Hey!
Sorry its been so long. Below is a LONG post 2737 words to be precise! I apologise. It is my talk for youth alpha so when I state ask the idea is that they ask me then and there. If you wanna asl then comment!
Hope you're all good! Also I didn't spell check because it has taken me 2 hours and I can't be bothered!!!
Til next time!
xx
How Can I be Sure of my Faith?
This is probably one of the most difficult topics that is covered in youth alpha. There is nothing that I am going to say that is going to make you be sure of your faith. There are things that are going to get you thinking and ideas that may help you on your way but nothing that is going to completely “prove” the existence of God. Before all the Christians in the room scream “heathen” at me I think it would be necessary to explain myself before I continue. It is the age old argument “you can’t disprove God” with the reply “yes but you can’t prove him either”, it is one that many Christian struggle with when trying to defend their faith. The only thing that is going to make you sure of your faith is God himself.
Faith is explained in the bible as “1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” Hebrews 11:1. This is something that we will come back to later but I thought chucking a definition of faith would be a good idea to start off with.
It is slightly ironic that I, of all people have been chosen to speak on this particular topic. As far as I am aware it wasn’t intentional by the people running this course in choosing me to speak but as I was thinking and praying about doing this I realised that it is totally God. The reason it is so ironic/bizarre is because for the majority of my Christian life I have been ridden with doubt. I would measure, (not that you should measure) but I measured my faith on how many doubts I had. For example, if I had no doubts it was a good week for my faith, hurrah(!) but if I had loads of doubts it was a bad week. Firstly, this is ridiculous because we shouldn’t be measuring out faith because otherwise we’d be constantly feeling bad! Secondly, did I really have faith if I doubted? If you ask any Christian during their walk with God they have doubted one way or another. Whether that is for 20 minutes or 20 years there would have been so form of doubt. This doesn’t make them less of a Christian but what does matter is how they deal with their doubt.
The point of my talk is not to prove God because as I said only he can do that to you but simply to give you some background information that you can think and maybe pray over. There are a few things that I personally struggled with and I believe there are universal so they are not just attributed to me and me only. I have looked into many different non-biblical sources to try establish solid answers but of course I looked at the bible to see what it states about being sure of our faith.
Doubt is defined as something that you are uncertain about, a lack of confidence, some disbelief. There is some hope within these very negative definition if you look closely! Uncertainty and lack of confidence show hope because all is not lost, if you are uncertain it doesn’t mean you don’t agree you’re just not entirely sure. A lack of confidence can suggest that there needs to be a catalyst to trigger that significant confidence. I was speaking to someone about Christianity and they were saying that they were unsure, they weren’t Christian but they were still in the doubting stage. One thing that I said to them is that “It’s a good place to be but not a good place to dwell”. If this is you if you’re in that stage were your unsure this is obviously a good place because you’re in consideration but it’s a bad place to settle. It’s not only going to get you saved but it is also not healthy for your mentality as you there is a constant battle in your head.
Jesus himself discusses doubt and the dangers it can do to your faith. The famous story of doubting Thomas which I think is now a common phrase used here in the UK?! Anyway, this story takes place right at the end of John’s gospel when Jesus has died and resurrected and he is appearing to his disciples. John 20:24-30
Jesus Appears to Thomas
24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."
26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
28Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.
Like many of us it is difficult to believe in something that isn’t physically there. So when we hear Christians banging on about the Love of Jesus and how we can be “saved” it is hard to understand because we haven’t seen it ourselves. Thomas was a massive doubter! He doubted more than anyone in history when you think about it because he had spend the last three years following Jesus around and being part of the miracles. You would think it would be hard for him to doubt when the disciples exclaim that they have seen Christ and Jesus has done what he came to do that Thomas would doubt unless he sees Jesus. When Jesus does present himself to Thomas he shows the holes in his hands he “says to him “stop doubting and believe” this is a cry to all of us. This was a cry to me! The biggest shout ever!! Stop doubting and believe! Jesus says we are blessed because we believe and have yet to see! This means we are highly favoured! This is good news! We doubt because we are uncertain but Jesus call to all of us is stop doubting and believe!
Another thing that we can learn from Thomas’ experience is his own personal experience of God. Like I said at the beginning there is nothing that I am going to say that will you convince you of your own faith it is something that you are going to need to explore and in time God will reveal himself to you. Thomas at the time was probably annoyed at God because his Messiah had died in front of him and it looked like the last three years of his life was wasted. It was such good timing when Jesus did reveal himself to Thomas because John records his anger and frustrating when he demands to see the wounds. At Christian events we learn of people’s testimonies, their stories about how they became Christians or how God has worked in their lives. These are often my favourite bits because they are so inspiring and relevant. In order to live as a Christian we need a personal relationship with God and in that personal relationship God will work in us. My second year of uni was by far the worst year in my life. It wasn’t overly dramatic in a sense that my life was threatened but everything that could of gone wrong went from. Financially, friends, uni work amd relationships was all going to pot. One thing that did stay true was my faith I just knew that God will take me out of this bigger and stronger. As the verse read at the beginning my faith showed me hope. Now a few months on my current friendship are so solid and strong, financially there is hope, uni is a lot better and relationship well lets not go there 4 out of 5 is not bad! My God through my faith carried me during this difficult times, I had hope that he was going to sort it out and he is still doing that now. That is my personal experience and I can look bad and stand here now being sure of my faith. Richard Dawkins, the guy who wrote “the God Delusion” states that this a ridiculous element of Christianity. The simple counter-argument to this is how can you know that unless you’ve experienced it! How can we be sure of our faith well we need to experience faith in order to be sure of it.
What about science and history? Aren’t them some inaccuracies about these in the bible? Just quickly science doesn’t disprove God. Science simply tells you how things work not how they were created. That is an argument that many non-christians try to argue but don’t often look at the bigger picture. In Max Lucado’s book ‘In the Grip of Grace’ he talks about the story of a cricket (I am no way going to explain it as amazingly as he does but I’ll give it a go!) in church. One day the cricket goes back to its whole in the wall with the other crickets and they start a discussion about where the light comes from. One cricket states “well its comes from that big light up there” but another cricket asks “but where does that light come from?”. They all sit there and ponder for weeks about this concern then one day another cricket had discovered a new idea! “It comes from the electricity” all the crickets are amazing by this but then another asks “but where does electricity come from?”. Once again they ponder this very big dilemma for another week. Finally after weeks of pondering a cricket watch a human turn on the light at the switch. We can go back and back and back trying to discover what created what but one thing that we have yet to discover is the original source. This direct quote from Lucado’s book is this “The loss in mystery has lead to the loss of majesty. Knowledge should negate wonder” simply meaning that because we think we know more we have lost sight of the creator. Just because we know more shouldn’t mean we wonder less. The bible has many examples of scientific accuracies and if you want to specifically then please ask me.
The bible wasn’t written as an historical document but does display many historical accuracies. It demonstrates the way of life during periods it was written. Whenever you open the bible you are likely to see a place name which can be traced back with archaeology. There is a lot of archaeology evidence in the bible and again if you want to know more ask me. We need to understand though that the bible was not written as an historical document but a spiritual handbook.
How about the authenticity of the bible? This simply means that many people have issues with the bible. The bible is one of the most important aspects of being a Christian. It teaches us about God’s character, it is a practical handbook to how to live and it tells us how we can get salvation! If we are unsure about the bible then this is a massive issue that needs to be addressed. Whether or not the bible could be the word of God, “the lost gospels” and how can it not be incorrect after years of copies?
All of these are very valid questions and ones that many question. Lets begin with the first question: could the bible be the word of God? The best place to start is to see what the bible suggests about the scripture being the word of God. In 2 Timothy 3-17 it states this “16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” This simply means that all scripture is from God and the reason that it is here is basically to act as practical guide on how to live like a Christian. How can God send what he thinks to the average human who physically wrote the bible? Throughout the old testament God spoke through prophets, we just need to simply look at Moses and the Ten Commandments where God gives him the laws to abide.
In the old testament “Then said the Lord” is mentioned over 400 times and when Jesus was preaching in Luke 24:44-45 he states “'These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.' 45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. " He references the old testament and stating his role that he played in the old testament calling them his words. Jesus never said they contain the word of God instead his says they ARE the word of God.
What about contradictions within the bible? This is one massive problem when people try to defeat the Christian faith. One thing that we need to be sure of that the copies we have now of the bible are NOT inspired. The original documents were ones written by Peter, John, Matthew, Paul etc but the copies we have of those inspired documents are not inspired themselves. Does that mean we cannot trust the bible? No! The bible is 98.5% accurate which means on 1.5% of the bible is uncertain. The originals were inspired and inspiration comes from God so when he the bible was written it was perfect. Due to the high accuracy of the bible the inaccuracies are so small that it will not change the teaching of the bible. Inaccuracies such as Christ Jesus and not Jesus Christ, small grammatical errors. We would throw out a science textbook due to a some small spelling or grammatically errors? No, of course we wouldn’t so then why do that with the bible? There are many famous documents such as the work philosopher, playwright and author Plato which were written around 427 BC and it wasn’t until 900 AD around 1200 years after it was first written that the first copy was made and from that we only have around 9 copies to choose from.
The bible, however first copy was written around 130 years after the death and resurrection of Christ and we have over 24,000 copies that we can translate from. We would dismiss the bible as not being accurate but not Plato?
Another thing which TV programmes in particular have gone to town about are the supposed “lost gospels” or the “lost books of the bible” . I am not going to dwell on this but just to quickly say they were never lost. They were known by the Jews and Christians of the time but they were never considered inspired. They lack apostles authorship and were never claiming to be the word of God, one thing we understand to be important, they also contain serious historical inaccuracies which would deem them unreliable. There you go! Problem sorted!
I understand that is a lot information to take and a lot of numbers, dates and references but it is so important that if we doubt the bible then we need to ensure that we are corrected.
It is an age old question how can I be sure of my faith? I personally think it is down to you to answer that question. I just wanted to present some ideas that would hopefully clarify some issues you may have had with some elements of Christianity. Ask any Christian and they will be happy to tell you how they are sure of their faith. I am sure of my faith because of the amount of work he has done in my life.
