I doubt it...

Talk about neglect, I have been so busy with studies and work that I have failed to follow through on my apologetics blogs...sorry about that. I promise though, in time they will start to come up. I have already had so many discussions with random people concerning issues and questions. It is almost like God is first teaching me before I go and retype something I read in a book. I think this is an important lesson.

I was speaking to a young guy today at Borders about the book he was reading. He had the "Dawkins Delusion" on his lap and he was just perusing through it. I proceeded to ask him why that book. He said he had read the "God Delusion" however, refused to just take it at face value. He wanted to see what others had to say. I loved it! A genuine seeker! To make a long story short, we spoke for a good 45 minutes on topics like evil, hypocrisy, the church today, the problems with christians today, who Christ was, the significance of what He said, who He claimed to be, why religion is wrong, and what He did on the cross. He was just two words away from saying yes to Christ on the cross. Reminded me of Jesus and what He did on the cross. Timothy Keller said it best when he described it as though Jesus was our bridegroom (which biblically He refers to Himself as such) and we are the bride, and at the cross, Jesus Christ got on one knee and asked us to be His bride.

I was God's tool for proposal, this guy was literally a knee bow away from saying "I do." While he said he wasn't ready, he did himself say that it is a big decision, and that it was so big not just because of the eternal implications, but also because of the brevity of life. He didn't know it, but he paraphrased James 4:14 when he told me "I could die tonight, I am not promised tomorrow." I loved how after this he also told me he was the kind of person who doesn't like just taking things at face value, he has to research it. I gave him Jeremiah 29:13 "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart" He read it aloud and understood the person speaking and the person being addressed.

Why can't we be more like this kid? Mind you, the kid was 14, but he spoke and composed himself as though he were 20. I left him with John 3, and said to start from there and go forward that I was sure if he genuinely wanted truth, that God would show up. It was encouraging to find someone so willing to seek, however, discouraging because so few of us today actually want to know more. While it is important to take things at faith value, wouldn't you want to know as much as possible about the very thing which saves you? Look at Abraham in Genesis 15:2-3, what did he do? How dare he question God right? And yet, look at God's response, He tells him that he will bring forth an heir from his own body (and the word body here is like that of "one flesh" from Gen 2 where God gives man the gift of marriage and love between male and female, hence why it wasn't talking about Hagar), but God doesn't stop there, He then proceeds to wow him by showing him the stars in the sky and telling him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars, talk about wow!

Why would God do that? Abraham is questioning God! Because God, as we know from Jeremiah 29:13, will answer those who seek Him with their whole heart. Abraham was genuinely asking him how this was all going to go down, because Abraham genuinely cared about what he believed in, and because it was a concern and a genuine care, God wowed him and answered. Take John the baptist in Luke 7, he too, even after baptizing God and hearing the voice of God from heaven and seeing the Holy Spirit descend as a dove sent messengers to Jesus asking if He was the Christ.

Their is nothing wrong with questions. In fact a person genuinely seeking the truth is what God wants, because once they find it, they'll defend it to the death and learn more on it. Look at the Bereans in Acts 17:11, they were genuine seekers, they wouldn't take things at what some man would say, they did what 1 Thess 5 says about testing all things, and as a result, verse 12 shows us that many came to faith because they sought after the truth.

We all are seeking some sense of truth. When we find the absolute truth of Christ, we should be eager to defend it and proclaim it to the death. There is nothing wrong with asking questions. If you ask questions with the right heart, God WILL answer. When a person approaches us with questions, be ready to answer, because your answers may be the water God uses to cause a seed to spring up and grow.

"A faith without doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if they have failed over the years to listen patiently to their own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection[...]it is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them" - Timothy Keller (The Reason for God, pg. xvi-xvii)