Is Jesus Really Real? (How I Know)

At 3 am, through my windows a ghostly orange mooned the white mountains, glowing the waters toward morning. A pod of fin whales breathed out orange mist. The world was being born again, every creature waking. I could have worshipped such beauty, sworn my life to such wonder. Instead, I whispered, Jesus.

But sometimes I doubt. I know so many reasons God can’t exist. 

*How can God be good when his people seem so bad? (Christians hurt people. We are unkind, we are judgmental. We are often blind. We have become a political power rather than a spiritual force. [Forgive us, Lord!])

*If God promises peace and deliverance, why are only some people delivered and not others?

*How do we understand 500,000 covid deaths in our country alone? How can God be loving and good when such pain presides over our everyday lives?

*Why should we would give up our moral freedoms for some invisible God who will make unreasonable demands?

 There are always good reasons not to believe. And yet God keeps showing up. Like he did that day the fish exploded in the fishermen’s nets and he said, ‘GIve it up. Come with me and fish for men instead.”

Incredibly, they did.

Jesus is still showing up. Nearly every day, if you are looking. For me, he showed up in a storm when I thought I might die. He showed up in Guatemala when a gun was pointed at me and my son . Last week He gave me the courage to confront injustice. Last night he gave me strength to teach a class when I had no strength. I heard him as I read the gospels this morning. He doesn’t let me give up loving someone who is terribly hard to love. He has taken one tiny aimless life and filled it with purpose and joy.

And for you? Maybe you will have a dream. Words from the Scriptures may jump alive. Maybe there’s a friend who won’t stop caring about you, a last-minute provision, the disappearance of the cancer cells, the fall down the cliff that didn’t kill you, the forgiveness you didn’t deserve from your son---all of them some form of miraculous sighting. All of them some sort of glimpse of the crazy inexplicable abundance and love of Jesus. Because it comes to you when you least expect it. It comes to you when you least deserve it. It comes in spite of your doubts.

We can revel in the fish, in the dream, in our new health, in the love of a friend, a son, but none of that will be enough for long. None of that will sustain for long. We have to know--who did this? Who has this kind of mastery over disease? What is the source of this wisdom? Where does this love come from? We have to know, because somehow we know that here, here, is life itself, the life we have longed for but could not even name.

Listen, those with ears to hear. A call comes to every man and woman and child. We have all been called. We must follow to find out who it is that calls us, and what we have been called to. Those men that day did not yet know either one: what they would be doing or even who it was who had called them.  They didn’t even know who Jesus was for sure. But they knew the poverty of their old lives. They saw the miraculous catch of fish. They knew the power of the Scriptures and its promises.

They would go, then. They would follow. They would find out.

Come, follow me. Do not be afraid.

This is Jesus’ call to you too. Are you ready? It’s going to be the wildest adventure you can imagine.

  Do not be afraid.

Friends, would you share your life for a moment? Give me one reason you know Jesus is real.

And if you're not sure, tell me one reason you doubt.