Open Your Eyes To The Reality of God

posted in: Faith | 0

  • You have to have more faith not to believe in God than to believe in Him. If He was real, you would be missing out on pretty big stuff not knowing Him and would have no assurance or hope in for when your time comes and for the future. Life is short and having assurance that after life there will be no pain or suffering gives me hope. If He wasn’t real, you wouldn’t be missing out on anything but being a Christian would only help you live life to the full and try to make a difference in this world.
  • We have been travelling the world for nearly 6 months now, have been to 10 countries since we left England in September and have visited many churches. We have been invited for meals to people’s houses that we have never met before, taken out to restaurants and have received lots of helpful advice. Travelling as a Christian and visiting churches has given us so many opportunities to learn and grow about the local culture and about ourselves.
  • The world promotes self-obsession, consumerism, individuality, narcissism. Jesus encourages us to love others more than ourselves, be better and do better.
  • Since travelling we have seen and experienced many other religions but this has only strengthened our relationship with Jesus.

 

Look around you and you will see billions of people without faith, people are ignorant and don’t want to know.

Being a Christian, believing in God is not popular. You say why believe in something that you cannot see, I wouldn’t     possibly be able to choose a religion from so many options even if I wanted to anyhow, which one is the right one?      Besides, religion is a cause of war and terror, how could any of it be true? How can God be good if there is one, with  so much suffering and pain in the world? And the list of questions continue….

In this blog I want to focus mainly on Christianity.

 

Loneliness has become a huge concern in today’s society, studies have shown that one in 10 of us is lonely; Christianity not only offers a relationship with someone who is always there but also offers a community where you belong to as part of a big family.

 

Young people and young adults struggle with self-image and self-esteem daily; Christianity gives us a new identity in Christ and reassures us again and again that we are wonderfully and fearfully made and God does not make mistakes.

Serious illnesses, natural disasters take many lives and many people suffer day-to-day; God is not some distant God who doesn’t care about what we are going through, but He entered into our world and personally experienced our pain. Jesus was broken, rejected, despised and he cried like we cry.

When we suffer, He feels our pain and He hears us.

Suicide, depression and self-harm has risen dramatically in the past 10 years and there are many reasons behind this and some are that people feel lost, hopeless and have no purpose: Christianity can give a new-found purpose, peace and hope for life on earth and also for after. We want to follow in Jesus’s footsteps which means that we put others wishes first before our own and our goal is to bring God’s Kingdom on earth by promoting peace, justice, love and forgiveness.

Science and individualism is an answer to everything.

Except that it’s not. Science has brought us an immense amount of understanding and scientists often claim that we can explain the workings of the universe without a Creator. However, science has not revealed why the universe has come into existence or how the advanced eukaryotic cells emerged from simpler organisms or how consciousness arose in living things and science does not have an answer to many other questions. Science and Christianity work alongside each other and compliment each other. Science and religion are two sides of the same deep human impulse to understand the world, to know our place in it.

Today some claim that Jesus is just an idea, rather than a real historical figure, but there is a good deal of written evidence for his existence 2,000 years ago. The historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth is both long-established and widespread. Within a few decades of his supposed lifetime, he is mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians, as well as by dozens of Christian writings. Compare that with, for example, King Arthur, who supposedly lived around AD500. From Tacitus (Roman politician) we learn that Jesus was executed while Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect in charge of Judaea (AD26-36) and Tiberius was emperor (AD14-37) – reports that fit with the timeframe of the gospels.

The Bible is a huge book and it has thousands of years of history within it, yet there are questions that I am not able to answer you with hundred per cent certainty. Christianity has been the cause of war and terror in the past and there are still Christians who promote hate and violence and we will continue hearing about some who have messed up big time and have done horrific things. Christians are humans and will continue to mess up, the only perfect human being who has ever lived on this earth was Jesus.

One of the major differences between Christianity and other religions is that the Bible not only has one but two books and thousands of years’ worth of history within it:

The Old Testament and the New Testament.

The stories and the books of the Bible are all written at various ages to different groups of people. The way people looked at God and understood the universe was completely different thousands of years ago to now which we need to be aware of especially when we read the Old Testament. Yes, there is violence and discrimination in it and I have questions that I continue to grapple with and I will not know the answers to all my questions with full certainty until I leave this earth. And this leads us onto another major difference between Christianity and other religions: through Christianity we step into a relationship and not into following rules, traditions and regulations. This allows us to grapple with our questions, doubts and to talk to our Father in Heaven about our questions and to put our faith in Him knowing that He loves and cares about us.

Without Jesus and the New Testament.

We wouldn’t be able to understand God’s love for humanity. When we read the Bible we have to consider the history behind the writings.

Yet, the church is made of people like you and me, people who make mistakes daily and will carry on doing so. There are also people who read some Bible verses and will try to follow them as black and white instructions without any history or background knowledge and this is just one example of conflict. Many people walk away from church for many reasons: I have been hurt, the church is not relevant to what I am going through, disagreements, the church is traditional and old, some Christians are very judgemental, etc… But I wonder whether instead of pointing our fingers at others we should be pointing at ourselves and asking the following question; what can I do about what I am unhappy with, we are the hands and feet of Jesus, therefore we are called to make a difference not to just to sit back, watch and complain. God loves the church, the church is the bride of Christ and each one of us represents the church and we all have an important part to play.

People, the church will disappoint us but God never will.

 

We are all humans in need of a perfect Saviour, none of us are better than the other and none of us deserve forgiveness. And still

God is waiting for us with wide open arms to let Him in, He wants to give us peace and a fresh start.

 If you would like to follow Him but don’t know how, have questions or want to know more, we are here for 
you, please get in touch.

 

 

 

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