A few months ago, I published a reflection entitled “God is really Real”. In it, I asked you to imagine someone who was desperate to figure out whether God was real or not and as part of making that decision they came to you and wanted to know why you believed God was real? 

If you read that reflection, did you think about what you would say?

We’re told in 1 Peter 3:15 “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,”. 

Are you ready with your explanation? 

Do you know what your reason for your hope is? Or is it something pretty vague?

Albert Einstein said “Just because you believe in something does not mean that it is true.”

Would your reason ring true and influence someone to decide there is a God? 

I suggested you look around and tell someone you know, maybe a family member or friend who needs God why you know he’s real.  I hope you did that. I also asked you to consider sharing your response with me so that I could share it with our readers and several of you responded. Thank you.

Below are the final two responses. I hope you find something meaningful in them.

Response No. 1

I found myself in Haiti, it’s a hot humid noisy dirty overcrowded and highly superstitious place.

I hadn’t slept for 3 days. Most buildings don’t have screens in Haiti, all the noises and dust from the city including the roosters, tap-taps (20 person taxis in the back of a covered pickup truck) and the voodoo midnight marches all come screaming through the wide open windows at 90° and 90 decibels.

It’s a dramatic change when you step out the plane and take your first breath of the smell of the place. You’re standing next to this state of the art American airlines wide body jet liner. Surrounded by a country continually on the verge of collapse.

I found myself a ride from the hotel to the poorest place in the western hemisphere. A city called Citasolay. It’s located on top of a garbage dump that was poured out into the bay. The poorest of the poor squatted their little shelters together usually only adding three sides to their tin hut. The fourth wall was your next door neighbor whom you utilize their wall to save funds.

I started walking down an open sewer street, just like all the rest of them. I stopped and looked around, a young boy came up and grabbed my hand. When in Rome… Just then I looked up and the American Airlines plane was coming in for a landing. What a contrast to look up from a squatter’s tin hut city to a modern day airliner.

The boy was still with me, I wondered what in the world am I doing here. I don’t know the language, I’m all dressed up different and the only white guy for miles. What am I to do in a attempt to help these people?

And then I remembered the boy holding my hand, I could pray for him. He was suffering from malnutrition like all the other children there were. He had a bloated stomach as a result. They’re hair was also glaring a red tint to their dark brown hair. And obvious sign of long-term malnutrition.

The only thing I could think was to pray for the boy. I knelt down next to him and put my hand on his stomach, still bloated as ever. The only thing I could think to pray for was his health and that the ravages of malnutrition be undone. As I prayed with my eyes closed I noticed my hand was moving in, this resulted as the Lord God restored this child’s stomach back to a perfect shape of normality. I really had a hard time believing what just happened, but yes it did happen!

I open my eyes to see and hear him jumping for joy. I couldn’t understand what he was saying but everybody listening knew what he meant. His health had been restored, instantaneously!

Then something very strange started happening. The people watching me started following me. In a real way I realized why Jesus often asked miracles he performed not be reported.

It’s a day I’ll never forget and has been a continual reminder of  the power in the name of Jesus.

All we need to do is have the courage to go out there with our skin on the line. God will be the rest.

Response No. 2

Is God really Real? 

It sounds so simple, a Yes or a No. 

Before I sat down to write whatever I am about to write, I spent a couple of hours on the internet reading what people who don’t believe God is real had to say. They included many who used to believe but have since changed their minds. And I have to say, they have some very compelling and sensible reasons to believe what they do. 

I guess I have believed God was real since I was a child because my family did, as well as everyone I knew. My parents believed. My grandparents on both sides believed. We all went to church every Sunday.

And I can only suppose that many of those who do not believe are that way because of their family as well. 

Studies show that when I was a kid, 98% of everybody believed God was real. Not so any longer. So, is God really real or not?

As I’ve said, there has not been a time in my life that I have not believed that God was real. That said, there has been a time, quite a bit of time that I have lived my life as if he was not. The bible tells us how God wants us to be and behave and even think in many circumstances. But I was convinced there was a better way—my way. And that’s what I did. As Frank Sinatra famously sang, “I did it my way”.

I reached a point in my life where I was miserable even though I seemingly had everything anyone could want. And so, I drank, because when I did, I felt better about who I was and what doing it my way had done for me. Over time, I gradually drank not just more but more often. I remember several times asking God for help. But he didn’t. And I knew why. He didn’t help me because he had given up on me and had moved on. At some point, my wife and I ended up with a counselor because now thanks to me, she was becoming miserable as well. The counselor sent me to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) with the instructions to go every day for 90 days—starting today!

Being the newbie that first day at AA, I was given the task of reading something to start the meeting. I have no memory of what I read except that it started with “hi, my name’s (fill in the blank) and I’m an alcoholic. I cannot begin to tell you how both weird and freeing at the same time it was to admit that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable (AA Step 1). As the days ticked by, I worked through more steps: I came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore my sanity (AA Step 2), I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God (AA Step 3), I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself and admitted to God, myself and another human being the exact nature of those wrongs (AA Steps 4 & 5), made sure I was entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character and then when I was sure I was ready, I humbly asked him to remove them (AA Steps 6 & 7).

Not long after that, I was driving down the road and found myself looking up at the sky. It was as if I were seeing it for the first time. It was only then that I realized that I was no longer the same person I had been a short time ago. Not only did I have no desire to drink, but so many things about me were different. I was no longer miserable. I had been changed, I also realized God had been there all along. He had not turned his back on me, it was I who had turned my back on him. And yet, I had been forgiven.

Now you might say coincidence, maybe I finally got serious, or the third times the charm or I was just one of the lucky ones. But the story doesn’t end there.

Through no conscious thought or effort of my own, I started desiring everything God. I started watching church services on TV every night, one or two every night and even more on the weekends, it didn’t matter what denomination. I started reading books about God. I made a pretty long trip to the Christian bookstore in a neighboring town every couple of weeks to get a new one. I started listening to only Christian music at home and especially in my car, not so much for the music but for the message and the daily reinforcement it provided me. And I started going to church—every week. 

I didn’t consciously choose to do these things. The thought never entered my mind. I was somehow led to do them by someone or something. But was it God—is he really Real? Maybe you still think it was a coincidence, or that it won’t last.. 

But my story continues.

Fast forward 10 years. 

My life was really good, I did not drink nor did I have any desire to do so, even when being around others who were drinking. I continued to not just go to church, but to watch the other church services on TV, listen almost exclusively to Christian music and read books about God.

But now something or someone was somehow telling me I needed to do more than just attend a church, I needed to be a real part of it, I needed to be involved in a community like my wife was in her church. 

For the past 10 years, I had been attending the Catholic church with my wife, but I was not Catholic. Far from it, I had been raised Baptist. When I had wanted to go to church after AA, any church, it was easy and convenient to go with her and it made her happy that we were together, but I never had thoughts of becoming a part of it. I was just there for some reason I didn’t really understand. So, I started to think about the different denominations and churches in town and where I should try first. After quite a while, I decided I might as well investigate the Catholic Church first, they say they are the original—and I was already there.

And so I read the Catechism of the Catholic Church and quite a few other books. I listened to the Catholic Answers radio program and paid a lot more attention at church and asked my wife a lot of questions about her church and her faith, many of which she couldn’t answer. But at the end of all this, I decided not to join the Catholic Church for the simple reason that they insisted you go to weekly classes for most of a year before you are allowed to join the church. This was too much for me, I still had some of that desire to do it my way left and I was ready to belong to some church now, not a year from now. Besides, I had heard on the Catholic Answers radio program that some parishes within the Catholic Church offered an abbreviated course lasting only a couple of months for people like me from other faiths. If they wanted me, they should have offered that one here. But they didn’t. I started making plans on where to go.

Two weeks after I had made that decision and was about to try somewhere else, a man walked up to the front of the church and announced that they would be having an abbreviated course to join the Catholic Church that would only last a couple of months for those from other faiths who had been attending the Catholic Church for quite a while.

I was stunned. 

To make a long story short, I did the program and joined the church.

There are people who will read this and say that all I’ve said proves nothing about God being real. There are even those who believe God is real that will say God does not work like this—it all just fell into place and happened somehow. I tell you that they are mistaken. What happened to me may not seem as amazing as healing the blind or raising the dead, but if you had been me, you would disagree. These things, especially taken together could have only been done by something or someone and not just chance. A someone or something most call God. And if God did this for me, someone who didn’t go to church, any church for a whole lot of years, someone who had no use for God unless I was desperate, he will most certainly do it for anyone and everyone, even you. No matter our past. He is right beside us, patiently waiting for us to stop insisting we do things our way and let him show us how to live his way—the best way.

Is God really real? Only you can decide. 

Maybe that’s the whole point of life. 

My way or God’s way.

You might be interested to know that my church in it’s many years of existence, had never had one of those abbreviated courses before that day. 

And they have never had another one in the almost 20 years since.