Speech—Gabriel Molina

I don’t know if you know anything about acoustic guitars or not, but I am absolutely in love with them. Recently my dad was looking to get me a new one, and there is a really prevalent brand called Taylor Guitars. You hear them just about everywhere. Almost every studio album is recorded on these guitars. The reason is because they’re easy for the music companies to edit, and they’re very consistent; every one of them sounds the same. But they also have a very distinct sound. Everywhere I heard them I liked them so I told my dad that’s the kind of guitar I’d like. He said “Sure we could get you a Taylor. But lets listen to some other guitars first just so you make a good decision.” So we heard some other guitars together without any edits, and I could not believe how much I disliked the Taylors! Every other guitar I heard was five times better! My perspective of them was skewed by all the popular artists using them and all the edits I had heard them with.

There are factors all around us that skew the way that we see God. The media and the people around you as well as many of your own experiences. But despite the many misrepresentations and obstacles battling to affect our perspective of God, at the core and truth of who He is, God is a good and personal Father.

I gave my life to Christ when I was four years old, but I’ve grown up in the same broken world you have. I’ve experienced both living for myself and living for Christ. I’ve been to good churches and bad churches. I’ve seen good churches fall apart for various reasons. In Connecticut my family attended a church that became a corrupt mess because of conflict in the leadership that was dealt with in the wrong way. I’ve seen the hurt in the world. I’ve seen religious confusion and hypocrites and everything that comes with that. I’ve experienced religion versus relationship. And in the midst of all these experiences that most of us share, I’ve been shown and have experienced the real character and person of who God is. Who I tell you again is a good and personal and loving Father.

We all want hope here. We all want grace. We all desire personal relationships. We all want to live a rich and satisfying life. No matter where we each come from I don’t think a single one of us wants to live a boring or discouraged or painful or dissatisfying existence. I want to show you that we don’t have to.

I’m not here to force you to follow Jesus. But like my dad helped me see clearly and make the right decision when looking for a guitar, I want to help you see who God really is. And you can make your decision from there. I’m going to address just a couple of the obstacles or barriers that tend to skew the way we see God. One of them being disbelief in His existence, another being the misrepresentations of the character of God that surround us. Lastly, I want to show you in just a few ways His real character.

Do you remember our discussion of credulity last week? Mindlessly believing things without finding out the truth for yourself? Lots of us have mindlessly believed that science has debunked the existence of God, when in fact nothing of the sort has happened. Look at your hand. See the detail and complexity and intricacy of it. Think about the absolutely unique design of your fingerprints; and how you think to move your fingers and they do as they’re told; and how your blood pumps to your hand, replenishes oxygen levels, and immediately rushes back to your heart again. Now think about the nature around you. Think about the beautiful colors of fall and how they never fail to show up at the same time every year. If you’ve seen a sunrise from a mountain at Red River Gorge you’ve seen the kind of beauty that an artist can’t nearly capture. And think about the interdependence of it: how everything in nature works together. I believe that it’s much more of a stretch to believe that all of this came into being by some cosmic accident, than to believe that there was actual thought and design put into it. That’s where we see the credulity again. We’ve been told that life has come from non-living objects completely by chance and we believe it when in fact, as scientist and biochemist Dr. Dennis Bogdan admits, the steps of this non-living-to-living process actually remain unknown.

If anyone has a watch on, look at it. Inside of that small disc are tons of tiny little gears that are crafted and designed to work perfectly. The design of a watch is so elaborate and complicated that there is no doubt there was a creator. In the same way the human body is just one of many testaments to the design of God. Think about the way that each part of your body works together in complexity and perfect harmony. Think about the creativity of the nervous system, for example. Touch your desk and electrical signals fire from your fingertips to your brain allowing you to feel the textures of it. It undoubtedly shows the mark of a Maker.

And finally the biggest proof of the existence of God is the real transformation of real people. There are dozen of stories I could tell about how God intersected people’s lives and everything about them did a complete 180, but for now I just want to share this one. It’s the story of a man named Moise Djigbenou, who grew up in a Christian home in the Ivory Coast. He came to the U.S. for college, was receiving plenty of money from his parents, had plenty of friends, and began to feel like he didn't need God. So he stopped doing everything he was raised to do and started doing what felt better to him. Eventually a war started in his home country and he lost contact with all his family, leading him to assume they were all dead. His parents couldn't send him money anymore and he felt like he had suddenly lost everything. He didn’t even want to turn back to God because he thought that He was mad at him. But he went back to church and started going every weekend again. At one service, the pastor told everyone to write down a list of their worries. He didn’t want anyone to see so he wrote his in french. However, the pastor began to address every single thing he wrote down in order. There was no way for the pastor to know, it was just God using that person to speak to Moise. At the end of the service there was an opportunity to receive Jesus and after feeling a continuous tapping on his chest, with no one nearby, he decided to accept the invitation and follow Jesus. Now he’s living fully in the blessing of God and he really is satisfied. I personally know this man and his story is absolutely real. And this is just one of millions of people who have experienced an intersection with God firsthand.

There’s all this clear evidence of the existence of God, and I haven’t even mentioned the full-blown miracles of healing I’ve seen with my own eyes and even been a part of. The existence of a God is honestly very hard to deny when you look at the evidence.

With that being said, with it being so obvious, why do so many of us reject Him? Which brings me to my second point: when most of us reject God, what we are actually rejecting is the embarrassing Christian “culture” that is paraded around us. This is a huge factor in the misinterpreted ways we tend to see God. I was thinking about it just recently, who really wants to be part of that group? The “got Jesus?” t-shirts and all that stuff. And when Paul said “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength,” I don’t think he was talking about doing five more pull-ups. But the misrepresentations of God that we see in people have no reason to determine how we perceive who He actually is. Music is a good parallel of this. You’d more than likely agree that music is a good thing. I’m sure you've got a favorite band or at least listen to some kind of music on a regular basis. And yet “artists” like Nickelback still exist. But that’s no argument that music is bad right? In the same way domestic violence is no argument against marriage and poorly made movies are no argument against television. Yes, there are embarrassing religious people out there. And yes there are Christians who say one set of things and live another. And yes there are churches in the world whose goals are not entirely pure. But none of these things, not a single one, is an argument against the goodness of God. People aren't perfect, Christians included. We cannot base our picture of a perfect God entirely off of flawed people. If you make the effort to separate the carnival of Christian culture around you from Christianity itself, you’ll be able to see a much clearer picture of Jesus and of the Father.

So I’ve dispelled a few oppositions to how we see God. Both the argument about His existence, and the fact that our view of God has been influenced by cultures that have misrepresented Him. Now finally, what is His actual character? Exactly what I opened with. There is an almost uncountable number of words to describe who God is, but I believe that above anything else, God is a good and personal Father.

The most common and maybe even the most compelling argument against God being good and loving, is the problem of pain and evil in the world. ISIS taking lives, school shootings, bullying to the point of suicide. No one can deny that evil exists. But author John Eldredge reminds us of this: “In order for love to be real, you have to allow people to exercise their own free will. Love is meaningless if it is not freely chosen.” When creating us, God chose to give us free will. The ability to make our own decisions. Otherwise He would be creating robots, not children. But by doing this, by allowing us to exercise free will, He allowed for the possibility of evil. He didn’t create it, but it became possible when He gave us the freedom to choose. The evil that we so lament in the world results from our choosing of it. So God isn’t the one who created evil, we are the ones who chose it. But the very act of giving us free will is an expression of God’s love!

Now another clear indication that God is good references back to nature as we talked about earlier. An evil God would not create the beauty that covers the earth. Sunrises and sunsets, the mountains, the oceans, forests, canyons, crystals, clouds, and all the beauty found in nature reflects the character of a good God. One who is loving; who is beautiful.

God has proved Himself to be a loving and personal Father countless times and in countless ways. But He proved His love to me specifically at the beginning of 2012. I used to live a deeply dissatisfying life. I was utterly broken. I didn’t know who I was, I believed countless lies about my place in my family, with my friends, basically every area of my life. I was lost. I spent all of myself chasing things like girls, grades, sports, whatever, all trying to find the validation I so desperately needed. Things looked okay from the outside, but on the inside I knew I was living a broken, bored, purposeless and unfulfilling existence you could hardly call a life. But in the midst of all this, in the middle of the direction I was going and when I was completely focused on myself, God came to me. When I was nowhere near searching for Him, He pursued me. He reminded me of His relentless and unconditional love for me, and of who He says I am. He never gave up on me. He chased after me even when I screwed up again and again and again. That is the proof of God’s love. That I can reject Him time after time and He will still chase after me.

The proof of God’s love became real to me at the beginning of 2012. And He wants you to know of His love as well. He wants to meet you in your brokenness. In the places where you think He would never receive you, maybe because of something you've done, my story is evidence that He will.

To recap, there is absolutely clear evidence that there is a God. Any time you forget, just look at your hand. Be reminded of the intricacy of creation, as well as the stories of real transformation in people’s lives. God created the Church to represent Him knowing that we wouldn’t do it perfectly. But we can’t allow that to change the way we see God Himself. And lastly, it is undeniable that God is loving, good, and personal because of His gift to you of free will, the beauty of what He created, and because He never stops pursuing us. He truly cares about us and every detail of our lives.

Don’t give up on your questions and your search for the truth of who God really is. Matthew 5:6 says “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” And in Luke 11:9 Jesus says “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” So if you want to know the character of God, seek Him for yourself. You’ll find Him.

Works Cited

Bogdan, Dennis, ed. "Abiogenesis." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2014.

Eldredge, Sam, and John Eldredge. Killing Lions: A Guide Through the Trials Young Men Face. Nashville: Nelson, 2014. Print.

Quest Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011. Print.

A Story of Pursuit. Prod. Jon Tsang. Moise Djigbenou's Story. Quest Community Church, 7 Mar. 2013. Web. 16 June 2014.