which He put there by the way and gave it the limitations as he determined best) must be a higher authority than Him. Dwell on that end of time and universe thing a little while longer and then continue to tell me you can figure things out… much less God. Do you really think science is the end all? God is eternal and beyond time and matter. After all, he created time and matter. He is the dimension we cannot fathom. God laughs at our futile attempts to deny his power and authority. (See Psalm 2:4) Oh, the arrogance of men!!!! So once again, he holds all the truth. He calls all the shots. Our ideas of “relative truth” just won’t stand up alongside God’s ultimate truth.
God is both just and merciful… but how can He be both at the same time?
Okay, so God gets to decide what is right and wrong determines the penalty for sin. And that whole punishment for sin thing simply comes, once again, with the fact that nothing unholy and impure can remain in his presence. It’s just a sad fact. That whole drop of acid in the glass of water thing or the cancer in the body thing. Look at what this "cancer" (sin) has done to our society and world. Now try and imagine if it were to remain so for all eternity. God has plans for eternity and they do not include prideful, self-centered humans who are only concerned with their self interests and are unable to “see” God because of their inward tainted sin nature.
The picture is pretty bleak. Everyone is messed up and so we all get to get on the roller coaster to hell.
Governing this bleak picture is a God who is suppose to encompass love. Well, let’s see. He is totally just so it only reasons that a perfect judge will judge sin perfectly. You can argue all day long that “God made me this way”, but that isn’t going to change the fact that you fall tremendously short of a totally righteous God and his laws. But if he is also perfectly loving which means he loves you more than you can ever imagine, then what is the answer?
The answer is Jesus Christ.
Jesus was born from above. He didn’t come down from heaven as a cosmic celestial being, but he was born into time and space by the Spirit of God. God placed his seed or Spirit into Mary’s womb. She conceived a man, just like you and me, except that He was not born from Adam’s seed, which was carried down through the generations to Joseph. If he had been born from Joseph’s seed then he would have that same sin nature that you and I have. But Jesus still had to live the same life as you and I, making the same kinds of choices, facing the same temptations. This is a crucial point. He had to be both totally human and totally divine. Where his humanity is concerned, those desires to satisfy the eyes, the flesh, and the pride of life came against Him just as they do for you and me. Side note: if you read the narrative about Satan’s temptations while Jesus was on his 40 day fast in the desert before beginning his earthly ministry… the three temptations fall under those same old tried and true temptations that faced Eve and you and me: lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. Yet, Jesus never sinned. He was in constant connection with His Father. All of the “laws” of God he followed and carried out perfectly, or rather, they were wrapped up in Him. The Apostle John called Him “the Word.”(John 1:1) We Christians gain a great deal of joy seeing this played out all throughout the scriptures, both the Old Testament and the New. In fact, some smarter people than me have said that there are over 300 prophecies concerning the coming of Christ, this Messiah, and all of them are fulfilled in this one Man. That’s right. His mission, his life, his very being is shown all throughout the Bible; the Old and the New Testaments. Jesus wasn’t just some man who came on the scene one day and then started a new religion. Even the date of his arrival was predicted. And yes, actually, that can be “proved. Or rather, the reference can be shown and then the truth can either be accepted or rejected. The prophet Daniel gave the exact date of his arrival into Jerusalem, but the religious leaders of that day (as well as many today) purposely rejected it. Why? Once again, the sin nature does not want to receive the truth because it knows it must give an account to that truth.
At this point perhaps your argument might be that if you can be shown enough evidence and if I find just the right set of eloquent words to convince you, then you would believe. I will say it again. Proof of God’s existence is not the issue because, once again, if we need proof, then we are taking the place of God, expecting God to conform to our criteria, thus we are taking the place of God.
Once again, I regress. Back to God’s solution. The Bible says that since all of mankind is sinful, deserving of hell, then a price for this sin must be made. Perfect justice demands it! And someone did pay the price.
The great exchange.
Jesus, the sinless “Man”, took our place on a cross and paid that price. Jesus died an extremely painful agonizing death and took your place. You can NEVER be good enough to see God and have him actually reveal his full presence to you… to satisfy your own stated need for belief. You might even at this point throw yourself into a great gulf of sorrow and guilt and tell yourself that you are going to live for God. (I realize I am exaggerating). But even that won’t gain you access to God.
What will? Here it is. Believe that what Jesus Christ did was the price that had to be paid. Receive that sacrifice and allow him to de-throne you and take his rightful seat on the throne of your soul. You see, it is as if you are standing before God the perfect Judge and he were to slam down his gavel, point his mighty finger at you and declare you guilty of breaking all of his perfect ways and rebelling against his Kingship, and therefore are banished from his presence forever in a place designated for demons. But then He suddenly steps down from behind his bench, comes down to where you are and says that he himself will take the place for your punishment and banishment. The one who made the law is also the One who disseminates justice. Not only that, but He is the ONLY ONE who can do that. No one else is worthy.
Since Jesus was born of God being totally divine, but also born from man being totally human, then that is precisely what took place. Adam, the first man who’s DNA still resides in all of us, results in our guilt. Jesus, the new Adam has taken that place within believers.
How then am I, this messed up person, ever going to be found worthy to stand before Holy God? It's all about God's grace. God's grac does not mean he turns a sort of kindly old grandfatherly blind eye to what we have done as an offense to Him. No. It means that through God's loving kindness, he has graciouslyy provided the solution for dealing with those offenses. Thus He is able to show mercy without having to compromise his justice.
Death could not hold Jesus in the grave because “the wages of sin is death“(Romans 6:23) , and Jesus did not sin. He arose which means that the verdict had been dealt with and that life was now available to all who would place their trust in Christ and HIS perfect holiness.
Controlled by the Spirit.
The Bible promises that the same Spirit and life which is in Christ will come to live in us when we place that trust in what Jesus did on the cross on our behalf. (Romans 8:11 & 1 Corinthians 6:19, John 15, and many other passages) So you see, Jesus, the new Adam can now occupy our souls. And then something marvelous takes place. You will have a different nature than the one you had previously. Does that mean that you won’t continue to mess up and sin? No, it means that there is now a Spirit living inside of you which enables you to overcome sin. The nature you had before simply decided for itself what choices were right or wrong. The sin nature would not, nor could not submit to God. It was impossible. “But a natural man does accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” (I Corinthians 2:14) Another passage says this, “The god of this age (Satan) has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:40) Without God’s perfect Spirit living on the inside of us we were totally destitute and simply relying on that 4 pound mass of tissue between our ears to guide us through life… to be our savior so to speak. But when we allow Jesus to be our Guide, our Shepherd, our Savior, we have him on the inside of us giving us the ability to live for God.
When you have been out partying and you end up drinking too much, who or what is making your choices? You might say you are still making your choices and must suffer the consequences for those choices. You would be right. Or you might say that it was the alcohol that influenced those choices and it was the alcohol which is to blame. You would be right about that too. So what I am saying is that we are living either with that sin nature governing our choices, or our new “born again” Spirit filled nature governing our choices. The choices are still ours to make and we might not make good ones, but with God’s Spirit we now have the ability to make good ones. Not necessarily all at once but God’s grace continues to work in our lives until He brings us home. If we were suddenly made perfect after receiving Christ then perhaps pride would once again raise its ugly head or perhaps we would become a bunch of robots of sorts. God’s work in our lives is a process. This process involves suffering and testing. The difference is that these life experiences can be a means of drawing us closer toward God rather than creating further division. If we have sinned, we recognize it and are able to repent. This can ONLY be true for one who has God’s Spirit residing within.
But God doesn’t let us off the hook by receiving Christ. It is true that you have been “born from above” (John) and that means you have passed from eternal death to eternal life.
The new nature will give you the desire to know more and more about God as long as you do not “quench” the Spirit of God who is performing His work on your heart. One important truth must be stated at this point.
If we are to know God, He must reveal himself to us.
He does not give us the option to just take in whatever resources we want in order to try and figure Him out. He’s God. He gets to decide the means and method and medium in which to reveal himself to us. Our need isn’t to try and figure Him out. He even says that His thoughts and ways are much higher than our thoughts and ways (Isaiah 55:8-9) and we will never truly come to a complete understanding of what he is up to while we are on this earth. He says “the secret things belong to God”. (Deuteronomy 29:29) He has built into our brains and into our world certain limitations. Maybe I have said that over and over and trying to find different ways to say it.
The problem is sin. We’re all messed up. The solution is our sinless Messiah.
Where does the rubber meet the road? It comes through faith. It comes through trust that what God has revealed and accomplished we can believe and stand on it…. No matter what! No matter what trials and pain life throws at us. No matter who calls us names or tries to hurt us. “They will hate you because they first hated me,” Jesus said. (John 15:18) Those who hated Jesus did so because he claimed to contain the ultimate authority of truth. We Christians are hated for the same reasons. Despite all the problems we face we still rely on God and his truth. Even the pain, trials, and mess ups are part of His means of growing us and making us “more like Christ” which is the ultimate goal of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
God has given us His resources.
Once we receive the offer of salvation from Christ, God’s Spirit directs us to the resources he has lovingly given to us. One of these is the Bible. And you can argue all day long using human logic and reasoning that it is merely a bunch of writings of mere men so how can it have come from God. It actually explains itself in that matter. You see, God used a certain Nation of people of His own choosing. He chose them. They did not initially choose Him. He set in motion the history (His Story) of this Nation with the declaration that through this Nation he would bring about salvation. That Nation, of course, is Israel; The Jews. From the first words found in Genesis through the last words of Malachi, God began to reveal his plan for redeeming mankind, using those individuals he chose to use, utilizing the very bents, gifts, talents, and status within their individual times, but then through the inspiration (God breathed) of the Holy Spirit, to put forth the words God knew we needed to hear. Thank God he didn’t just send down some great giant golden stone from heaven with some sort of “proof” that it came from God. Then we would be right back to where we began. Us, sin filled rebellious men still having to live in that same old worn out messed up nature deciding whether or not the giant golden book fit our criteria for belief.
No. God chose humanity. He chose tiny Israel. He chose his own creation to write down his words through all kinds of ways and methods. The entire Bible has the same thread. It has the same unity of message even though it was written by 40 different men from vastly different time periods and cultures and status over a 1500 year period to bring about this unified message of a coming redeemer to solve the problem which occurred from the first words written in Genesis. And then in the New Testament, men who now had the Spirit of God living within them began to make it plain. Then he used faithful spirit filled men of God creating the “Canon” of scripture which we now call the Holy Bible. The mystery is explained. The message was made clear. But you must go to Him on His terms to hear it. Once you do, the understanding, the revelation from God continues to grow deeper and deeper within your mind throughout your lifetime.
We who place our trust in Jesus Christ have an awesome privilege of reading those words and having the Spirit reveal the truth to us. The Bible says that the “natural man” or “those who are perishing” as scripture puts it cannot understand the Words of God. (1 & 2 Corinthians again) They are foolishness to him. It says the natural man doesn’t want to know God’s Words or perhaps decides for himself which parts are worthy to be read and then tries to interpret them to line up with his own ideas.
Another resource is His Church. And I do mean His Church. Not a bunch of people who rely on rituals and traditions to somehow make them pretend to do good things for God. The “Church” isn’t a religion or simply an organization or building. It is made up of those individuals who have placed their hope and trust in Christ and are doing His bidding. Christian literally means “follower of Christ. “ Christ himself organized the Church. Oh sure, there are those individuals who want to argue that they don’t like “organized religion.” Religion is simply people trying to do good stuff and hold onto some form of belief system. But praise God that the Church, His Body, His Temple, His Family has some semblance of organization… His kind of organization. The “Church” is a resource he lovingly provided. He never intended for us to be “Lone Ranger” Christians. It is through the Church that God gives feet to His mission and message of salvation.
You must make a choice.
Let me tell you what I believe may happen with you right now. Actually one of two different things may occur.
On one hand you may find yourself somewhere between annoyed and infuriated. Perhaps you will be fed up with all this nonsense and continue to believe that Christians have bought into an irrational set of beliefs which defy logic and reasoning. How could we actually believe all of those fairy tales in the Bible? I mean, come on, people. Use the brains that God gave you…er, I mean that evolution gave you.
So what if what I am telling you is true? That changes everything. It even changes my motivation for writing this letter and trying to suggest you need a “paradigm shift” in the way you approach the existence of God.
If not, then once again, you are left to that brain., that four pound mass of tissue with neurons making electrochemical transmissions which simply evolved without a creator over a several million years as your final authority. Good luck with that.
Another thing which might happen is that you give God a chance to enter your heart. He may cause you to humble yourself and admit that you have “missed the mark”, and see the foolishness of your own attempt at requiring God to “prove himself” to you. Perhaps the Spirit of God is bringing you to a point of recognizing your own sinful state. You may come to realize that without a Savior, you are destitute and guilty before a holy, righteous God.
In which case you might simply talk to God and say something along these lines,
“Okay God. I get it. I admit my own arrogance and rejection of you and that I am messed up and totally deserving of whatever consequences you have declared. I have not submitted to you. I’ve been blind to the obvious evidence of your power and wisdom and love. I have ignored your authority over my life. And I have to admit; my life’s a wreck. I am miserable and angry all the time. And yes, I keep making other’s lives miserable as well. I admit all of that too. If you have said that you can replace my anxiety with peace then I will just believe it even if it doesn’t make any sense to me right now.
Having realized this and the fact that my sin was what caused your own Son to have to pay an agonizing price for my sinful condition, I give myself to you. I have been blind. I know you see right through me and I cannot hide anything from you. I stand totally naked before you. And like I said, God, I am guilty. No excuses God. You’ve got me.
Almighty God, I am at your mercy.
Now I am making the choice to place my trust in what Christ did for me. I am thankful that his act of obedience now makes it possible for me to stand in your presence totally forgiven. Oh my Lord how I need to hear those words. I am forgiven. Thank you. I am yours. Show me the next step, Lord. I still have troubling questions which don’t make much sense to me right now. I know I need a group of believers surrounding me, loving me, and helping me on my journey. I know they too are on a journey and might mess up at times but give me your spirit of love and forgiveness. Show me that place Lord.”
God willing and by his grace and mercy that will happen to you.
If God begins to burden your heart, believe that it is coming from Him. It means that He desires to reveal himself to you and bring you into His family. Even if those nagging questions keep popping up which don’t seem to want to allow you to buy into this, don’t ignore what God has providentially revealed to you at this time. Let the Christians in your life know about that burden. Then watch what happens as the weight of a lot of junk comes off your shoulders. If, however, you are not burdened as I described then perhaps you can at least stop the condescending remarks towards those people who only want to wish you well, and who, perhaps, have been praying for you. Besides, they really can’t help who they are… God changed their very nature. They can no more go back to being who they once were than for a dog to will itself into being a cat.
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