I have always had a hard time answering the question, “Why do you go to church?” to my friends. It can be a difficult question to answer because there is so much beyond the surface of it. In order for me to answer that question I had to ask myself and God this question. It took years of questioning and discovery until God made me realize that it was my faith in Him that had kept me going all these years.
It’s important to know God’s word as a basis on to how to live our lives, but it’s also important to have a growing a relationship with Him. There are many who don’t realize that it’s our experience with God that reaffirms our faith in Him. It is our personal experience with God that solidifies the relationship.
We cannot “prove” God’s existence through physical means and scientific explanations. God lives through our lives and his blessings are proof of his existence. Faith in God is knowing that our prayers will be answered without question and sometimes no answer is God’s answer.
2 comments:
When you say there's no way to "'prove' God's existence" I'd have to agree entirely. However, there would be the idea of his existence being reasonable. Many apologists have come to terms with the "absolute certainty" of God being a fleeting thought, but they have thought and reasoned that believing in God is in fact a reasonable belief. If you're interested this topic is covered by men such as: William Laine Craig, Ravi Zacharias, and JP Moreland. Ravi, has a website with free audio talks that he's given so feel free to check them out at www.rzim.org . Reason does have it's limits, however, and William Craig admits to this. There's a point where one can think themselves into circles before they have to jump in and simply experience. We can vicariously experience things through other people, but how much more real it is to us when we can say that we've shared their experience.
In an entirely different mode, I think God always answers our prayers, but I don't think the times when we receive no answer that it's no answer, it's more like "wait." Honestly though that's got to be the hardest answer to a prayer that one can receive, because it seems like receiving no answer. Only when our prayers are answered do we even begin to see why God told us to "wait."
And that's my $0.02
Wow - profound!
An interesting reasoning I heard from one of my Profs in college about why we should believe in God in terms of expected returns:
1) If we choose to believe in God:
Cost to us now - Living a Christian life
Benefit to us now - Living a Christian life
Expected Cost to us (if we were wrong and there was no God) - Simply dying
Expected Benefit to us (if we were right) - eternal life in heaven
2) If we choose NOT to believe in God
Cost to us now - living life without a sense of higher meaning
Benefit to us now - living life without rules imposed by God (but we still have to live by rules imposed by the world)
Expected Cost (if we were wrong) - Eternal damnation in hell
Expected Benefit (if we were right - no God) - we simply die
Weigh the costs and benefits yourself but the raionale points to a pretty clear answer for me.
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