Why I Believe In God

Someone asked me recently to objectively consider why I believe in "the god" that I do. This is my response.

Quite a few years back, I was engaged to a military man. My life at the time was a mess. I’d moved to Florida, was putting my small kids through hell, was living with an unstable man. I was a drunk. And I was an agnostic.

I’d been raised to be a Christian, had been saved and baptized as a pre-teen, was in love with the Christian calling. But at the hands of a few ignorant and misled men who twisted the Word to suit their own purposes, I became bitter and turned away. In my youth and naivety, unable to separate the truth from interpretation, I decided that I just didn’t care for "the God of the Christian Bible."

And away I went, no longer acknowledging or considering God’s existence. Years I spent twisted up with drugs, alcohol, bad relationships, etc., etc. That all ended here in Florida after the man to whom I was engaged killed himself, quite violently, in my home, while my kids and I were there. If I hadn’t been a total drunk before, I sure had a reason to be one now. And I took full advantage of that excuse.

Those were very dark days. And on one of those typical hung-over mornings, I started reflecting on how I’d been brought up to believe that we, as humans, are weak and can’t accomplish anything on our own. "We’re supposed to take everything to God," I thought cynically, "and here, I’ve gotten through this whole thing without praying one single time." 

God spoke to me then. It was not audibly, the way He spoke to Moses. But He was in the room. It was as if He sat down on my shoulders and squeezed my eardrums and He said, "you would not have "gotten through" anything were it not for the strength that I have given you."

Wish I could say that was it...that in a snap, I was healed. It didn’t happen that way but that morning was the beginning. I no longer had the luxury of denying a God who’d spoken to me.

So you know that story in John 5:1-9 where the paralyzed guy’s been lying by the healing pool for all those years, waiting for someone to drag him in first so that he can be healed? The first thing Jesus asked him was if he really even wanted to be well. And then He told him to get up and go.

My answer to the question is this: I believe in the LORD because He has spoken to me and has made me well.

I pray that each of you will hear Him when He speaks and that whatever holds you back will be replaced with a soul-deep desire to get up and go.