Ross, 40+ years ago I was asking questions about God & the bible similar to those you are asking today. I want to explain how I did find the truth that I was so desperately seeking and how today I still have the same lasting peace that I found back then.
I grew up attending a Baptist church where every Sunday I heard about sin, God, and Jesus dying on the cross, and heard that if I wanted to be “saved” and go to heaven that I had to repent and believe in Jesus. Sometimes in church I would hear Christians tell how God reached down from heaven and gloriously save them. Well, of course I wanted to go the heaven; not hell, so as a teenager I went to the altar and said the sinners' prayer “in Jesus' name'” and got saved.
Later, as a young adult I would think to myself “how do I know I was saved?” I had heard other Christians tell how they knew for certain that they were saved, but I really did not have any kind of definite assurance that God had gloriously saved me. Also, sometimes the preacher would lead people in the sinners' prayer where he would add the words “and I promise to follow Jesus the rest of my life,” and sometimes he would add “I repent of all my sins,” or “I commit my life to Christ,” and then he would finish by saying “now if you said that prayer or something like it, and if you really meant business with God, then you're saved.” I would think to myself “when I was saved did I really repent of all my sins, or did I really commit my life to Christ,” or “did really mean business with God?” Over a period of several years of questioning myself as to whether or not I had said the right things or had really believed, or really had the right kind of “saving” faith at the moment I was “saved” I began to doubt that I was saved.
Those doubts led me to ask a lot of questions about how Jesus saved anyone. I talked to 3 different pastors who served in our church, I talked to my Sunday school teacher, I found & read several books about salvation written by well known Christian authors, and I listened to some radio preachers, and read bible tracts. I was searching for answers about God & about the bible, I was looking for something that would convince me that it was all true. I wanted evidence that would show me that God was real and that when Jesus saves someone they would know it, because the preacher did say that when we get saved we would know that we are saved. But all I found was the same message I had already heard in church, and I did not know that I was saved. I did not understand how just saying a prayer “in Jesus's name” saved anyone. I thought that something was missing; that there was a missing link, and that I was not ever going to find whatever it was.
Over a period of several years I seriously began to think that God was not real, and that the bible was not true. I could not find the evidence, that missing link that would convince me that all the things I had heard about God & Jesus were true, my life was miserable and I did not know what to do.
One night I went to bed hoping to get some sleep and as I lay there looking up at the ceiling in my bedroom I just gave up on trying to figure it all out. For some reason, out of a sense of helpless desperation, I said a prayer to the God I wasn't sure even existed. I said “God, will you show me the truth about you and about believing in Jesus?” I went to sleep and slept better that night than I had slept in a long time.
The next day I had 2 college classes in the morning and that afternoon/night I worked on a research paper until about 9 pm and then for some reason I thought about the large family bible sitting on a table that we never opened. I put up the research paper and got that bible, wiped off the dust, and opened it to the Gospel of John. I remembered someone saying that if anyone wanted to find out about Jesus that he/she should read the Gospel of John so I started to read John 1:1.
I had read some of the Gospel of John as a child in church, we never read in the bible at home, and back then I really didn't pay attention to it, but that night sitting at my kitchen table, as I read in the Gospel of John I realized that for the first time in my life I was understanding scripture. As I read John chapter 1 something was explaining it to me. I saw that Jesus was God who became a man so that He could suffer and die on the cross to pay the penalty for my sin. By the time I read through the first 6 chapters of the gospel of John I had found that missing link that I thought I would never find. I found the “evidence” that completely convinced me that the bible is true, that God is real, and that Jesus will do exactly what He said He will do.
When I began to read in the Gospel of John I did not know what I would find there, but I was willing to accept whatever it was if it convinced me that it is the truth. Well, it is kind of difficult to explain to someone who has not found it for himself. I doubt that anyone could have explained it to me back then since I had spend years talking to other Christians, reading books, etc. and never found my answer. Some Christians talk about their “experience” and I guess it could be called an experience, but to me it was more like a light being turned on for me and “I got it.” I found the answer I thought I would never find. You have probably heard the verse “I once was blind, but now I see” in the song Amazing Grace. Well, that's it. I was blinded to the truth of the bible and suddenly I could see it. I hope you want me to tell what it is that I could see because here it is.
God does not care about what I could do or what I did do when I was trying to get him to save me. All the prayers I said did not save me. None of the promises I made did not save me. My trip down to the altar at church did not save me. I saw that there was absolutely nothing that I could do be saved because Jesus had already done all that God required for me to be forgiven when He, Jesus God the Son, was nailed to the cross, and suffered & shed His blood there as He died in my place to pay the penalty for my sin. A penalty that I could not pay. When Jesus said “It is finished” He was saying that my sin debt to God was already paid. Paid “in full.” All God wanted me to do was to see that Jesus did that for “me” and for me to stop trying to do whatever I thought I needed to do to get Him to save me, but to simply rest in His finished work on the cross. That I did and I immediately found myself saying a prayer. A prayer where I did not have to beg Him to save me, but a prayer where I was thanking Him for dying on the cross to forgive my sins and where I asked Him to give me His new life. That He did, and an enormous sense of relief flooded my troubled soul. I became a believer that night, and I did not have to try to make myself believe. I did not have to try to work up a sense of strong faith as I had done in the past. No, Ross, I found that missing link. The link that provided evidence that was so real that it made a believer out of me, and all I did was obey a scripture that at the time I knew nothing about. This scripture, Jeremiah 29:13, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” says that if you earnestly search after God you will find Him.
Finally, the missing link is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gave me the light I needed to see the truth I was so desperately seeking. The verse below describe me before I gave up on myself and turned to God for my answers.
1 Corinthians 2:14, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
After I did give up on “self” and did turn to God, the Holy Spirit began His work in me and allowed me to see the truth about God's way of redeeming us back to Him. He actually “turned on the light” for me and “I got it.” He brought me out of spiritual darkness into the light of the truth of the Bible.
Ross, you will not find the truth without the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, the Bible. If you will seek God as described in Jeremiah 29:13 He, God, will do for you the same thing He did for me and has done for every person who became a believer in the Gospel message.
Sorry this post is so long. I hope you read all of it.
Don
