Recently, Pastor J.D. got to be a part of a special “Live AMA” with college students from Hardin Baptist Church in Hardin, KY. Listen in as Pastor J.D. answers questions submitted by the audience, including, “How do you have faith in something that you can’t prove exists?”
Show Notes:
How do you have faith in something you can’t prove exists?
- The first thing I would say is that there are a lot of things that we perceive that are not necessarily perceived through our sight or even our five senses.
- And think, for example, about our perception of love. We all know love is real, even though it’s not something we can taste, touch, see, smell, or hear.
- We all have an innate sense of the divine — that there is something greater out there — whether we want to acknowledge that or not.
- It’s like C.S. Lewis said: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
- Beyond that, there are several things that the Bible points to that philosophers have called the “arguments for God,” or evidences and fingerprints for God’s existence.
- The cosmological argument: essentially, the idea that nothing + nobody cannot = everything. And that matter cannot create itself, which is a strong evidence that there is some a Creator.
- The moral argument: the idea that we all have a sense of right and wrong, and that if we truly are just evolutionary accidents, there’s no such thing as right and wrong.
- The teleological argument: the idea that we seem to be created for a purpose, with a longing for eternity.
- The ontological argument: the idea that because it is possible that God exists, then he must exist.
- And I often just think about the significance of all that has happened since Jesus’ life. None of it is likely, and especially since the original Christians did not gain much from the founding of the faith.
How can we share the gospel with grace and truth?
- The story of Jesus is the greatest of all forms of evangelism.
- Over time, my evangelism approach has changed from trying to get through whatever method or tool I was using as quickly as I could, to focusing on an invite to study the Bible with that person together. Because I know when we study the story of Jesus together, there’s a beauty there that is more powerful than the logical arguments I might be able to overwhelm you with.
- Michael Green wrote a book called Evangelism in the First Century. He drew a distinction between missionaries and defenders of orthodoxy. Both are gifts to the body of Christ, both are important, but they are different roles.
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