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I launched HaveCharacter.com and my first blog back in the middle of 2023. I didn’t really know what to expect or what was ahead of me. I just wanted to get my thoughts out to the world and try to make a difference. I didn’t originally think that it would become a devoutly Christian website and blog. Instead, I wanted to just relay a message of the morals and values that my parents taught me because I thought my parents raised me right (which is true). However, God had a different plan for me. As I started to write and put the website together it became clear to me that God was leading me to talk about Him. I surely don’t want to put words in God’s mouth, but it was almost like He kept saying to me, “Do you really think you can talk about your morals and values, relaying a message that has any meaning, without talking about where they truly come from and that is your relationship with Me?” I truly felt like God bopped me in the head with a two-by-four. It became obvious to me that He was the reason I could speak to the things I would be writing about. He was the foundation of all I had to offer. Now, looking back almost a year and a half later, HaveCharacter.com is exactly what it should be…a message that puts a spotlight on the author of life… the God I serve. I can only hope that comes through clearly with anything that I have to write.
After I released my first blog, I started a Facebook page and set myself up on Twitter (now X), and put myself on Instagram. Up to this point, I had done very little to no social media at all. Social media has never been my thing, but I needed it to get my message out there. So, as I blogged, I paid to promote them so that they would come across people’s pages and feeds. This opened up a whole new avenue of interaction with people that I knew would come but didn’t realize what it would actually look like, let alone teach me. How naive was I to think that some people, not only would disagree with me, but might attack my message in a pretty nasty way? I mean the message I would be putting forth was what God has done in my life and how great He is. How would they not be able to see the benefits for them as well? After all, He is not just my God, but their God too.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not dumb. I understand that with a Christian message will come those who want to tear it down, mock it, and belittle it. But remember, I was never really into social media, so I had never come face-to-face with the keyboard warriors I would find myself up against. Needless to say, I was in for a treat…or better yet, a challenge!
But that is where I would learn a most valuable lesson and what I will be speaking about today. Let me just start out by saying this: Dialoguing with those who have been the nastiest to me on social media has been an absolute blessing for me! It has led me to understand and pinpoint exactly where the problem lies when it comes to a fellow human being bowing before the God of the universe or rejecting Him. It also has allowed me to expound on my message in a way that would not be possible if everyone agreed with me. I don’t expect to “change” their mind. Only God can do that, but what I don’t lose sight of is this: I am to give an answer when my faith in my God is challenged and, here is the key… to do it with gentleness and kindness! (1 Peter 3:15-17)
And miraculously, here is what it does that my God is big enough to do. When I go back and forth with a non-believer who is being nasty, what they don’t realize is someone else might be reading and watching. Not everyone will be out there strongly rejecting God. There might be someone out there seeking the Truth. There might be some searching for information, longing to find the God who made them. My God is big enough to use a feeble man like me to miraculously bring someone to Him! And not because of me, but because of his power. This I have ultimate confidence in. After all, He did this for me! And if He can do it for me, He can do it for anyone! I am blood bought by Jesus Christ…I am His!
So, here is what I learned in all of this:
Rejecting God or having a relationship with God is a matter of the HEART! Not a matter of evidence or proof of evidence!
Now, someone might read that and go, “Wait a minute! Are you saying you don’t need evidence to prove God exists?” No, that is not what I am saying so please read further. The evidences are plenty and they are not complicated to grasp! And I don’t believe that those who reject the evidence are dumb human beings. In fact, I have found quite the opposite. They are very smart people. I don’t think I have ever interacted with someone online who I thought this person is not intelligent. But when we start going back and forth the one thing that almost always gets thrown at me is “Where is the evidence?” or “Provide me the evidence!”. Both of which are totally fair game. But here is what happens…I have dedicated a page on my website at HaveCharacter.com to many resources for “evidence”. I have pointed to men way smarter than me who have made it their life work to provide the evidence, many of whom started out to prove the God of the Bible wrong only to bow and worship Him when their research was done. Why did this happen? Because those men genuinely wanted the Truth wherever it took them and they found it. But when I present this page to those who ask for evidence, they either blow right on by it and ignore it or they discard it without taking a good look at it. Instead, it is too easy to rebuke, ridicule, belittle, and spew hatred in a Facebook post knowing all too well that providing evidence in a Facebook post reply would take a book to do because of how much evidence there is. So sadly, the very thing they throw at me is the last thing they really want. Why? Because their heart does not want a relationship with the God who is! It is that simple. It really doesn’t matter how much evidence is available, their heart simply rejects God and wants no relationship with Him.
What is interesting to me is this is spelled out for us in God’s Word. Yet, it took me dialoguing with people online to bring this to the forefront for me. With every real life, online, interaction I get involved in, I am seeing examples of how the heart is the reason a person rejects their God. I take a step back and analyze the online back and forth with individual after individual who rejects God and then go to the Scriptures. Right there my experience is backed up. You see, through this experience, God is teaching me too! Here are some Scripture passages that back up exactly what I am talking about:
Romans 10:9-10 says this, “Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your HEART that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the HEART one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
Jeremiah 29:13 assures us this, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your HEART.”
Now let’s contrast that with the heart that doesn’t want God. Jeremiah 17:9-10 says this, “The HEART is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the Lord search the HEART and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
The Bible is clear that all who seek God with their whole heart will find Him. It is also clear that those who reject Him do so because their heart does not want Him. For this reason, I am putting forth that, even though the evidence does exist, the real key to finding God is a matter of the heart. The determining factor is the heart and not the evidence available to us.
With all that being said, I would be remiss if I did not talk about some of the evidence that is available to us. God gives us plenty! I am one who loves the evidence. Not because I need it, but because I love the confidence it gives me in the faith that I have in the God I serve. I am going to summarize some of them here. Now please understand, if you are looking for me to convince you that the God of the Bible exists with the evidence I am going to state here, you would be mistaken and missing the point. Each of these would take more research and study than just listing them. With all due respect, I am writing a blog here and not a book. (But make no mistake diving deeper into any of these are available and if you go to the Evidence for Christianity page on HaveCharacter.com you can find resources there to help guide you).
Below are some of the evidence that I find gives me great confidence in my faith. Some of these are for the existence of a God while others are not just for the existence of a God, but that the God who does exist is the One True Living God of the Bible. These are two different evidential proofs…first, we can have confidence that God does exist and then we can have confidence in who that God is! The first lays the foundation for the latter, but the latter is the ONE we must get right!
So here is some evidence in no particular order:
The life of Jesus Christ- The historical evidence for who He was, who He claimed to be, what He did, how He died, and how He came back from the dead is about as strong as it gets.
The 12 Disciples- they ran in fear and hid when Christ went to the cross. They denied they knew Him (Peter most famously). Yet, when they saw the risen Christ from the dead, they spread the Gospel and died for Christ. Jesus Christ being raised from the dead is the reason for their miraculous change and the reason Christianity exists today!
Miracles- miracles point to a God who does things beyond human explanation and understanding. We know miracles do happen today and yet many refuse to give God credit or look at this as proof God does exist.
Historical evidence- a deep dive into historical evidence gives us confidence in the Bible as the Word of God and that Jesus Christ died and rose again.
The Supernatural Word of God, The Holy Bible, being Preserved – It is the best-selling book of all time, all while it has been attacked and attempted to be destroyed all throughout human history. A deep dive into this further will reveal supernatural evidence at every turn as you study the historicity of the Bible to come to the conclusion that it is God’s Word to Us.
Archeological discoveries- These give us confidence in Christianity and in Biblical stories and people being true.
Love- This is personal evidence in my mind. I don’t see love coming into existence if we happened to just evolve by chance. In fact, my logic tells me we would be devoid of love. Love, the beauty of it, the uniqueness of it, the substance of it, and all that love is had to come from the Creator of all things. I see no other explanation that comes close to making sense as to why we have love, its importance, or its meaning.
Roman Crucifixion- This one is an interesting one to me from a practical sense. Some say Christ went to the cross, but maybe he didn’t die. Well, a deep dive into Roman Crucifixion and how the Romans carried this out make this extremely slim to none, and definitely not plausible to stake your belief in it. The Romans perfected this way of killing and saying they did this very well would be an understatement. In fact, I would argue, that if Jesus didn’t die from this horrendous, perfected way of execution by the Romans, that too might point to him being God! (I am obviously being facetious here but maybe not if you think about that for a moment!)
Creation- Looking at the creation all around us screams of an ultimate Creator or Designer way bigger than us.
Animals- This goes in line with Creation, but animals offer a pretty unique perspective. Many of them have very fine, unique details to them in their design that allow them to survive. This spotlights the need for a Designer who set this up perfectly.
Complexity of Human Beings- Our bodies are so complex that making the argument we got here by chance or by evolution just doesn’t make any logical sense. DNA, fingerprints, and the symmetry of our bodies all put a spotlight on a Designer.
Science- Many have taken God out and inserted Science as their religion. Yet, science actually points more to a Creator than replacing the Creator! Oh, and by the way, we don’t have Science without Historical Evidence because without recording scientific findings, experiments, and observational outcomes (which now becomes historical evidence the moment it is completed or observed), science cannot go forward, nor does it exist.
Morality Code- Many think we can have morals and values without a God who gave us them. But if we were to come together by chance or evolution there would not be any kind of morals and values at all, let alone a set of them that are pretty cohesive. A clear system that points to One source as the Moral Giver.
Changed Lives throughout Human History- Many have sought to disprove God, but in doing this, they chased after the Truth wherever it genuinely took them. Those that did the latter came to the feet of the cross and bowed before the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
As I shoot through this list it just occurred to me that the probability of all of this being in place, yet devoid of a Creator who put it all there, is so astronomically low it defies logic and reason to a huge degree. And this is coming from a feeble man like me. I am sure some way smarter than me would come up with some evidence that I missed. After all, we are the creation and there really is no way to get away from the Creator. His fingerprints are all over our existence. So, it would be laughable to believe that no God exists. And yet, as I shoot through this list, there is one thing I have yet to mention that goes beyond all of the above for me. In fact, all of the above is really just a distant second to this last one. And the last one is:
My life!
If you’ve read any of my blogs, I give my age in some of them. I am currently 50 years old and in my 50 years of life, God has carried me WITHOUT QUESTION. I don’t care what any mean-spirited person might say about disputing any “evidence” they deem not convincing; they cannot shake the evidence for me of my life! I undoubtedly have a personal, unique, relationship with my Creator. He is the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Alpha and Omega. The ONE TRUE LIVING GOD! If you and I were to go out to lunch and you said to me, “Tell me about your relationship with God and why you have this relationship you talk about?” I would say, “Pull up a chair, how much time do you have? I have 50 years of stories to tell you!” And here is the kicker… this isn’t about a God who made my life some fairytale life without any tragedies or trials. No, quite the opposite. But in the moments of it all, good and bad, there has only been ONE with me the whole time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No, that is not a cliche timeframe…it is the exact true timeframe…24 hours a day, 7 days a week! My God has always been with me.
If you are someone who is reading this and doesn’t have a relationship with the God who made you, man, you are missing out on the greatest relationship available to us for all our eternity! I have been able to tackle anything life has brought me only because of Him. And He is more than capable of doing that for you too.
As I try to wind this blog down, I will give you a glimpse of what I am talking about in my life which has to do with this very blog. So, when I blog, I typically pray that God will guide me in what He wants me to say. In writing this blog, I started to struggle a bit as I do most of the time I write. On my phone, every morning, I get a “verse of the day” texted to me. When I wake up the verse is sitting in my text inbox. The last two days, yesterday and today, the “verse of the day” have been these two verses:
Psalm 119:11 – I have hidden your word in my HEART that I might not sin against you.
Proverbs 19:21 – Many are the plans in a person’s HEART, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
A quick Google search for how many verses that are in the Bible came up with a number of “about 31,102 verses”. I am struggling to finish a blog on a matter of the HEART over evidence as being why someone rejects or wants a relationship with God, and my last two verses in the morning are those two verses? Really?
Let me now tell you what those two verses tell me that sums up this blog perfectly and allows me to finish this. The whole point of this blog is that wanting and finding a relationship with God is a matter of the HEART and not a matter of the “evidence” someone says they want in order to believe. Psalm 119:11 tells me that when my heart wants the Word of God, I want a relationship with Him and I find it.
But that second verse given to me (Proverbs 19:21) tells me something even greater! Had I finished this blog two days ago when I was writing it, I would have missed this… and that is this: GOD IS POWERFUL ENOUGH TO CHANGE A HEART! What hope for the lost! I will say that one more time…What a hope for the lost!!!!! So even though a heart might be currently turned off toward God, God in his purpose has the power to change it! Praise be to God for this good news! Need proof of this? Scroll back up and re-read my list of the many changed lives who have turned to Him!
One final thought: When your HEART wants a relationship with God, He will reveal Himself to you and THEN the evidence all becomes quite clear. When that happens, the evidence is incredibly cool! But a HEART that doesn’t want a relationship with God will refute and spit on any evidence that is presented before them, no matter how compelling it is! Both Hearts have the same evidence available to them. One of the clear examples of this is the two criminals on the cross with Jesus when He is being crucified. Both had the evidence of the Messiah right there on the cross with them. One had a HEART wanting him and one had a HEART rejecting him. Jesus promised the one wanting Him that he would be with Him that day in Paradise! (You can check out this clear contrast of the heart in Luke 23: 32-43)
Again, let me offer comfort for those of you who are praying for someone who currently has a heart closed off to God. Go back and read that second Scripture verse that came to me. “Many are the plans in a person’s HEART, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” This means you DO NOT stop praying for them. God has the power to change the HEART. His ways to reach a person to bring them to Himself have no boundaries. Take HEART in the God you serve, wait on his timing, and don’t give up on the one you are praying for!
He is a good, good, God! “Trust in the Lord with all your HEART, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths!” (Proverbs 3: 5-6)
Thank you, God, for guiding me through the end of this blog! Praise and worship to YOU, my God and my King!
DON’T TELL ME THERE IS NO GOD! My heart wants Him first and then, make no mistake, the evidence is cool and backs it up!
Have Character!
J. Noah Russell
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