Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. -Hebrews 11:1 (NKJV)

Look back at your own experience and you will find that until you learned who Jesus really was, you were a skillful skeptic about His power. -Oswald Chambers

How can anyone believe in God, in a world full of evil? If God were real, we’d only have fluffy bunnies and goodness and light everywhere, right?

There are disasters, crimes, and atrocities people can rattle of as evidence of His nonexistence. Some just had traumatic experiences with poor witnesses of His servants. Some just can’t surrender to a God whose actions and world don’t fit their worldview.

Like many around me, I was the perfect skeptic. My doubt in a God who didn’t act like my idea of a good person meant He wasn’t real. What I could see or touch was real.

Until God decided it was time I woke up. And once I was unplugged from the Matrix, there was no going back. I now had sight beyond sight: I had faith.

We believers walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7). How else can we believe in someone we’ve never met, yet died for us and forever changed our hearts and lives once we received Him?

And when we live like this, we feel Him in our lives. We see Him permeate all things in this world. We finally get it because we have a spiritual awareness the godless don’t.

Once Jesus touches our hard hearts and spiritually fills us, we go from expert skeptics to passionate believers… and He becomes our stairway to heaven. Thank you, Lord!

Today’s soundtrack

TobyMac’s “Feel It” tells it like it is: you only know God through the evidence of feeling Him.

Love this song? Get it on Amazon Music »

May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever. -Romans 11:10 (NIV)

Some of the nicest people I know are Jesus-proof. Some of the people closest to me, and some of the best friends I have, don’t believe in Jesus. No amount of witnessing, conversation, or debate will alter their sureness that Jesus was nothing more than either a real person who was just mortal, or that He never existed at all.

Some self-professed Christians may even live in ways that don’t show God through them at all. They may chase worldly pursuits and interests just like unbelievers. And though they proclaim His lordship over their lives, their lives don’t really show it.

If you truly believe and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, the fruit of it will show in your life. And if you have not, a very different result will come forth from you. It may even physically affect you in the way of ailments. Remember how Jesus blinded Saul on the road to Damascus?

In the Book of Romans at the top of this post, Paul is talking about the unbelieving Israelites who refused to accept Jesus as their prophesied Savior. For those who refused to believe, even with Jesus in their midst, they would suffer not just in this world, but for eternity.

The above verse Paul wrote refers to one of the psalms of David (Psalms 69:23), where David asks God to punish wrongdoers.

So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. -2 Timothy 1:8 (NIV)

True believers–those whose lives reek of Jesus to the outside world–walk in testimony to His reality, and His power, His strength, and His grace. We overcome the impossible. We outlast situations and seasons deemed impassable by the world. We love when the world tells us to quit loving. We do it all for Him, to His glory.

And I can testify that, as a former Jesus-proof, Teflon-coated unbeliever, that He can and will change your life…and that exposure to true believers can start that spark. But you have to acknowledge that the way you’ve been going isn’t working out…that there must be a better way. Jesus is that way.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. -2 Corinthians 4:3-4 (NIV)

I was too smart for God. It’s easy to have that mindset.

You didn’t have to grow up in a godless household like I did to not believe in God. You can simply listen to most people around you at work, in public, in the media, and maybe even in your own family and friends to know better than believe in God.

You could have even grown up in a Christian household, then later walked away from Jesus after being around enough nonbelievers.

Maybe life has just been too much…a seemingly endless chain of painful circumstances and grief. How could God exist and allow such things to happen if He’s omnipotent and loving?

Some common reasons nonbelievers argue why He doesn’t exist:

• If He were real, He would be kind in the way I would imagine a kind human to be.
• We can’t measure Him to prove He exists.
• There would be no suffering or evil in the world.
• He would only give us good things and circumstances and everything we want.

I was like so many around me…too smart for God. Too smart to believe in a being I could not touch.

But that’s because I could never see past my own senses…the carnal shackles that bind so many around us. Unbelievers are still sleepwalking in a bad dream, like living in the Matrix. Because that is their reality, they can’t see past it. It’s the very limit of their consciousness and sanity. So, to them, we are the ones who need a perspective adjustment!

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. -Romans 10:9 (NIV)

For me, and for many other citizens of this world, life was just too bleak and pointless. We knew there was something else we couldn’t put our finger on. So why not try the sinner’s prayer? I did in the summer of 2013, and everything changed.

It was not that I was too smart for God at all. I was in a dark cave, thinking the shadows were more than they were. But now, out in the light, Jesus charges us with awakening more sleepwalkers in His name. In our words and deeds, let us show the world how walking by faith and not by sight may never make sense to them, until they taste and see what it really means to wake up!