Dear Anonymous,

1 Peter 3:15 "But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect."

About a week ago I noticed a new comment on a previous post. The post had to do with Jesus' second coming. I have come to realize that I have been a tad naive in thinking that only my friends read my blog. It turns out that, at least occasionally, people that I don't even know read my blog.
The comment that I recently discovered was from an anonymous person, and they questioned how I know that what I believe is true. Have I studied all religions? How do I know that my faith is the true faith and not something else?
Well, I want to attempt to answer that question. I'm obviously not in seminary...I don't have a Bible degree...I also could in no way be described as eloquent, however, as the verse states above, I always want to be ready to explain why I believe the Bible is true. The following points are in no particular order.

1. To start off, to place our hope and trust in anything requires faith. Although there are plenty of evidences that the Bible is true, it still takes faith. The Bible also says that the Holy Spirit gives us faith as a gift. So no matter what I say, I can't fully convince anyone to believe the same thing. That power belongs to God alone.

2. The Bible begins before the world was even created. If I believe in anything, I want to know that it starts at the beginning of history.

3. My faith is based on authority not of my own, or of any human, but on the authority of God. The Bible itself says that the entire thing is written by God. He inspired men to write HIS words.

4. As far as I know, all other religions, at least the ones I know of, include some kind of human work for salvation. But the Bible says that salvation is in Christ alone. "And there is salvation in on one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12 I have definitely lived long enough to know that I am a sinner. I can try as hard as I can on my own to not sin, but it doesn't happen. I know that I don't have any power to save myself or have any part in it except for faith, which as I said earlier, is a gift of God's grace.

5. Creation. There's really not much more to say to say on this one. Romans 1 tells us that just by looking at creation we know that God exists and we are without excuse. And seriously, just looking at the complex way we are made. That didn't just happen.

6. Ezekiel 36:26 says, "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." I love the words from a certain song..."The mercy is more that a match for my heart, which wonders to feel it's own hardness depart." Besides experiencing my own heart melt before the Lord, I have witnessed numerous changed lives. What else can explain Paul's immediate change from a man who persecuted Jews...one who stood by watching people stone Stephen for his faith in God, to one who went around spreading the same gospel and being persecuted for it himself?

7. Our natural instinct to worship. If you don't worship God, you worship yourself or something else. We all start off worshipping ourselves. Yet there is never satisfaction in this. If you worship yourself, you can never receive enough praise, enough attention, enough money, enough things, enough of anything to make yourself happy. The times I am most joyful are the times when I am dwelling on God and who He is and praising Him with my heart. And I can't do that perfectly on earth because I still have sin, but there is GREAT JOY in knowing I will eventually worship Him with NO SIN in Heaven! We were created to worship Him.

Well, this is by no means an exhaustive list. In fact the real list would be inexhaustive because God is eternal and infinite. But please, feel free to leave comments, especially anything obvious that I am not mentioning...like for instance, all the prophesies in the Bible that have been fulfilled...that sort of thing.

Psalm 5:11 "But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you."