What makes Christianity convincing for you personally?

[ChristopherHays]

I went to church 3 times a week for the first 22 years of my life. Now at 23, I consider myself an atheist. However, I like to think I’m still open minded. I’d like to know what makes Christianity convincing to you?

 

[Not David]

A lot of things but mainly the influence it had in the world when the first Christians had nothing to win by being Christians.

History and theology can count too.

 

[WESTOZZIE]

Jesus alive in my heart.

Rom 8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father."
Rom 8:16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

God Himself bears witness in my heart that I am His son.....Through all my valleys He is there..inside my heart telling me I am His, He is with me.

If you have Jesus in your heart dear friend....He is witnessing to your heart the same things. But it's when we acknowledge OUT LOUD that "Jesus is living in me" that things become real.
It's easy to speak according to unbelief and say God is not with me, God is not real, God is far away from me, God does not care about me....it's easy to say those things and wallow about in self pity...I know.
But even if we do that, He is still with us and in us--if we received Jesus.
Going through college and university and having our intellectual ideas about God and Bible stuff can cause us to throw everything away...that's not such a bad thing...For we are not saved by believing all the stuff in the Bible...all the correct doctrine I mean....we are saved by having Jesus in our heart. That's all.
Receive Jesus and the rest will take care of itself.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

I went to church 3 times a week for the first 22 years of my life. Now at 23, I consider myself an atheist. However, I like to think I’m still open minded. I’d like to know what makes Christianity convincing to you?

Check out my Blogger article here for many evidences that show that God's Word is divine in origin:

Love Branch: Evidences for the Word of God

Side Note:

Long before I knew of these evidences, the Lord Jesus Christ changed my life when I believed His Word and I sought forgiveness of my sins with Him (via a Bible tract). Oh, and I was an atheist for a time, too; But it was before I accepted Christ as my Savior, though.

 

[ChristopherHays]

@David Cabrera I agree with you completely. Something fascinating happened in first century Palestine. The common rebuttal to this point would be that the Morman church grew at a faster rate than Christianity after the death of their respective founders (Joseph Smith & Jesus) Islam has also risen very quickly since the time of Muhammad, and has the largest following according to a recent census. There’s obviously allot of variables and I take those numbers with a grain of salt, but would you agree that it’s possible for false prophets (such as Muhammad, Joseph Smith etc.) to spark equally successful religions?

 

[Bible Highlighter]

I updated my post #4.
You may find it interesting.
Just refresh the page.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

 

[Jonaitis]

I went to church 3 times a week for the first 22 years of my life. Now at 23, I consider myself an atheist. However, I like to think I’m still open minded. I’d like to know what makes Christianity convincing to you?

God's Spirit is the short answer.

One reason for what convinces me of the Christian faith is the worldview that it holds. Buddhism and Islam, to give an example, appear very attractive on the surface, and their principles look attractive, but they don't make sense when it comes to their worldview. I am not just talking about "logic," but consistency. The morals are consistent for an example, they don't play down or minimize anything, they speak for what a thing really is. It shows me what sort of person I really am and what I need inside, as if it knew me personally. It is the only religion that has the most sobering worldview.

Islam teaches that we must earn God's favor with our good deeds, as if we can outweigh the bad things we have done in our life with the good, but that doesn't make sense if God is absolutely just? How does he simply forgives our sins without diminishing his justice? In their worldview, he apparently can sweep our sins under the rug of the universe if we do him some favors.

Buddhism teaches that we are not to think of ourselves as good or bad, because evil isn't a characteristic, it is simply something we create. Foolery. They deny that there is a personal being, but that contradicts our existence. This world is clearly intelligently designed by someone greater than ourselves in every way, you have to force yourself to struggle becoming an atheist.

 

[derpytia]

I went to church 3 times a week for the first 22 years of my life. Now at 23, I consider myself an atheist. However, I like to think I’m still open minded. I’d like to know what makes Christianity convincing to you?

I will be completely honest with you, there's little that makes Christianity "convincing" to me (as far as that definition of the the word goes). I doubt a lot and there are some questions that I will never get answers for in this life.

But if I had to pick one thing, it would be the early Church. They had no Bible. They had no money. They were not really materially benefiting from being Christian. A lot of them were killed, tortured, and imprisoned for what they believed. Yet Christianity took the world by storm in those early years anyway. If I look at it from a purely historical and logical point of view, that sort of behavior is insane. Yet you can't label all of those people insane or you would only be saying that the world had some sort of mental health crisis at the time.

We as human beings makes many choices every day, every week, every month, and every year. Being Christian is a choice. You can choose to take up the faith or you can choose not to. If you're anything like me, you won't have some "wow" moment, Jesus coming to you in your dreams, or signs from God that you are doing the right thing in choosing to be or not to be Christian.

(I will say that if you are someone who doesn't explore what Christianity is with an open mind and/or doesn't take your time to look in more than one place/source for answers to any questions you have then nothing anyone living or dead will say to you will get you to suddenly become Christian. No one becomes Christian unless they make that choice for themselves.)

 

[ChristopherHays]

Jesus alive in my heart.

I appreciate the response! Ive always thought the personal experiences and transformations people credit to conversion are most interesting evidence for Christianity. I think I may be at a disadvantage though because I first prayed for salvation at a very young age. I don’t think I had much weighing me down that I could've felt liberated from. I’ve since prayed for salvation many times with great sincerity and I’ve never felt any different. I never felt the comfort, guidance, or assurance of the Holy Spirit. I’ve been told many times that I must have been insincere, but I feel strongly that I was.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

For me, it was a transformation. When I accepted Jesus as my Savior, by hearing the verses from the Bible in a comic tract, it was like light went on inside of me, and I had a peace, and a love that I had never known before. I was so changed that I threw out my comics, and worldly things, etc. This would have been impossible for me on my own to do something like that. It was all the Lord who was making a change in my life.

The evidences for His Word came way later, and it only helped to reinforce my faith.

 

[ChristopherHays]

@derpytia I think my reply to David C would apply here too. There are other religions that have grown in a similar way. There are also many examples of people dying for false beliefs. The Heavens Gate cult comes to mind here. Many people committed suicide believing an alien space ship would preserve their minds in robots.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

When I was in my atheist phase as a teenager (before I accepted Christ), GOD softened my heart with love to get me back to the belief that GOD exists. GOD kept bringing Christian women into my life that I had a crush on. Two women back to back stood out as being different than other women. They had an inner beauty that other women did not have. This helped to soften my heart to love. With the existence of love, this made sense that GOD existed then, because in an atheistic universe there is no true sense of love. In an atheistic universe, there is no true morality, either. Morals are subjective to the person or culture. There is no absolute right or wrong in an atheistic universe.

Anyways, after praying for several decades, GOD finally answered my prayer in finding a soulmate halfway around the world. But I first needed to fall in love with the Lord Jesus Christ first and seek to follow Him before she came into my life. GOD is good if you are faithful to Him. He will not bring great material riches in this life for you, but He will bring those good things that are simple and good so as to love Him, and others.

 

[Bible Highlighter]

Deep down we want to be loved.
GOD can ultimately provide that love for you.
Others can betray you, but GOD will never leave you, if you are faithful to Him.

 

[ChristopherHays]

@Bible Highlighter I appreciate the response! And thank you for the link as well, I’ll be sure to check it out
As I mentioned to westoozie, I’ve always been fascinated by personal experiences and transformations associated with conversion. I prayed for salvation many times wishing to have a similar experience. Unfortunately I never had such a moment myself and that was very disheartening for me.

 

[Jeshu]

We all know that truth is eternally true and lies are never true but bring misery alive in truth. So if my faith in God's truth brings me liberation from the lies that used to hold me captive and brought misery into my being, then i know that His truth is truly true as He says it is.

So a new, free loving life with my Creator is what convinced me of the validity of His truth. The fact the God suffers evil just like i do also convinced me that He is true God and not a bogus one. Nothing makes more sense than the story that the lie got into the truth of my existence and destroyed me from within, and without, but that faith in God's truth rescued me from the lies that ruled me down here and set me free to love truthfully.

To see the truths of Scripture come alive inside of my inner dwelling place was the ultimate truth i needed to see to convince me the God of the bible is true God. His inner peace is beyond explaining.

Peace

 

[Bible Highlighter]

@Bible Highlighter I appreciate the response! And thank you for the link as well, I’ll be sure to check it out
As I mentioned to westoozie, I’ve always been fascinated by personal experiences and transformations associated with conversion. I prayed for salvation many times wishing to have a similar experience. Unfortunately I never had such a moment myself and that was very disheartening for me.

At the bottom of the page of the link I provided, there are comic tracts that I recommend for a person to check out. It was one of those tracts that I had read (i.e. This Was Your Life) that the Lord used to help me to seek forgiveness of my sins with Him. In short, we have to play ball on God's terms, meaning we have to come to the Lord via His Word (the Bible). We have to be born again by the Spirit, and be born again by water (Which is the Scriptures).

 

[derpytia]

@derpytia I think my reply to David C would apply here too. There are other religions that have grown in a similar way. There are also many examples of people dying for false beliefs. The Heavens Gate cult comes to mind here. Many people committed suicide believing an alien space ship would preserve their minds in robots.

Similar way but definitely not the same. With Christianity came huge social change. Welfare and community-based caring for the most vulnerable, outcast, and downtrodden in the society of the time was encouraged and normalized by Christians which was "insane" in the society of the time where, if you were poor, outcast, or had done something bad in your life, you were basically on your own and rejected at pretty much every level of society.

People believing in aliens and committing suicide for cultist things doesn't do much for social change or addressing basic human needs in the same way. Christianity does not ask its believers to kill themselves or to die. You could argue that Christianity demands its followers die instead of denouncing their beliefs but that is not the same as telling people or encouraging believers to die.

So yeah, you have a point with other religions' growth being similar but definitely not the same.

 

[ChristopherHays]

@derpytia I think my reply to David C would apply here too. There are other religions that have grown in a similar way. There are also many examples of people dying for false beliefs. The Heavens Gate cult comes to mind here. Many people committed suicide believing an alien space ship would preserve their minds in robots.

 

[Dropout_Theologian]

The joy and the pain that it brought me are testimony to me -- finally starting to feel with Jesus. I'm still a huge narcissist, but God made me start to care for others.