Experiencing Reality

Most mornings as I am getting ready to start the day I watch a few minutes of the weather channel in order to dress appropriately. The meteorologist will tell me what temperature it is outside, the humidity, chance for rain or storms, and even the pollutant level. The most precise details will be given of the conditions outside as the station’s expensive equipment gives him the latest facts about the weather. At this point, sitting on my couch, I haven’t experienced the truth of the report. I have been given purportedly true facts, but that’s all they are. If I never left my house that day that is how they would remain for me.


However, upon opening the door, stepping out into my yard, feeling the breezy 63 degree weather and the slight over cast of the sky I have now experienced the truth of the information given on the television. A new dynamic has taken place, I haven’t just a series of truth statements in my head, but my body has experienced them. I may not be able to tell its 63 degrees if the meteorologist hadn’t provided that information, but I could experience what 63 degrees feels like. I would then be experiencing the truth of 63 degrees on a cloudy day.


I recently went to see the movie Surrogates. In this movie all the people on the planet experience life through a robot. A person will purchase a very technologically advanced robot that looks like a perfect person with perfect agility and performance of all life’s work and pleasures. They will lay back in their chair or bed and hook up to a virtual system and live life without ever moving from their chair while their surrogate lives out their dreams each day. The idea was that no one would get hurt, if the surrogate got damaged sky diving a new unit would be purchased and the person would have experienced the virtual thrill of sky diving without ever leaving their bedroom.


Something goes terribly wrong and life as humanity knows it is shaken. I will leave out the details so as not to ruin the movie. At one point, however, as people emerge from their homes into sunlight they wake up from virtual reality. They experience touch and sound and feelings in the real world rather than through their virtual subconscious. Experience of reality occurs again as a novel thing and a man touching his wife’s cheek softly with his hand is so much more glorious than any of the greatest dreams lived out through a surrogate.


There is something innate to humanity that we have to experience life. Virtual experience is not good enough. We need to experience reality. We need not only to read books about adventures; we want to go on our own adventure. We need not only read about exciting places to visit, we want to go there. We don’t only want to decide on a spouse by reading a bunch of facts about who they are, we want to experience who they are and fall in love and enjoy life together.


The question is, then, why do we forget this when it comes to matters of God? Why is God only a potential fact that matters not either way? Why is He relegated to what we believe in our minds, but not understood as someone, if real, to be experienced in the depths of our person? It would be such a waste of time if all conversion or salvation was about was changing someone’s mind to believe a different set of facts about life as if that’s all there was to it. Some people have only experienced Christianity as a social club of people who believe a set of doctrines about life and try to live by them. Such Christianity is understandably found wanting and dismal. Such a reality would have nothing to offer anyone.


However, what if, it’s not just a series of facts akin to a meteorologist telling someone the weather report? What if it can be experienced like stepping outside your door and feeling the cold air of a coming blizzard or the warmth of a summer day. What if God isn’t looking for people to adhere to certain facts, but to know Him, experience His love and have a home in Him? What if our knowledge of Him grows not only in learning about Him, but in first hand experience? What if there is something amazing about life that is still left to experience that is greater than anything the natural world can offer a person?


Anytime I speak of the existence of God or the reality of Christianity, I am not talking only about a set of ideas that one needs to intellectually ascribe to and all their hearts desire will be satisfied. No, I am talking about ideas that lead to experiencing the reality of the glory of God. I am very much concerned about the reality of things, and the truthfulness of things, and if I hadn’t experienced God I wouldn’t be telling you it was possible. But I have experienced Him, I have seen His mighty works, I have felt the life that flows from Him into me and I have shared that love with others and seen them transformed. I come not with opinions, but with truth, truth I have experienced with awe and wonder as my soul leaps at the joy of His reality.

Musings Upon Reading More About Reformation

As I am reading through McGrath’s book on the Reformation I noticed that prior to the Great Awakening there was this mentality in the Church that revolved around intellectually believing the right doctrines. If one accepted the right beliefs then they were considered among those who are Christian. It wasn’t until the Great Awakening, with a few exceptions, that the focus began to shift to whether or not one experienced conversion. During the Great Awakening people were having experience with God when they came to faith in Christ that was considered conversion experiences. From these people began to tell their testimony of when they met Jesus rather than the focus being on ascribing to certain intellectual propositions. The Moravians, a Christian group in Germany, had already had these type of experiences and already emphasized personal relationship with Jesus over doctrinal beliefs. Also there are many books written by individuals prior to the Reformation who spoke of such experiences and depth to their walk with Christ.


But it seemed in this age that there was a distinct shift from what one believed in their mind, to what one experienced in their heart. The faith from intellectual belief deepened to a faith which had personal experience.


Reading on, I read about Jonathan Edwards; a man who is often mischaracterized by most. Throughout my Christian school education and on into my college years at secular colleges I was taught this fiery man was one of those sorts of preachers that made Christianity look bad. The problem is most focus only on his most famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. There is a whole story surrounding that sermon that I won’t go into at present that makes sense of that sermon. However, there is so much more about this man. I recently read something by him regarding the manifestations people were experiencing in his day, akin to the Pentecostalism of today. He addressed every common argument I have heard against such a thing being God showing point by point how it very well can be God. I realized I want to study this man more as well as some of the other key people in those days. He is certainly a more interesting fellow than I once realized.


The last thing I wanted to address was the difference history reports between the ministry that came out of the groups of Christians who were all about knowing Christ experientially and those who were staunchly about what doctrines one maintained. The missions sent out from the experiential group were all about helping the people preserve their cultural identity and protecting them from the advances of colonialism. They would work to get to know the people, be helpful to them, learn their language, and transcribe their cultural stories so that they would be protected for future generations. The Moravians who settled in North Carolina befriended the Native Americans and lived amongst them. However, the missions that came from the more staunch groups were combined with financial prospects of commencing trade, converting the native people to the ways of the colonizers, and often they brought harm and trouble upon the people.


I am often met with the argument of the No True Scotsman. However, I think there is really a difference between those who follow a set of doctrine and moral laws and those who claim to know God experientially and have real relationship with them. These two groups had stark differences—one seemed to walk out the life of Christ with hearts full of compassion and love and the other trying to fulfill a mandate of reaching the world with the Gospel without knowing God’s love experientially. I am not sure that truth or love can be lived out with only intellectual understanding of it, I think it takes a transformation of the heart that has come into relationship with the living God.

It's Supernatural

I have just spent four days at a healing conference where I witnessed many miracles and many tangible experiences of God’s presence. I also heard hundreds of eye witness testimonies of miracles happening around the world including the United States. God is undeniably pouring out His love upon people across the world. He is working through His followers just as He did in the early disciples of Jesus. Biblical miracles are being experienced today. They never stopped being experienced. There are so many historical records of the power of God in all the great revivals of history around the world.

I speak so much on cerebral defenses of the truth of Jesus Christ. However, if all I ever did is present an intellectual belief system I would never paint the full picture of the reality of heaven available to us today. God is not merely a matter of the mind to answer the big philosophical questions of life. If that was all there was to it, what would be the point.

The Kingdom of God is at hand. He is actively moving in the world today. I’ve seen His work. I’ve experienced His presence. I saw a three year old praying for the sick and them getting healed. I saw her pray for someone and the power of God flow over them. I saw children prophesying the things of God over people with great accuracy bringing life and healing to them. I had a woman I had never met prophesy over me so specifically exactly what I needed to hear from God about concerning an area of ministry. About 60-80 people were healed each night. Some had injuries for as long as 10 years and were healed miraculously.

One young man, a musician I know personally, was 50% deaf in one ear and his hearing was completely restored so much so that the noises around him was hurting his now sensitive hearing. Another man had partial paralysis on the left side of his body due to a stroke. Strength returned to him and his limp arm was restored and he could grip a man’s hand in a hand shake where before he could not. This man shared his testimony and demonstrated his returned mobility and strength before the church that knew him well and was jubilant at his healing.

God is restoring the gift of healing and the supernatural to the Church. If you have not seen such demonstrations of the reality of Jesus I believe you will one day soon. This is quickly changing from something common overseas and not so common in the States, to something common throughout the church at large. Don’t you think if most of the Christians you encountered loved like Jesus did and healed the sick and set people free from bondages and such that you would know that the Gospel we share is true? Would not that be proof? The day is fast approaching where this will be what the ministry of Christians will look like. The Bible says that the power of God must accompany the preaching of the Kingdom of God. It confirms the truth of the Kingdom when it is preached accompanied by the demonstration of the supernatural. This is normal Christianity. Normalcy is being restored.

I am reminded of the phrase in The Chronicles of Narnia when the spring was breaking forth through the winter and all the Narnians knew, “Aslan is on the move.” The Kingdom of God is breaking into the Kingdom of this world and we are seeing the God is on the move through His people.

To Love and Be Loved

God wants us to love Him because He loves us first. By loving God, love is activated in us in a deeper measure. It becomes a tangible flowing stream bubbling up within us more and more as we learn to live from His love. When we choose not to love Him, we do not hurt Him, we hurt ourselves. A person cannot truly experience love if they don’t love in return. Being the recipient of love is nothing compared to entering mutual love. However, it is easier to love in return when we are loved first by another. God has eternally loved us and has given Himself for us.

Everything God asks of man is good for man. For instance, giving, in reality, does something in the giver more so than in the recipient. When God asks us to give up anything it is so that He can give us something better. When we give up our will for His, we gain something much greater. When we give up our time, money, food etc. for another, it is the same as giving unto Him. It does something in us that is worth far more than what we give up.

All that He asks of a person is for his or her good. Many think I must love God because He dictates that I do so for His pleasure. The truth is our pleasure is His pleasure. He knows the only way for our fulfillment is Him for He created us to be fulfilled by relationship with Him. He gave us the earth, the animals, the plants and authority over it all. Yet in His love He gave us the freedom to relinquish it all to do our will instead of His will. Yes, He knew what we would choose and could have withheld the freedom, but if He had created us without freedom we would never experience life the way we can experience it with freedom.

Even though we blew it, He knew there was victory coming that would redeem all that was lost and restore creation to an even greater beauty than before. He knew His Son would provide the way to redeem mankind and free man from the debt of his transgressions. Even though we bear the responsibility of sin, He who is without sin, pays our debt for us. We can continue to live in a fallen reality and be in bondage to that world, or we can choose to enter into the greatest relationship of all time. We can experience tangibly the love of God. We can enter a supernatural reality that gives meaning, purpose, and value to nature and ourselves like nothing else can.

I’m not talking about a fantasy land. I am talking about something better than anyone can dream up in a fairy tale story. People write fantasy stories because deep down they know there is a greater reality than the visible world and they desire to know that reality. I am talking about something so real it’s undeniable. I’m not writing about religion. I’m writing about a real relationship with the living God. I do not seek to impose any rules, any laws, or any religion on anybody. I’m inviting you to ask God to show Himself to you and to show you in an undeniable way His reality. I often hear, the burden of proof is upon the Christian. In reality, the burden of proof is on God Himself. Do you really want to know if He loves you? Ask Him to reveal His love to you. You risk nothing, but gain everything.

The Substance of Faith

The etymology of the word “faith” commences circa 1250 and it meant "duty of fulfilling one's trust," and it derived from the Latin root word fied which essentially means "trust". Trust comes from the Old Norse word traust meaning confidence circa 1200. We use these words everyday, but sometimes we use them with a misconceived idea about them.

True faith should be built on trust and confidence in that which you have faith. We use faith/trust everyday. We have faith that brushing our teeth will reduce risk of cavities. We trust that our employer will supply our paycheck at the end of the pay period or else we would not be working for him. After repeatedly being rendered our paychecks we have confidence that we will continue to get reimbursed for the hours worked. We utilize faith, trust, and confidence in a myriad of ways everyday. However, our use of faith is not without reason. We have plenty of reasons to believe that brushing our teeth is advantageous. We have plenty of experiential reason to have confidence we will receive our due paycheck unless something gives us reason to cease having faith that we will receive our paycheck.

Why, then, when we step into the area of spirituality, do we not understand the use of faith and reason? Faith is not blind adherence to someone or something in the absence of evidence and reason. Faith is trust in someone or something based on the substance of the evidence that supports that faith. I have often observed a child leaping off the side of a pool into his father’s arms. The child has faith that daddy will catch him. He doesn’t absolutely know that nothing will prevent this from happening, but he knows daddy loves him and will protect him because daddy is that kind of person. A child like faith is not one of ignorance, but one of trust greater than many adults because adults have learned fear and that often rules their intellect more than their trust. To live a life not bound by fear and distrust is a wonderful freedom that can only come from being in the truth and love of God. Love, trust, faith all go hand in hand. Sure someone can put their trust in the wrong place; we see this happen all the time. But we also see those people who are so afraid that they trust no one and live a life bound to fear.

It is often said in Christian circles that it takes more faith to be an atheist because there is a greater leap to accept proof of a negative than proof of a positive. The only way you can know a negative is by knowing all things and being omniscient yourself. But the way you know a positive is by knowing that particular thing and not all things. I really don’t want to hear about unicorns and fairies in response to this statement. That doesn’t really address the matter. Nor am I using this an argument for God’s existence but more so an illustration of the leap of faith employed.

However, even in saying this it reaffirms the misuse of the word, faith. It isn’t really faith in the real sense of the word that is employed in believing in nothing, except maybe faith in one’s own intellect. It is a skepticism that leads to atheism, not really a faith. Faith and trust is absent, not because of lack of evidence, but because of skepticism. Atheists deny what they have not experienced even to the extent of discounting the experiences of others because they haven’t shared them.

The Christian puts his faith in God because he has come to know God is real, not as some would suggest, to come to know that God is real. Many think that faith is employed to posit God’s existence, but in reality it is employed after knowing God is real. An encounter with God doesn’t take faith, it’s the most real thing in the world when it happens and no one can shake that knowledge. It is then that faith rises for when you have come in contact with the living God you know that you know that He is real. Faith in Him can lead to deeper relationship with Him, but it is not a major factor in knowing He exists.

Proof that He is real is more an experiential matter than simply an intellectual matter. There is a plethora of intellectual arguments for and against His existence, but once you’ve encountered Him all arguments are secondary to the reality of that encounter.

I know a God who is in pursuit of humans with His love. He points to Himself in creation, in reason, in logic, in history, in revelation, in our emotions, in our desires, in our morality, in our creativity. He affirms who are we are and does not detract from who we are. The supernatural affirms and enhances the natural.

I am not merely asking that people accept only intellectual arguments for Christianity and join the club. I am suggesting that people can authentically truly experience the living God for themselves and come to know that Christianity is true. I don’t know God as a mere set of intellectual ideas and assumptions, I know him personally and relationally.

Faith isn’t something you muster up to believe in something unbelievable. It is the substance of trust in that which has become believable. I pray that you can find the way through the seas of uncertainty and set down your anchor into the firm foundation of truth that is knowable both cerebrally and experientially.

I Can't Help But Believe In God

I can’t not believe in God. My life has been inseparable with His for as long as I can remember. Somewhere around the age of 15, my belief in Jesus transformed from childhood obedience to an adult reality. Most of my life, my relationship with Christ has been one of knowing Him not one of simply believing things regarding Him. In high school I began to study a little about the evidences for the claims of the Bible. However, in college I found myself surrounded by much opposition to my worldview. I had professors who used their classroom as a place to promote their worldview more so than the subject they were paid to teach. I was faced with English and History professors who did not believe in facts, absolute truth, and the knowability of history. Many of the worldviews I was being exposed to were postmodern and pluralistic in nature. Some professors lamented against Christianity and some against any meta-narrative construct. Most denied there was any true way of looking at the world. All of this drove me to want to know more about the evidences, logic, and reason supporting the Bible as well as to know more about the ins and outs of other worldviews. Throughout my college years and beyond I consumed books, DVD’s, CD’s, attended conferences, and sought to interact with real people who believed things differently from me. I do this so that I can learn and to communicate what I learn to others to hopefully be of aid to those who are searching.


I have fed my intellectual foundation of my belief in the Christian God for over ten years. However, in the last few years my experiential relationship with the Lord has grown by leaps and bounds.


I have become experientially and intellectually aware of the supernatural aspect of my faith like never before. I have tangibly felt the presence of God upon me on multiple occasions. I have tangibly felt His power surging through me like an electrical charge of sorts. I have reached out to touch another and transferred this manifestation of His power to them by the laying on of hands. The first time I experienced sharing it, it was unintentional, I merely stumbled and touched another to steady myself and they felt the power of God enter them from where my hand touched and spread throughout their body. I have experienced instant healing of a severe sinus and upper respiratory infection upon receiving prayer. I literally went from hacking up a lung of asthmatic proportions to feeling the heavy congestion leave my lungs to where I could breath deeply and freely through my lungs and sinuses. The infection that had plagued me for days on end left in an instant through the power of God, which I also felt upon me at the time of healing.


I have prayed for a woman with glaucoma and cataracts clouding her eyes and saw them clearing before my eyes as she shouted that she could begin to see me and my husband standing before her. I have prayed for a woman with partial deafness and not only was her hearing restored, her friend told me that she too felt the healing in her ear even though she had no problems with her ears. She felt the experience of her friend.


I have had many people who I had never met come and tell me things about myself impossible for them to know save God telling them on many different occasions. For example, I had a girl walk up to me recently, at an event I was attending, who I didn’t know and tell me I loved to write and that God had given me a passion for writing that He wanted me to use for Him. That’s the third time I have been told that from someone I had never seen before and who knew nothing about me.


Everything my husband and I are doing in our lives right now is a direct result of doing what God has shown us to do. Everything from the church we started last year to the place we live, and our employment choices are a direct result of hearing from God. The church was birthed out of a dream from God my husband had one night that was confirmed by many independent sources who did not know us and some who did. Over the last year prophetic words, dreams, impressions and other amazing revelatory things have continued to confirm that we are doing what God has called us to do. Moreover, things are happening in our ministry that is of an incredible nature. Some of the divine connections that are taking place are blowing our minds. God is giving people in another country visions about our ministry and gave them knowledge of how to contact us (our website is not in the search engines – we’ve looked). The e-mails that are coming forth from the other country are testimonies of the goodness of the Lord. The goodness and reality of God is abundant and evident in my life in such a way I cannot conceive of His absence.


If Christ is not the Son of God and if the Bible is merely a book of fairytales, I must be living in a fairytale story and should be confined to a mental institution. I am seeing the reality of Scripture in my life and in the lives of countless others in amazing ways.


I hope by my sharing this, you will see why I desire to write about the God I love because He is too overwhelmingly real and good to keep to myself. I believe being connected to Him in a real tangible relationship through Jesus is the way to transform the world to a place that reflects the goodness of heaven instead of the corruption of sin. The Kingdom of God is not about what happens in the walls of a church, but the reality of transforming earth to the truths of heaven. Embarking on a journey with God in bringing His Kingdom to earth is an incredible adventure of a lifetime and beyond.

Moral Framework

A response to http://godlesswoman.blogspot.com

I will now respond to your second objection on the topic of morality. I asserted that there is a moral law at work in humanity and that for there to be such a construct there must be a moral law giver, God.

To set it up as a syllogism it would look like this:

• If there is a moral law, then there is a Moral Law Giver.
• There is a moral law
• Therefore there is a Moral Law Giver

Let’s unpack the idea of the existence of a common moral framework in all of mankind. In use of the term “moral law” I am merely claiming there to be a moral framework at work in mankind.

There is a difference between agreement on specifics of right and wrong and a basic understanding that there is right and wrong. The specifics can be subjective at times; however, the framework is objective. For instance, you give the example of slavery.

Throughout history slavery was not always seen as wrong by all people. Even today, slavery continues in parts of the world such as in Sudan. If morality was subjective to a culture or a person, one could say that the English slave trade or the American slavery was not wrong to those who didn’t believe it to be wrong. However, I think the reality is that it was always wrong even when people justified it to be right. Also, just because a community justifies something to be right, doesn’t mean deep in their souls they know it to be right.

When someone is on trial for murder, they can submit a plea of insanity if they have no understanding between right and wrong. One of the key things the prosecutor must prove is that the Defendant not only committed the act, but that the Defendant was cognizant the act was wrong. For if the defense attorney proves through a physiologist that the Defendant has no moral understanding he is able to present the defense of insanity. So even if someone does something wrong and is convinced that it is not wrong, even in a court of law, it is still wrong and the person is seen as insane.

If morality is subjective then we have no right to judge another culture or community for doing atrocities to people such as the holocaust. However, if it is objective and all people really do know right from wrong somehow then the Nuremburg Trials were warranted. However, if moral truth is merely what a community agrees upon there could never be any justice for the millions of Jews exterminated in the concentration camps. Was this historical event evil? Or was it merely Hitler, to quote Richard Dawkins, “dancing to his DNA.”

[Regarding the Bible condoning slavery, it does not. Jesus didn’t come to force political change; that was not His mission. He knew that the heart change that happens from knowing Him would change the world and force would never produce love which was what was needed to treat people the way He designed them to be treated]

The second part of the syllogism proclaims God must exist because there is a moral framework. How else could a standard of morality exist in humanity if it were not for a conscious designer placing it there? The objective nature of a moral standard that man kind experiences guilt when he breaks it and demands justice when it is broken against him is not explained by evolution. Again that is why I maintain that non-Christians must borrow from the Christian worldview regarding these things to even posit questions about good and evil and how to differentiate between the two. It’s the only worldview that gives a good explanation about how this all works and is the most viable in corresponding to reality.

To Be Continued: Last Response Blog will address the matter of how God sees mankind in light of moral failures

Knowing the Author of Life

My last blog was entitled “Being Proceeds Knowing” and was philosophical and rather abstract in nature. Now I will expound with greater specificity.

The first verse of the Bible declares, “In the beginning God. . .” God has always existed. He refers to himself as the I AM for He is existing eternally never having a past or a future for He is not measurable by time. He is the eternal I AM. Genesis 1:1 goes on to declare that God created the heavens and the earth. All of life is created from Him who was uncreated.

How can we know this? We know it because; He has revealed it to us. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they [men] are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20).

Therefore the only way finite man can know anything is because “an understanding God made it understood” (James Sire).

Proverbs 1:7 proclaims, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Again in Proverbs 9:10 we read, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

Knowing comes from the fear of the Lord, meaning that through awe of Him we can gain knowledge: the greatest knowledge being knowledge of Him, the Holy One. For it is by Him we gain wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

“Isaiah 33:5-7 “ The LORD is exalted, for he dwells on high;
he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness.

He will be the sure foundation for your times,
a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge;
the fear of the LORD is the key to this treasure.”

God is the sure foundation of our wisdom and knowledge. It is from Him that all knowledge flows.

God has not only revealed His existence to us, He has made it possible to know not only about Him, but to experientially know Him. The Spanish language actually has two words for “know” one is used when referring to knowing about someone or knowing who someone is without any relationship knowledge of that person. The other is used when someone claims to know a person personally like a friend, brother, or father. God allows us to know Him both ways, but knowing Him personally allows for much greater knowledge about Him.

Paul wrote in Galatians 1:11 “I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.”

The message of Christ has been revealed to man. It is not something that is man made. It is not a religion developed by man to find spirituality. This revelation has been continuous from before the beginning of time. It’s one big story that is never ending. And we are invited to partake of that story and live life within it.

Proverbs 8:22-35 reads “I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. When there were no oceans, I was given birth, when there were no springs abounding with water; before the mountains were settled in place . . . I was there when he set the heavens in place. . . Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after to day, rejoicing in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind. . . . Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord.”

What a spectacular passage of Scripture! This is Jesus talking for in John 1:1-3 it reads “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”

Jesus is God and has been eternally with God creating with God the Father all that has been created. He delighted in His creation just as God says in Genesis 1 that “it was good.” In fact, it says specifically that Jesus delighted in mankind. He also says that life is found in Himself. He says if you find me, you find life and you receive God’s favor. The passage in Proverbs was written hundreds of years before the passage in John which is after the incarnation of Christ. Jesus says of Himself, “I am the way, the truth and the life . . .” (John 14:6).

Knowledge is not the way. Christ is the way. He is the Truth and He is the giver of life. From Him we gain knowledge, wisdom, and understanding in greater measure than we could ever possess without knowing Him experientially. God is the author of this story and He is the only One who makes it understandable. We need to get to know the Author in order to understand the story of life.

Religion Breeds Atheism

You've heard the saying, "rules without relationship breeds rebellion." I think this is also true stated as, "Christianity devoid of relationship with God breeds rebellion." I keep meeting people, in person or on-line, who tried Christianity and turned from it to atheism. Usually their stories are similar. Christianity for them was a bunch of rules that they saw the most religious among their community breaking. Christianity was merely a religion with nothing going for it as all it had to offer was a bunch of religious activities and social club meetings. In their experience, Christianity was empty and lifeless. It was their parents' choice, but not theirs. Besides, once they got to college they learned that all of it was a farce anyway. The Bible had errors as it was unhistorical, unscientific and altogether irrelevant to modern life. No reasonable person would believe in it and no reasonable person would believe God exist for it is a scientific fact that we are merely products of evolution though no one is quite sure about the origin of the process of evolution.

Christians should bear the weight of responsibility for this process, not the atheists. Atheism is becoming popular. Just look at the end aisle next to the inspiration section at your local book store. You will see such books as The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins or books attacking Christianity by Sam Harris such as The End of Faith, or for a more philosophical selection there are Daniel Dennett's books.

Those who are raising children need to lead them into an encounter with God by modeling that lifestyle and showing them the Father's heart. We cannot just teach morality to them and take them to church every week. It's not enough. We do need to train them in the evidences for their faith so that they can be a calm firm voice in their schools for the truth of Christ. But even more they need to know God experientially. He has to be undeniably real to them because they live a life in connection with Him. Christianity is not a religion, it is reality and it is a relationship with God. When we lose sight of that all we have is religion because it becomes something about man instead of something about God.

So many people believe they have given God a try because they were raised in church or because their parents were Christians. But they never encountered Him, and now they believe He must not be and their hope is lost. From then on they lump all Christians into the same religion mold as many do not stand out to them as any different then the ones they saw had nothing to offer.

We must get connected to God. Bill Johnson says that we owe people an encounter with God. If we don't get connected to the source we can't show life to a dying world. We can't show hope to the hopeless and peace to those in turmoil. We have no freedom to offer the captives and no healing to offer the hurting and broken. We have no real love to offer the rejected. How can we minister without being filled up with God by encountering Him?

We know He is there for His presence is everywhere. There is nowhere we can go from His presence. Likewise (to borrow an illustration from A.W. Tozer) we know the sun exist even on a cloudy day, we still know it is there. But how much more glorious is it when we see the sun shining and we feel its warmth on a nice sunny day. God is with us always. But to live like we are meant to live we must experience His presence like we experience the warmth and brightness of the sun. We must encounter Him. I have nothing to offer the world if I don't first seek after Him and know Him more and more. I am just as negligent in this as most people or more than most people.

My words are to myself even more than anyone reading them. I have encountered God before and I know that I know that I know that He is. But I need to encounter Him more so that I can be a greater light to shine hope in the lives trapped in darkness. For they do not even know they are in darkness until they see the light. We must each be that light that testifies of Christ.