My God is Real – Part 2
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:4-9)
HOW DO WE KNOW WHEN SOMETHING IS REAL? When I was about 10, I visited my Aunt Esther Ramsey in Nashville, TN, for a week. I was sick with strep throat most of the time and bored. I finally told her that if I knew how to get out of town, I would just walk home (125 miles). When my appetite began coming back, I began to get hungry and spotted a bowl of fruit on the coffee table in the living room. Aunt Esther had gone shopping and I was by myself. I picked up an apple out of the fruit bowl and chomped down on it. Big mistake. It was wax. Not real. I left my teeth marks in the wax, so I turned the apple over, so it would look nice. It’s important to know if things are real.
THE PHILOSOPHERS IN GREECE who spent all their time probing and debating ideas left us with this word: Epistemology. It’s “a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.”
ATHEISTS BELIEVE THERE IS NO GOD. Agnostics say they don’t know if there is a God. They are on safer ground than the atheists. No one can be in all places of the universe at one time to see if God is there. So, when this thought began to be faced by atheists and they looked like fools, they changed from atheism to agnosticism. Atheism has fallen on hard times in the philosophical world. They are: “anti-intellectual.” It’s more honorable to be an agnostic than to be an atheist.
IN PART 1 OF "MY GOD IS REAL," I gave a few instances of God’s power and presence that I had witnessed, such as sudden physical healing of human bodies. This kind of proof of God being real is what Jesus referred to when He was doing miracles and people still didn’t want to believe that He was the promised Messiah, or God in the flesh.
SOME PEOPLE WILL NOT BE CONVINCED FROM MORE PROOF. After Jesus rose from the dead, the sky was dark for three hours, the earth shook, the veil was rent from top to bottom, the graves opened, and dead people walked out of them alive; some still would not believe but wanted to put Christians to death.
GOD IS A GOD OF INFINITE (UNLIMITED) VARIETY. He makes snowflakes that are not quite alike and people and cats that are similar but not quite alike. People may look a lot alike and be able to do amazingly different things. Some can sing beautifully and some can’t carry a tune in a bucket. The picture today of “the heavens’ recalls that there are no two stars alike. And God says of them: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. (Psalm 19:1) Paul writes:
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:(Romans 1:20)
GOD DOES NOT LEAVE HIMSELF WITHOUT A WITNESS. Many men (and women) will declare: “Oh, if only I had proof that there is a God…” But, proof of God is not what they are looking for. They are looking for a god who will agree with them, a god that they can manage. It is their pride, their arrogance that is the problem. Among them are a few honest skeptics, but that is not really a problem. An honest skeptic won’t be a skeptic very long because God will see to it that they have in hand the few things they need to see that God is real.
WE KNOW GOD IS REAL BY LOOKING AT THE ENDLESS NUMBER OF THINGS He has designed and made. Dr. Bob Jones, founder of Bob Jones University, loved to tell of things he used to think when he was a barefooted boy, walking the dirt roads in South Alabama. I heard him tell of one such story. He would walk by a beautiful rose and declare: “God has been here. He has made and painted this beautiful rose. Only God could do that.” He looked up in the sky at night and said to himself: “I know God lives up there. I see the dew drops on His front lawn where He lives above us.” I agree with him. Seeing what God has made, is enough to convince an honest person that God is real.
IF YOU THINK A BIG PILE OF SCRAP METAL CAN GIVE BIRTH TO A NEW BOEING 737, ready to fly out of the junkyard, there’s something wrong with you. If you can look at a newborn baby and not know that God is real, there’s something wrong with you.
READING THE BIBLE HAS CONVINCED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE that God is real.
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)
If you want to know God is real, read His word and it won’t be long until the message of the book will become real to you. This is the way it works: And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:30-31)
The testimony of God’s witnesses convinces many that God is real. Isaiah says of one group of people: …I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. (Isaiah 66:19)
Jesus gave the Great Commission to His followers: And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. (Mark 16:15)
GOD USED THE BIG OLD COUNTRY PREACHER to convince me that God is real. God uses the testimony of people to convince other people. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. (1John 1:3)
Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. (James 4:8) Ω
Read Through the Bible in a Year
NOVEMBER 26, 2018 - MONDAY
A.M Ezekiel 40 P.M 1Peter 5
(Bible Gateway will read this to you if you like. Look for the speaker icon.)
Good Verse to Memorize:
Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake. (John 14:10-11)
Song for Today:
How Great Thou Art (7:43) (Kim Collingsworth)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO67xEESp1M&t=83s
You may have to adjust the volume and delete Ad.
It blesses me to see people do things who believe in what they are doing. I don’t know anything about the Collingsworth family, except that she is a terrific concert pianist who plays “before the Lord.” I read that her father was a preacher and when she was three years old, he told about God giving Solomon the gift of wisdom. It struck her to talk to God, when she got home, about giving her a gift like Solomon. She wondered what she would be like when she woke up the next morning. No gift of wisdom.
However, when her older sister played a number on the piano, she said to herself: “I can do that.” She went to the piano and figured out where to start and played the song her sister had been playing,… like her sister had been playing it. Her mother thought the sister was still playing. I don’t doubt that God endowed her with a gift when she was three years old. God does a lot of things and one of them is to give gifts of ability to people. Matthew Henry, the famous Bible commentator was reading by the time he was three and writing by the time he was seven.
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