Belief in God is unreasonable. There is no good reason to believe that God is real, especially the Christian God.
At least, this is what I believed for a while.
Though I grew up in a Christian home, I had a lot of questions. Questions that no one in the church seemed to be able to answer. Why should I trust an old book written by men I’ve never met? Men make mistakes. Men lie. Even worse, men desire power and control. And what about all the other religious books that others, like Muslims and Mormons, believe in? Don’t they believe theirs is from God as well? Who is right?
Since that time, God has shown me that, not only are there very good reasons to believe he exists, but the Bible is entirely unique. Why do I think this? One reason is that it’s the only book that can prove it was from a divine author (God). Don’t believe me? Let me ask you something: What are some ways that God could prove to you he exists? Write his name in the sky? Appear to you in your bedroom? Perform a miracle? Those would all be pretty exciting to witness, but how long do you think it would take before you believed it was just a bad dream? Memories fade. They aren’t perfect. They can be mistaken.
What if God were to show you that he knew exactly what was going to happen in the future? What if God was able to know, with razor-sharp accuracy, what would happen hundreds of years later? Would that convince you that God is real?
Let me show you some verses from the Bible you might find interesting:
He was despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief…
— Isaiah 53:3 NLT
Ok, nothing too out of the ordinary yet. This could be talking about anyone. Let’s read further:
But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
— Isaiah 53:5–6 NLT
Whoa. That’s definitely a little more specific. This person was beaten, whipped and pierced for our wrongs. I can only think of one person that could meet that description, but let’s keep going:
… But he was buried like a criminal;
he was put in a rich man’s grave.
— Isaiah 53:9 NLT
Wait a second. Jesus was treated like a criminal. Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s family tomb. At that time, this kind of tomb was only owned by the very rich. Let’s go a little further:
… Yet when his life is made an offering for sin,
he will have many descendants. — Isaiah 53:10 NLT
… my righteous servant will make it possible
for many to be counted righteous,
for he will bear all their sins.
— Isaiah 53:11 NLT
Well, slap me and call me Sally! Put all of these verses together, and it’s clearly talking about Jesus. So why does this matter? It matters because all of these verses come from Isaiah 53. Would you like to know why that’s so significant?
Because Isaiah was written in 800 BC.
Yes, you read that right. A full 800 years before Jesus even walked on the face of the earth. And no, this isn’t made up by Christians. Virtually all historians date Isaiah to that time period.
I will stop here and let that sink in for you, but you should know that the Old Testament is full of many more predictions of Jesus. That he would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem. That he would enter Jerusalem on a donkey. That he would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. That he would grow up in Nazareth. On and on and on. There are more than 200 predictions about Jesus, all of which came to pass, and all were written hundreds of years before he was born. No other religious book has ever been able to do something like this.
What does this all mean? It means that God is not only real, but that he revealed who he was by becoming a human named Jesus. This means that, not only can we know who God is, but that everything in the Bible can be trusted.
It is because of this, and many other reasons as well, that I not only trust Jesus at his word, but trust him with my life.
I encourage you today to come to a place where you not only trust God at his written word, but that you trust him with your life. It will be the most reasonable thing you ever do.