Is God For Real

To My readers, I must say I am truly sorry for not keeping up with the blog these past few months, but I hope to change that now. I want to start by saying that these next few weeks my blog will address some interesting points concerning God, Faith, and Religion brought up by my niece at dinner doing our last night of vacation in Barcelona Spain. My niece was questioning why she should go to church when she truly is not sure if there is a God. My niece is 15 years old, questioning the existence of God in your teen years is nothing new, I would like to say at that same age I had those same questions, but I didn’t. Yet I have had times in my life where I question God on why he lets bad things happen to people, Christian or nonbelievers since he is a Loving God.
“I do need to provide you with a little background information on my niece and nephew and a major life-changing event that occurs this past year.”
My nephew and niece have a group of friends (15 of them) that hang at my Sister-N- Law home every day after school and stay the night over the weekends. So when I say these teens were close, I’m not over exaggerating. This past year one of the young men in the group committed suicide. This young man death not only had major effects on the group but on the parents as well. Each Parent was wondering how did they not see this coming and the kids in the group are questioning everything, looking for answers and not knowing where to find them. The group grew closer together after this young man died, but they were still so lost when it came to knowing how to deal with the loss of a close friend. My wife and I reach out to my Nephew and Niece to let them know we are praying for them and family of the young man. My nephew then asked my wife and me to come home to NYC to be with him and his friends. We met with all the teens, pray with them and let them know we are there for them if they ever needed us. From that moment on my wife and I inherited 13 more nieces and nephews who call us uncle Troy and auntie Vernie. Which we both take as a no small honor, we have even met the parents of some of the teens. We send daily inspirational Scriptures to the teens to let them know that God loves them and we love them, but after listening to my niece and her questioning her faith in God I realize that just sending Scripture without providing meaning is worthless. So I’ll be changing how everyone in the group texts receives their daily Scripture moving forward. What good is spreading the word of God to the group if you don’t understand the meaning?

These next series of blogs are meant to answer the question “ Is There Truly A GOD.” It’s not meant to push my Niece towards Christianity but to help her understand God Love. “ For the record, you can’t push God on anyone, but you can educate everyone on the wonders of God Love.” I feel when we push too hard you tend to push people away; people come to Christ in most cases when the chips are down.People tend to thinks that Our God is only available doing the hard times. NO! THAT’S SO NOT TRUE! God is there ALWAYS when the times are good and bad. So Give Praise to him Morning, Noon and Night, Thar’s my belief! So, for now, my niece doesn’t believe there is a God, she finds it hard to believe that someone is controlling our destiny, that if you are bad, you’re going to hell, there is no saving grace, for the record she has every right to feel that way. Just as we as Christian have every right to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So how do you tell someone that God is for Real? Before I started writing this next section, I prayed to the Holy Spirit for wisdom on how to relate this not just to my niece but other nonbelievers. So IS GOD FOR REAL
Is God For Real

When I was a young lad growing up in Manassas Virginia, we attended Oak Grove Baptist Church in Herndon Virginia. My Mom was the church Secretary and pianist, and my Dad was a Deacon. If you ever been to a truly Southern Baptist Church then you know on any given Sunday it could be all day event. Our Pastor could preach for 2 hours, and everyone normally left church being filled with the Holy Spirit. What I loved about going to church and having a Mom that led all the Church Choirs, “which by the way meant I was always singing on Sunday with My Mom” was that I was able to memorize a lot of old gossips songs, those songs today have comfort and lift me up when I was in need of spiritual healing. That all being said, there was a song written by Kenneth Morris in 1944 called “Yes God is Real.” At the time he wrote this song he said; Yes God is Real expresses the surety of faith of many Christian.” What is so wonderful about this song is that it answers the Is God Real question for many Christian in just a few verses

There are some things
I may not know
There are some places
Oh Lord, I cannot go

But I am sure
Of this one thing
That God is real
For I can feel
Him in my soul

Yes, God is real
Oh, He’s real in my soul
Yes, God is real
For He has washed
And made me whole

His love for me
Is just like pure gold, oh Lord
My God is real
For I can feel
Him in my Soul

The verse “For I can feel, Him in My Soul” the write “Kenneth Morris” is Saying that God fulfills that emptiness or void that we sometimes feel when life can seem so complex, or we feel when we are at our wit’s end. The dictionary definition of Soul as “One person or is the spirit and essence of a person.” One example could be stated this way, “Your Soul or Spirit is the part of you that makes you who you are, and that will live on after you are gone.” Christian believe that your spirit will live on after your physical body has died, If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will be with him in Heaven if not and the Bible is very clear you will go to hell. Now here is the part where lots of Christian will tell nonbeliever “ What if you are wrong and when you die, you face God, and you end up in hell? Just as a nonbeliever can come back and say what if you as a Christain are wrong and you are just ashes to ashes, dust to dust? I call this the Tic for Tac syndrome no one wins this battle or do they?

My niece was right about one thing; it can be hard to believe that some God is controlling our every movement. We as a human really don’t want to be controlled by anyone; we want to determine our own faith. Yet don’t we seek leaders and mentor to guide us, sometimes blindly putting our faith / lives into another person’s hand who may have their own issues. We are only human, can you truly believe that another human doesn’t have his or her’s own fault. Maybe nonbelievers don’t want to believe in God because that means they would have to put their faith/lives into something they can’t see or control. Hebrew 11:1 said:

11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. “KJV”

John W. Ritenbaugh said ” Faith is the foundation for what we hope, the foundation for our relationship with God and everything that it implies within His purpose. Faith is the very beginning of everything that really matters spiritually

So we as Christian believe that our faith creates a relationship or bond with our Lord and Savior. I have heard it said, “ We believe even though we do not see,” I say we believe because of the things we hear and see today. When I wake up in the morning, and I see the wonders of God works, when I hear or read the Living Word God Bible I see the Love he shows for all of us, believers and nonbelievers. I have heard people say that in the Old Testament your God was a wick and evil God. I see in the Old Testament where God Showed his love to wick people who pray to be rescued from their enemy time after time only to turn from God again after being saved. Many of these people who say God is evil have never even read the Bible or go by hearsay. I say go find a Good Bible base church and for 30 days give God a chance to make an impact on your life, but you must truly commit to giving God a chance. If you do You Will be amazed at what changes God will do in your LIFE.
Inclusion is God for Real, that depends on the individual if you need to actually see and touch God then you may never truly believe. One of Jesus disciples named Thomas said he would not believe the Jesus lived until he saw the nail marks in his hand. When he met up with Jesus and saw the marks he cried “ My Lord and my God. Jesus replied in John 20:29 KJV

John 20:29 29  Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

I hope and pray that you will come to the Lord on your own and not because of some major life change event, that made you feel there nowhere to turn, and you cry out to him for help.  Even if that happens God will be there for you. Jesus said in Matthew 7:7-8 NIV

Matthew 7:7-8 New International Version (NIV)

Ask, Seek, Knock
7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8″ For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened
Please don’t miss read this, I have heard this verse used against God because some people believe it means that God will give you everything you ask for,

In an article written in Gotquestion.org the author said:
Jesus is not saying that believers always get what they ask for—wrong motives, for example, will hinder answers to prayer (James 4:3). However, the more time a Christian spends in communion with God, the more he or she will know what to ask for in accordance with God’s will. Prayer, in and of itself, does not produce sanctification (an increasing holiness in a believer’s life), but it does show a dependence on God for needs that can be met no other way. God is always pleased with such displays of faith. It is only faith in what God can do, and what Christ has done, that brings about true sanctification, not an artificial self-righteousness (Hebrews 11:6).

I truly agree with the above statement so to my niece and others nonbeliever the question Is God For Real well, to me he is for I can feel him in my soul. For others, it could be in other ways. To you, my niece and others I say give God a chance, commit for the next 30 days on finding out is God for Real? Start by finding a good bible base Church, go online on Youtube and listen to some Great Sermon by Pastors like Chris Hodges, T.D Jakes, and one of my Favorites sermons by Robert Morris of Gateway Church on the Holy Spirit is my Friend. Go in with an open mind, pray to God for answers to your questions, join a Church small group so you can fellowship with other believers. You will also find many answers you seek from reading the Bible itself. You too may begin to build a relationship with God.  I pray  that you will Grow not only in knowledge and Wisdom but build a healthy relationship with God as well

AMEN