The assignment of writing about faith to a vast audience of the mature, the immature, and the lost is not an easy task. Each one has a different picture of faith. In order to cover all the bases we have to start with the basics. The word faith from the Greek is “pistis”, which means: persuasion, trust, credence, conviction, and so forth. Faith is simply to believe in or to trust in something or someone. I could put my faith in the fact that it will not rain on Friday when I am performing an outdoor wedding. Does that mean that my faith is firm? Certainly not! But to a certain extent, it is faith. Faith comes in varying degrees. When Jesus wanted to give a little push to the disciples about their need to increase in their faith He would often say, “O’ ye of little faith.” Mark records a time when Jesus asked them why they had no faith. They were in the boat with Jesus in the midst of a storm. In a panic they awakened Jesus and asked,

     “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” (Mark 4:39 NKJV)

     But He said to them, 

     "Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?" (Mark 4:40)

     The disciples asked Jesus, in Luke 17:5, to increase their faith. There were some instances where Jesus had told some people that they had great faith. I will have to save them for a later article. The point is that faith comes in varying degrees depending on your maturity. Our goal is to reach the highest level of faith. If we do not have a good foundation to our faith we will crumble like the tower of Babel.

The rudimentary elements of faith are in understanding that God is. In Hebrews the eleventh chapter we are blessed with the great chapter of faith. Verse 6 is one of my favorite verses to quote because it is one of those foundational quotes upon which great faith must be built.

“But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

     The most basic principal of faith is to be convinced that God exists. If you can be made to doubt the existence of God your faith will topple over. Satan’s modus operandi is based in deceit. He thrives on being able to deceive people either to believe that God is not to be taken seriously or that He does not exist at all. If he can only get you to doubt the existence of God your faith will be lukewarm at best. The only way that you can be totally convinced that God is, is if you have examined the evidence and have found it to be convincing. In order for us to have an undoubting faith God has supplied us with undeniable evidence of His existence. I recently heard a report on a book that has come out which was co-authored by Ken Ham. In it they had examined the ratio of young people who had left the church and they found that most of those who went to college left the church. In the study they also claimed that more children who had gone to Sunday school left the church than those who had not gone to Sunday school. It was their conclusion that the reason for this was that many Sunday school lessons do not teach the bible stories as hard facts but rather as good moral stories, like Aesop’s Fables. It is arguable as to whether this is the cause for the dissension, but there is no doubt that many religious people have a foundationless faith. There is no substance to what they believe. It is about how they feel rather than what they are convinced of as truth. God did not leave us to stupor in a blind faith that exists contrary to the evidence. The evidence of God’s existence and of the truth of the scriptures is overwhelming. In order for our faith to be on a firm foundation it must be substantiated by evidence. At the beginning of every football season (back in the 70’s and 80’s) I used to believe that the Cleveland Browns were going to go all the way. I could proclaim this belief from the hilltops, but my faith was not backed by hard evidence. My faith was weak and unsubstantiated. All of my belief was not going to make it true if it was not true. In Hebrews 11:1 the Holy Spirit claims:

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

     God has provided us with evidence that He is. If the existence God is not backed by true proven evidence, then there is no God. I do not fear that statement because I know the evidence, and I know that God is.

     It is not possible for me to cover all of the bases of God’s evidence in one, two, or even a thousand articles. There are books upon books and articles upon articles that have been written. Some lunatics even built a state of the art museum near Cincinnati Ohio to prove the creation. I will touch on some of the more compelling evidences to me, but if you want to sure up the foundation of your faith then you must,

     “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, righty dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15).

     And you must do some empirical research. God does not want us to be stupid. He told Hosea:

     “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6).

     Ignorance destroys and truth does not fear examination. In verse three of Hebrews eleven the Holy Spirit inspired writer clues us in on the most obvious evidence of all:

      “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are                visible” (Hebrews 11:3).

     This is the most basic of all testimonies. Matter did not appear out of thin air of its own accord. Rocks did not create trees, frogs, and dogs. Trees did not create weeds and bees. And humans were not created from lightning bolts and mud puddles. In 2000 A.D. the famed scientist Fredrick Hoyle made the news in USA Today with the headline, “There Must Be a God.” “Hoyle and his colleague, Chandra Wickramasinghe, independently reached that conclusion after their mathematical analyses showed that believing that life could result from time, chance, and the properties of matter was like believing that ‘a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.’” (Gary Parker, CREATION FACTS OF LIFE, Master Books 2006) Another analogy that I like was made by a professor from Princeton University in Readers Digest in 1963 where he said, “The probability of life originating from an accident is comparable to the probability of an unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop. (Readers Digest, 1963, p. 92 citing “Evolution Vs. Science and the Bible,” Bob West Productions 1974)

     Our being here did not come from some impossible accident of matter turning into a living cell. You can whip up a puddle of primeval broth and you can stimulate the broth with a cattle prod thousands of times a day until the nice men in white coats come to take you away, but no living cell will come forth. What is even more convincing, as to life not being an accident, is the advent of DNA. DNA research proves that each species of animal has come from its own original DNA. Each species is distinctly different. Now that impossible accident necessary to create the first living cell has to occur over and over for every species of animal or insect. Science is not the enemy of the Bible, it is its greatest ally. Scientists who try to use science to disprove the existence of God are merely theorizing and manipulating in order to propagate the religion of atheistic evolution. Let’s face it, the idea that an explosion of matter, that came from only God knows where, formed a vast universe, and within that vast universe a planet is formed that was just the perfect distance from its sun, with just the right amount of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide, at just the right temperature, along with the water and atmosphere to sustain life, which happened to have a perfect primeval broth for a cell to form, which happened to have the right ingredients in the right place when some stimulus such as a lightning bolt struck and caused life to form, all be it, from a situation that would kill anything already living, and that one cell actually lived to somehow make another cell, and this same miracle happened again and again until all of the species were complete, well, that takes more blind faith than anything I have ever believed in; even the Browns going all the way.

     There’s another point that I like to make. It is one that makes perfect sense to me even if it does not mean much to anyone else. Love proves the existence of God. Where does love, compassion, righteousness, goodness, and so on fit into the whole accidental, evolutionary, atheistic scheme? If you and I work at the same place, and you and I are being considered for the same job, what is wrong with my bringing a gun to work and blowing you away? That is just survival of the fittest. Why would anyone care? If we are just the products of random chemical accidents, then murder should be no more appalling to us than using a chemical like bleach to destroy a stain in my t-shirt. If we are just animals, then I should not see the aforementioned situation any differently than seeing a male lion destroying another male lion in a territorial dispute. It amazes me when some kids go in and shoot up a school and the media is in such a quandary as to why. Our nation has taken prayer out of schools, our schools have taught our children that there is no God, and that we are chemical accidents evolved into animals. But when they act like animals, when they act as though there is no God, when they act like what they have been taught they are, it is touted as such a bewildering tragedy. What hypocrites the unbelievers are. As long as they can apply the “we are just accidental animals who are to look out for number one” theory to their own sinful desires, it is their gospel. But when some sinner carries this theory to its natural end, which they claim is beyond their belief system’s tolerance, it is time to lock them up and examine what caused this terrible tragedy. Without God there is no reason for unselfish restraint. God is love and love is a gift from God. The existence of love, compassion, sympathy, empathy, or any other spirit of concern or self sacrifice cannot be explained through evolution or any atheistic criteria.

     Let’s get real here. The only way you can not know that there is a God is if you are willingly ignorant. The Psalmist said:

     “The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals                      knowledge.  There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth,” (Psalms 19:1-4)

     Paul took that same principal and used it in his epistle to the Romans:

     “ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "The just shall live by faith." For the wrath of God is revealed from         heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:17-20)

     Notice what he says in verse 19, “…what may be known of God is manifest in them…” What that means is, God has been made known to them. That is the reason that he concludes in verse 20, “…they are without excuse.” Do you get what he is saying here? There are no atheists. They know. The heavens and the creation cry out God in a language with no barriers. They have seen it and they know it. I like to have people tell me they are atheists. I like to tell them “I don’t believe in atheists.” If you say that God does not exist, I have news for you. God says that you don’t exist. The label atheist is cloak for excuse worn by those who have buried the knowledge of God deep in their souls. They seek to bury Him in intellectual rhetoric in order to excuse their disobedience and to sooth their conscience, but they will be like the man caught at the wedding feast with no wedding garment. There will be no excuses when they meet the Lord because they are without an excuse.

     When Peter wrote his second epistle, he had to deal with those who were refusing to believe the second coming of Christ. Their reasoning was in the thought that everything is going on as it has from the beginning. It had been a few decades since Christ’s ascension and He had not come yet. Before Peter went on to remind them of how God had waited for years before He destroyed the world with a flood, or how one day is like a thousand years to God and a thousand years is like one day, he said this:

      “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:            Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: (2 Peter 3:5 KJV)

Peter reminded them of the flood. It was not that people did not know, it is that they purposely set the knowledge aside. They wanted to be ignorant. Their lack of belief in Peter’s day was not because the evidence was not clear. It was because they were willingly ignorant of what they knew to be true. Those who claim not to believe in the existence of God are willingly ignorant. It is popular with some to claim that they are agnostic rather than atheist. To be an agnostic means that you are not sure. You do not believe or totally disbelieve. You just don’t know. The word “agnostic” is from the Greek word “ ἀγνοέω ” (ag-no-eh'- o) meaning not to know or to ignore. The equivalent Latin word for not to know or to ignore is “ignorant”. Every one who says, “I am an agnostic” is saying, “I am ignorant," either by lack of knowledge, or by ignoring the facts.  

     Whatever someone may claim to be, it does not matter. The evidence is there. Somewhere within each person is the knowledge of God’s existence. His creation cries out from the heavens to the earth. His love transcends through all of the earth. 

 GOD IS!