It is difficult to accomplish much by using the Bible as authority with someone who does not accept it as the word of God. I know this because this used to be I. Nonetheless, I will use some bible references because they are powerful.

Faith is a wondrous thing.  If you read Fox's Book of Martyrs you will be amazed at how the martyrs went joyfully to horribly painful deaths. Many sang or praised God while being burned at the stake. They counted it a great honor to die for Christ.

I do not know that anyone I know has that kind of faith. I believe that such faith is a gift of God (the Holy Spirit aka Comforter) given at a time when it is needed. Christians are suffering in this fashion in various parts of the world as we speak.

The Bible defines faith as, "...the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1 I used to believe that you could believe in anything by blind faith and to some extent that is true. Everybody believes in some kind of God. The question is, what God.

When I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley I had been greatly influenced by what I considered to be enlightened intellectuals whom I now regard as benighted as well as my peers with whom I had spent many hours discussing weighty matters such as religion.

The Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10:17. Lack of faith comes in the same way. To illustrate this how many people believe that atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that we have landed on the moon? Our belief (knowledge) comes from hearing about these events with no personal experience whatsoever. These are pretty tall tales but we believe them.

My God at that time was my mind and reason. In other words, I worshiped the creature instead of the creator. I made the same mistake Adam and Eve made in the garden. They wanted to be gods as did I. I was more willing to believe the unbelievers because that suited the desires of my heart.

I was not only a confirmed agnostic (thank god I was not an atheist) but I was quick to ridicule and scoff at fundamentalist Christians whom I considered to be ignorant nincompoops. I truly could not imagine how anyone could believe such nonsense. I considered the Old Testament to be nothing more than a colorful history of the Hebrew people and, in large part, folklore. I did believe that a man named Jesus had lived and that he was a magnificent philosopher and was crucified. I believed that the Christian faith was anchored on this event and upon the belief that he had been resurrected from the dead after three days in the tomb although the last part of the story struck me as a being a bit hard to accept.

My unbelief was reinforced by my success as a lawyer and what I perceived to be my success in managing my life. I was a big frog in a little puddle and obtained two record breaking personal injury verdicts in adjoining cow counties within three months of one another and considered myself to be the meanest man in the Valley. I did not think I needed God and I was not sure there was one anyway. Everything was going well.

I firmly believe that had my life continued on this course I would never have found the Lord. God had other plans. We do not choose God. He chooses us. I say this because this is what the Bible says and because it has been my personal experience. John 6:44; 14:6; 15:16.

I found myself a serious alcoholic single parenting four children, broke, and with a struggling law practice. I experienced serious unpleasantness, fatigue, and desperation. Had things continued to go well in my life I would never have changed and I am thankful for all the hardship I endured. It was a small price to pay for a pearl of such great value. Matthew 13:45-46.

I have given some thought to how people come to God and I have concluded that there are a number of ways and that all Christians have experienced and continue to experience more than one of them. Here are some of the ways:

1. They come to realize that they cannot manage their lives as I did. I actually learned this in Alcoholics Anonymous. It was also in Alcoholics Anonymous that I realized that there was a higher power in charge of my life. It took a year or two for me to decide it was God

2. Some people are raised in the faith and come back to it after they have strayed. I had some exposure but I was never a serious believer in my youth.

3. Some are fortunate enough to have a Road to Damascus experience in which Jesus speaks audibly to them. I envy these people. I have not had this experience.

4. Some people have dreams and/or visions. I have had a vision. It was very short, perhaps a second or two in length, and was accompanied by a "word of knowledge." I was wide awake driving alone in my car at night and in my mind I saw myself alone and surrounded by worldly associates. I knew they were there although they were concealed in a sort of murky darkness. I was in the light and I knew that they could not hurt me and that I would have a good influence on them.

5. Some people witness or experience miracles. By miracles I mean things that defy a natural explanation. I have experienced a number of these.

6. Many people receive answers to prayer. Obviously, God is not Santa Claus anymore than our natural father is and my faith is nurtured more by looking back at what I did not receive than it is by what I did receive. I can see clearly, by hindsight, the things that I wanted that would have destroyed me had I gotten them. However, I have had quite a number of prayers answered and several in ways that can not be explained as anything other than answers to prayer.

7. Experiencing the power of the Word of God. I do not believe anyone can have a faith that grows without having epiphanic experiences when exposed to the Word of God. This is the principal way that God speaks to me and I believe it is the principal way that he speaks to everyone. In my own case, I have reached a point at which I am hungry for the Word of God. I treasure it. I wish there were a way I could make you understand its power. I rely again on the Bible. Hebrews 4:12 says, "…the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

8. The final element is prayer. I pray less often than I should but I do pray several times a day. Obviously, you are not going to have answers to prayer if you do not pray. I regularly get answers.

This runs headlong into Darwinism and/or evolution which I submit requires far more faith than believing in creation (intelligent design.) I was seated as a guest at dinner one evening years ago when I blurted out that evolution was a lie. Up until then, I had never really questioned it. I accepted it in school and believed it (Here we are with faith coming by hearing again.) The theory of evolution is that as a result of billions upon billions upon trillions of minute mutations a tiny percentage of them result in a superior characteristic that makes a member of a species more able to survive in its environment than its brothers and that given enough time a new species will evolve.

I realized as I believe any thinking person will that if this were true there would be transitional forms of every species everywhere and there are not. Furthermore, there would be fossil evidence of such everywhere in great abundance which there is not. I concluded that the missing link was missing because it never existed.

The second reason evolution is not believable is because almost all of the characteristics that give us some advantage are extremely complicated even at the cellular level and cannot function until they are complete. Eyesight is a perfect example. The eye cannot function and thereby endow its owner with a superior advantage unless it is complete. Furthermore, there is a great deal of similarity among dissimilar species with respect to eyesight. Did that happen by accident also? In each case the organ must be complete to function and lend any advantage to its owner.

The above does not require any citation to authority or the reliance on "experts" as the conclusions can be reached solely by force of reason. Darwin’s theory does not work. Darwin's theory can be discredited out of his own mouth.

It is a great testimony to the rejection of God and creation by those who think themselves wise that they persist in denying the obvious.

If there is a god how do we know he cares? Many question how a loving god would allow bad things to happen and I wish I had a complete answer. I can tell you that the Bible says it rains on the just and the unjust alike and from my own experience I can tell you that God is not a permissive parent who will spare us the consequences of our conduct. Any parent who does that ruins his or her child. The Bible repeatedly says that if you spare the rod you will spoil the child. You may also wish to consider what the world would be like if none of us had to suffer the consequences of our actions. What a horrible world that would be.

I can also tell you from my own experience which I have described above that I am eternally grateful for the hardship and suffering I endured that brought me to Christ.

Finally, I can tell you that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts. Isaiah 55:9 Stated differently, if I had all the answers I would be God.

We are back to the problem that Adam and Eve had in the garden. They wanted to be gods and we want to be gods. Worse than that, we want to judge God just like we want to judge our leaders and our fellow men and Sunday’s quarterbacks.

If nothing else, I hope I have provided food for thought without being offensive. I firmly believe, as I have explained above, that it is God who chooses and I pray that he chooses all who read this.