These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:31
God does not lean out of heaven with a clenched fist shouting “Believe! Believe!” God reveals Himself and then invites us to examine the evidence.
You see this most clearly in the Gospels. When Jesus came into the world, He did not say to Peter, James, and John, “I am the Son of God, and you’d better believe it.” No, He called them to follow Him, and as they did, He made Himself known to them.
One day, when they were in the boat with Him, Jesus spoke to the wind and stilled a storm, and they said, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matt. 8:27). As they heard what He said and saw what He did, they were compelled by the evidence to this conclusion. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16).
Was that the end of the matter? No! Like ours, the faith of the first disciples was mixed up with many doubts and many blunders, but through it all, faith believes what Christ has revealed and trusts what Christ has promised.
Maybe you say, “I don’t trust. I can’t trust.” But why don’t you trust? Your distrust is based on evidence. What you have seen is that people let you down. Your distrust is based on the compelling evidence of your own experience.
Faith is based, not on your experience, but on Scripture. God invites you to come out of your broken world of disappointment and to look into His very different world. He invites you to look away from your own experience and to find hope in what He has said and what He has done.
What evidence in the Bible (things that God has said and done) has been most compelling to you?
