This year is my twelfth year living as a Christian (since I got baptized). I was born in a Christian family, inherited my parents’ religion. Yet, to be honest, I did not want to blindly follow my parents’ belief as I grew up. In my youth life, I often struggled with a lot of questions about God, which many of them are still mysterious to me now. Many times I tried to understand the Creator with this tiny brain. I eagerly wanted to know who God truly is, to whom I worship. I used to think that when people asked me about my belief and what my life foundation is, I should be able to give the reasons and to explain my conviction. I have the responsibility toward my faith. Sometimes I thought that I deserved to know God and I felt smart enough to formulate the truth about God, until I realized that what I eventually got was only a frustration.
Well, I believe that everyone has his/her own spiritual experience as well as the right to share it widely. For me, Christianity is not about religion. I am rather allergic toward ‘religion’ things, as many people might also feel, because the history has shown that ‘religion’ has been provoking division and war everywhere instead of creating peace and harmony in this world. I believe that Christianity is about a lifestyle, that imitates Jesus as the real and relevant model, and pursues an intimate relationship with Him – it is a journey to become like Jesus, to have the characters of Christ.
Thanks to Jesus Almighty God for giving me His grace amid my busy working days so that I can write down a little of my life experiences as a Christ’s follower here.
Dear friends, here is my testimony about “Seven Reasons to Believe In Jesus”.
1. He is the only One who came to the earth and took an initiative to make a relationship with people.
Human can’t reach God by his own strength or understanding regardless of how hard their efforts are. It is God who first took an initiative to lovingly reach the people. Jesus is the perfect manifestation of God, in the form of man, who was miraculously born in the world He created, to make a connection between earth and heaven, to build a bridge between people and God. Because Jesus so loves people, he came to us that we may have an intimate relationship with God.
Initiative is the first important step in building a relationship. If you are really interested (or falling in love) with someone, you can’t wait to start the conversation. You can’t keep yourself from giving a sincere help for their needs. Your initiative will show your care and love, inside out. Many people are afraid to show their love because they are afraid of rejection. However, when you take the first step to offer a kind and sincere deed, you are overcoming your fear, because perfect love casts out the fear.
2. He is the only One who died, rose again, and ascended to heaven.
The human history has proved these facts. Do you realize that every year the world celebrates Good Friday and Easter (on March – April), as well as Ascension Day (on May)? For me, this has explicitly shown the world’s recognition of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. Moreover, his death and resurrection have pointed out his ultimate authority over death and life, while his ascension has indicated his sovereignty on earth and in heaven.
Death is the ultimate fear of every human. It is the end of every living creatures’ existence on earth. Nobody feels good about ‘extinction’. But, as believers we don’t need to be afraid of death because Jesus has conquered the grave! He has won the victory over death. Even more, he has provided eternal home for us in the glorious heaven. It is our final destination where we can be with God forever in the happy-ever-after life. In Jesus, who has been ordained as the authority of this universe, we have assurance in the eternity.
3. He is the only One who emptied himself, to be a servant of all.
Jesus is the incarnation of God, being in the very nature of God, yet he did not consider equality with God something to be used for his own advantage. He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. He came to this world not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for us.
In our recent days, we can find so many tribulations everywhere, mostly caused by the corrupted leadership. There are so many world leaders who failed their people such that we could see rebellions as the consequences. The broken leaderships have failed to meet the people’s needs as they just seek their own interests. However, Jesus’ life has been a great inspiration for successful modern leadership. The key of Jesus’ leadership is to empty himself, not to seek His own benefits, and becoming a servant of all. People can put their trust, hope, and confidence in this kind of leadership.
4. He is the only One who dedicated all his life to live for God.
Jesus had a clear mission during his life on earth: live for God. He lived to do God’s will and to accomplish His work. He dedicated his life and totally surrendered his will to God. Seeking God’s pleasure is his purpose in life. His earthly life, though relatively short (33-36 years), has been a tremendous impact to people all over the world, more than anyone in the history who had lived longer.
God is not merely an object to study. More than that, God is ‘something’ to experience. We can make a lot of theories about God, but it would be vain unless we experienced Him personally. To experience God, we need to wholeheartedly surrender our lives under His control. We need to confess His authority in our lives while denying ourselves every day. Sometimes we don’t need to hear what other people say because we are not living to seek human’s approval. God, as the Creator, knows about us more than any people do, and even more than we ourselves do. Dedicating life to God is the best way to have a significant, fruitful life. Living for God is an honor. It gives us confidence that life is not purposeless; there is a reason to appreciate life and to live it meaningfully.
5. He is the only One who sent us to be the witness, to tell the world about His story.
Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he commanded his disciples to go to all nations, spreading good news about the truth and salvation of God. He wants the whole world to know his name, because God’s will is for all people to be saved.
If one of our friends or family is suffering from a severe illness while at that moment we find a good medicine that would bring healing, are we going to let them know about it? Or would we just hide it and let them suffer even more? If we know that Jesus is all that this ‘dying’ world need, we can’t keep him for our self-salvation. We should share the truth to the world so that people may find the healing they desperately need. This is why I believe that evangelism is relevant and the gospel sharing, either verbally or non-verbally, always makes sense. Witnessing the story of Jesus means loving people actively. It is a privilege to be God’s partner in this world, to testify His good news.
6. He is the only One who claimed God as the Father.
In “The Lord’s Prayer”, a prayer that Jesus taught to his disciples, he called God as Father. It is said, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” There is no other religions or belief systems in this world that describes the relationship between God and human as such a father-son relationship.
It is only in Jesus that we could imagine God in the most-intimate level. God, is not something that is merely so far away, unreachable, or transcendent. In fact, God is so close to us, even He wants to dwell in our hearts. Having known this truth, we don’t need to worry when we have something to ask Him. We can freely let Him know about our requests, happiness, sadness, strength, weakness, success, failure, and so on. Our lives are widely opened before Him. Nothing is secret to Him. As a real father sincerely loves his son, Jesus has loved us completely and unconditionally (he has accepted us the way we are). On the other hand, as a real father rebukes and chastens his son when he did wrong, Jesus has also showed his discipline to the one he loves.
7. He is the only One who has brought the messages about unchanging faith, hope, and love.
It is clear and undeniable that Jesus’ life message is essentially about faith, hope, and love. During his lifetime, wherever he was, he always delivered this message in context of God’s kingdom. As many Christians have already known, the core of Christianity is loving God and people. In love, there is hope. Love also believes all things: if you really love someone, you will believe the good things about them, even when they are not seemingly good or worthy enough. Faith, hope, and love in Christ are not the same as those of this worldly concepts/values (which often keep changing based on circumstances), because Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
In our world today, genuine love and faithful hope are difficult to find. People can easily lose their love, hope, and faithfulness, especially in the situation where things are not going well according to their wishes. We see a lot of things are changing rapidly. We see broken promises everywhere. People changed, economic changed, friendship changed. There is nothing we can really rely on. Even friends can turn into enemies. It seems hard to believe in people. It seems difficult to make a firm commitment. But, Jesus Christ is different. He is the only One who remains unchanged. His love and faithfulness stays forever. This is why we can faithfully put our trust, hope, and love in Him.
Pearls of Mind 
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He is also one of the only Ones to never exist. Believe what you see and what you know is fact. Just because you want something to be true because you read it in a book doesn’t make it real. I want a Green Lantern ring and I’m still waiting. Have a nice day and please enlighten yourself with logic and reason. Be nice to each other as the holy book says but spare me the “son of God” speech
Jesus’ life on earth is not a myth, it has been historically proven. If you are not sure with all the facts and evidences about Him, just pray in the name of Jesus, ask Him to come to your life and open your heart. He is able to reveal what is in your heart and God’s love to you. Have a blessed day.
Unfortunately Myths and history are two completely different things. Most christian are the average person that has not the time nor the propensity to trace the source of the beliefs and disbeliefs that make or break their lives. The average, however is also the majority.
Learn from the history… it is easier now than ever to do your own study and research on the things you wanted to know, prove, or disprove. Please come back to me later and show me if you found any compelling evidence that has proven Jesus or Christianity was wrong. I am willing to learn from that.
“Please come back to me later and show me if you found any compelling evidence that has proven Jesus or Christianity was wrong. I am willing to learn from that” ???!!!
Unfortunately, you can’t “prove” something that doesn’t exist to begin with. Prove that God didn’t appear to me yesterday in the shower. That’s how dumb your statement is. You can’t prove a negative. If you want to believe in something no one is stopping you. If you want to pray to Jesus to end Corona Virus tomorrow or the fires in Colorado or any one of a 1000 other tragedies, by all means go ahead. Name what ever preacher you want and have them and all their followers pray for a single, irrefutable miracle; I’ll settle for God to make a 60 second appearance in TImes Square at noon. With thousands of even millions of earnest Christians praying, that should be enough to do the trick however, some 2000+ years after his purported life and death, there’s still no sign of him, and all I ever hear is a lot of semantic drivel when I ask true believers why that is.
Honestly, actions speak louder than words. If Jesus or God or whoever shows up tomorrow in Times Square, I think that would be enough of a miracle to make a true believer out of me, but I don’t think any true believers would want to bet their lives on that happening.
There are dozens of various religions in the world, and each one claims they have the “only” answer. Big Deal.
What I’ve said and written about religion through the years is that there seems to be two common denominators for true believers
1.They either come from a family of true believers or
2. They have experienced some sort of traumatic event in their life that they’ve somehow survived and which they attribute to god’s intervention. It may be a Medical condition, the death of someone close, or the near death, etc, but these religious conversion experience are almost proceeded by a psychologically traumatic event which seems to override people’s logic and reason.
I’m not an atheist. I don’t not believe in god, but I believe in Science and rationality and reason and logic, not a lot of religious nonsense. So far, I’ve seen nothing at all compelling in your article that “proves” that Jesus ever existed in the slightest. And short of someone having taken some video camera footage of him 2000 years ago, it’s going to have to remain that way. Also, realize that now fully 1/4th of the American public consider themselves either Atheists or Agnostics and that number is slowly growing yearly. Perhaps all these people know something you don’t. – – – DJonson
From the length of your comments I can tell that you actually care about this matter. Thanks for that. Now, let me briefly share my thoughts. First, how can you imply that Jesus or Christianity does not exist? Humanity would not have existed if Jesus does not exist, because He is the Creator of this universe, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Uncaused First Cause. Also, if Christianity does not exist, nobody would have celebrated Christmas every year. I am simply sharing my story here, how my life has been transformed by the grace of God in Christ Jesus. I am a Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering, so I know something about science. Yet I believe the knowledge of God surpasses all sciences in this world. Science would only equal if it could create a living being from nothing, or if it could give immortality to a living thing. Unfortunately, so far, I have not yet heard any of these things. For example, I never heard a baby born from scientific experimentation in laboratory, nor a man living eternally on this earth. Our imperfections and brokenness of this world reveal our needs for a Savior. And I believe the ultimate answer to these problems is Jesus Christ.
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He is historically proven and that what he said is true. He came to the world as a savior. He introduced the father and holy spirit.He is the only one said and proved that he is son of God.
He gives us hope by his words especially with ” I am the way, light and truth”- for which all human beings search. Ones we find him and start to tell about him, there is nothing else we need achieve in life.
Josi Joseph
Great points! Thanks Josi.
where is he historicallt proven? show me. The Bible is not historical proof. Josephus has been proven a forgery. Tacitus is second hand information. Where has he been historically proven.
So true ;I too was born in non christian family ,but my quest for the Truth made me seek the way & I found the life in Him;
I do not believe in a religion or take christianity as one of the religion ,but a life to live & be in Christ;
You can read a book by late Ravi Zaccharias “ Jesus among other Gods”
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I read the book you suggested long ago.
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i am not trying to oppose this but all you say that Jesus did is simply details no evidence whatsoever
thank you. Someone that thinks and requires proof.
I just wanted to say that this really helped me when I was doubting. Good job!
It boils down to believing or not. I have no problem accepting the notion that there actually was a young rabbi named Jesus who turned judaism upside down with His teachings. But His outlandish claims to be the son of God and the only way to achieve salvation seem to be either the ravings of a lunatic or the truth. A lot of people have sacrificed their lives in His service including most if not all of those closest to Him. I wouldn’t lay down my life unless I bought in to this Man’s seemingly ridiculous ideology. And don’t expect Him to magically appear as he supposedly did to a guy named Saul of Tarsus. Odds are He won’t. So that leaves you with the burning question “is this alleged God/man for real”? It’s your call. Where do you place your bet? I’ve made mine. GLTA. Jeff……
Everything you have said is an opinion, statements of faith. You have offered no evidence to prove you statements of faith. No the Bible is not evidence.To you it may be. to everyone else in the world it is a book of myths like every religious scripture with a narrative.
I would you say if you doubt that the Bible is true we could debate that all day. What I would point you to is the prophecies it was written Christ predicted the fall of the second temple, the scattering of the Israelites, that his words would go out to all the world. And now 2000 years later Christianity is the worlds largest religion 2.38 billion people. The second largest religion also predicted by the old testament when the Lord told the slave women and Abraham he would make Ismael also into a great nation (religion of Islam 1.9 billion people). Very hard predictions for 1 man from Israel which is a tiny tiny place and his message has changed the world and went every where just like he said. To say someone or something didn’t exist or never happened but it is now years later ingrained into so much of society, how did that happen if there never was a Christ Jesus? I think anyone of us today would have a very hard time changing entire belief systems making up stories about someone who never existed. Now you can choose not to believe in Jesus but it seems very evident that something very significant happened in Israel 2000 years ago and that thing is the teaching of Christ Jesus and his sacrifice and resurrection. Not to mention all Christ’s followers were killed now it is very doubtful many men would choose to die instead of admitting the truth that they made it all up. Also the authenticity of Jopheus is debated (aren’t alot of Historical documents) Tacitus may have been second hand but that doesn’t mean he didn’t hear of things going on. Extra biblical writings also include Pliny the younger, Babylonian Talmud and Lucian.
what year is it ?
One of the gifts if the Spirit is Speaking in Tongues That’s can only happen through the Holy Spirit Think about that