What do you know about God?

Some people can claim to know a lot about God. Some claim that they don’t believe He exists. But in the Bible, there are many people who have seen His miracles and His love for them shown in many different ways. From providing food and water for the Israelites in the desert for forty years to making sure that none of them got sick or feeble during that time. Miracles abounding almost every day and yet after they made it to the Promised Land most of them forgot about God within one generation.

Why?

I believe if I had seen the Red Sea split and I walked through it on dry ground, that would’ve been enough. If I had seen the manna and the water from the rock and the quail that piled up in the camp knee-deep…I would’ve believed in Him. When they went into the Promised Land the first city to fall literally was Jericho after their marching around it for seven days and then on the seventh day they blew the trumpets and shouted and the thick walls fell down. This was happening in Exodus and Joshua.

There are so many miracles that happen in the Old Testament and many more in the New Testament and yet there are still people who either don’t believe or just won’t. True, if you don’t believe that the Bible was written as inspired by the Holy Spirit then none of the miracles which happened in the Old or the New Testaments will make a difference in how you know God. But consider this: God created the heavens and the Earth and everything that is seen and unseen in both. Granted, it may take some small amount of faith to believe this and He can supply it. God lives outside of our “dimension” if you will and He can see and has seen everything that mankind has done and will do but He still loved us enough to send His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross so that those who will believe would have a chance at eternity with Him.

Does that mean that He knows who will believe and who will not? Yes, but He doesn’t force belief on us. That comes to each of us when we realize that we need Him by faith which He has given to us by the hearing of a sermon or by reading His Word. At that point, we know that without Jesus as our Savior we are going to spend eternity separated from God in hell. We know that if we choose not to accept Jesus as our Savior and we die before we change that, we will be going to hell. It is our choice because we know by faith that we need Him and if we don’t make that choice then our destination is set. If we do, then we will be changed when we repent of our sinful condition and ask Jesus into our hearts and at that moment we are forgiven and brought into God’s family through the blood of Jesus that paid for our sins on the cross.

In the most simple terms, God is the embodiment of love. Unconditional love. The kind that we can do nothing to earn. We just have it because He loved each of us so much that He sent Jesus to pay our sin debt in order for us to be with Him in eternity. We can’t earn it. We don’t deserve it, but it is a gift by the grace and mercy of God through Jesus Christ our Savior.