People will wonder and question that if God is a person being, why isn’t he more obvious to us humans.  I believe the greatest evidence that God is not only obvious, but a personal being, can be found in each of us.  Creation as taught in the Holy Bible tells us that God made us with a mind that is self-aware and a heart with the ability to love.  We have been created with a conscience that calls us to be morally responsible and a soul that longs for meaning and significance.  Together, they become the essence of what humans were designed to be and quite frankly, the strongest evidence of a personal God.

To go further, let me share the following observations.  Isn’t it interesting that the world around us is fully compatible to our physical longings and desires?  We hunger and there is food.  We thirst and there is water.  We have sex drives and there is sex.  The world created for humans amazingly provides for those natural drives within us.  Isn’t it also interesting that humans instinctively assume that something like love is a reality?  In many ways, love becomes the only ideal in our lives worth living and dying for.  On the other hand, nature on a whole seems to be indifferent, loveless, and a brute process of colliding chemicals.  Is our ideal for love within us just a case of reacting chemicals?  And where do we obtain our moral convictions?  Humans also instinctively hunger for meaning and purpose.  We strive to fill our lives with significance.  If the evolution of man based on natural progression is indifferent and purposeless, than all we are, all we do, all we believe in and strive for is simply dust that scatters in the wind.  Everything becomes ultimately meaningless. 

To me, there is something more powerful than sheer nature.  To me, there is overwhelming evidence of a created environment that is ultimately personal.  Not only does our world take care of all our personal needs, but humans have been created to be self-aware, rational, loving, moral and purposeful.  God created a perfect environment that is in perfect sync with his ultimate creation, mankind.  If we are determined to leave God out of the picture and our existence is solely based on human theory, then we must conclude that our existence becomes only a “freak of nature”, out of place, tortured and extremely painful.  We become the product of a cruel, sick, cosmic joke.  So, unless the ultimate source of all existence is at least as personal as we are, than who we are — our very being — is both unexplainable and extremely difficult to swallow.

 

 

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God is the creator of the heavens and the earth. He is the creator of all things. His ultimate and perfect creation is you and me. He created us in his own image and declared, “It is good.” He has power over life and death. He is in control of the fiercest storm and at the same time, fully aware of a tiny sparrow’s death. God even controls history. His plan for our world and its ultimate conclusion has already been established long ago. Even though a spiritual battle still exists between the forces of good and evil, there is no chance God is going to lose. His victory has been assured. Satan does have immense power, but he can never threaten God’s ultimate purpose — to have his creation share in his love.

Even though humans have the capacity to reject God’s love and choose to deliberately sin, God is still in control of their lives. He orchestrates the blessings and the tragedies with the intent of drawing us closer to him. God does not call on us to understand his wisdom, but to simply trust in him and his plan for our lives. Sometimes after a tragedy, we hear the words “God is in control” or “the purpose of God.” What is God’s purpose of “taking home” a young girl killed by a drunken driver? Why does God allow thirteen people to be gunned down in Fort Hood ? What is God’s purpose in allowing a young mother to succumb to cancer leaving three small children at home? I honestly don’t know. Sometimes, God simply does not make sense. Yet, it is logical to conclude that we can never completely understand God’s wisdom since he is a higher being.

To help solve the complexities of life, the Christian hope derived from faith rests not on the questions of this life, but the answers discovered in the next. Our physical life on earth is only temporary – like living in a tent for an extended period of time. What matters the most is where we will spend eternity. If heaven were not true, life is ultimately tragic and absurd. By believing in Christ as Savior, we receive the hope that all things will work out for good and our citizenship in heaven is assured.

In the meantime, a person can receive through faith the fullness in life God always intended them to have. It is a fullness that no evil in the world can touch. The Apostle Paul tells us that “nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.” God still exercises today the dominating influence in the world. Only he knows what this world would be like without his constant, holy influence.

 

For more answers to tough questions, I encourage you to check out www.gregboyd.org.

Lucifer was perhaps the greatest of all angelic creatures.  He was created by God to be beautiful and perfect in many ways.  The problem began when he began to notice his beauty.  Pride seeped into his heart.  Pride led to self-will in that he wanted to be like God and self-will to rebellion.  Lucifer became known as the Adversary, or more commonly referred to as “Satan” which is the Hebrew word for adversary.  Satan apparently led other angels (now referred to as demons) into rebellion sometime before the creation of man.

The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image to love and be loved.  Because of Satan’s hatred toward God and his consuming desire to be worshipped, he successfully tempted God’s original creation, Adam and Eve, to fall into sin and condemnation.  This act of rebellion became a curse for all mankind which Christians refer to as “original sin”.  Satan continues his unrelenting, world-wide struggle against God and all goodness.  His ultimate goal is to defeat the divine plans of God’s grace by seducing people to reject God and worship him (the world) instead.  His primary method is through lies and deception — about himself, his purpose (man’s eternal ruin), his activities, and his coming defeat.

God had the power to destroy Satan at the moment he became the Adversary.  Instead, in his divine wisdom, God has chosen to tolerate Satan and uses him to test man until that final day of judgment.  On that day, Satan and all the other enemies of God will be cast into the “lake of burning sulfur” called hell. 

In the ongoing conflict between good and evil, it certainly seem as though God has given Satan every advantage.  Yet, we can be assured that God’s victory is certain.  The world will try and tell us something completely different.  We get easily distracted by what Satan has contrived to focus our attention away from eternal truths.  The most important truth there to know is the absolute assurance of God’s victory over the world and Satan.  The symbol of assurance and God’s victory is the cross.

To help understand how a cross can be a symbol of victory is to recall that God created us perfectly.  However, we can’t on our own make ourselves what God intended us to be because of original sin.  Our bodies have become corrupted and imperfect.  What we need is a new start, a new creation, a clean slate.  God became man and died on the cross to reconcile us with God and to give us a new life in Christ.  He became our perfect substitute and took the eternal punishment of hell in our place.  By faith, Christ becomes our substitute so we can be declared perfect through Jesus Christ.  It is only through Christ that we enter a personal relationship with God and are declared holy and perfect; just like God originally intended us to be.  This is the certain victory that God gives us through faith in Jesus.

 

 For more information, check out www.gregboyd.org.