It is the spring of 2010.

I’ve been a “Christian agnostic” for a long, long time.

After all those long years of doubt I’m still acting “on the assumption” of Christianity, like I discussed in The Nature Of Faith.

But my level of commitment is weak at best.

What else do you do when you’re not sure?

Despite this I still pray.

Again very weakly.

I always talk to God and I’m sure many people think I’m just mumbling to myself.

But I genuinely discuss my life with him, even though I don’t know if he is there.

I’ve given up asking God for specific things years ago.

I never saw any real answers when I tried that.

I don’t hear anything back from God when I talk to him either.

So I don’t say I have a relationship with God anymore.

Isn’t a relationship a two way communication?

I just intellectually believe God could be there and Christianity might be true.

I feel it makes better sense to honor God and end up mistaken he exists, than to dishonor him and find out he does.

But there is one specific prayer I always DO pray. “Please guide and provide.”

It is a simple heart request really.

I’ve never known what to do with life or how to make it work out financially.

So I ask for God’s help regularly.

Sincerely.

Honestly.

I’ve prayed this prayer over and over through the years and as I look back on my life now in the spring of 2010, it sure looks like it has been answered.

Time and time again God seems to have guided.

Not clearly.

I’ve never had a sense of seeing him guiding while it was going on.

But looking back it feels like there is a pattern there.

It is the same thing with provision.

Money seems to come for what is needed over and over again too.

But I don’t have any sense of this happening because I “have faith.”

I really feel like I have none.

That it all could just be coincidence.

But suddenly now something starts to change.

I’m not sure why but this thought comes into my head:

“Kel, you’ve always prayed for me to guide and provide, and as you look back on your life over and over again it looks like I have. Isn’t it just as easy to believe I’ve been guiding and providing as it is to say this has all just been coincidence?”

I have to admit there is no reason to deny this.

And probably better reason to believe it is all God.

After all, if there is no God, what reason is there to think things should work out for your good at all?

Because there is a “law of attraction” and the universe just happens to exist for your good?

Really?

How believable is that?

Without a conscious being there to act in your favor, why would an impersonal universe just happen to have impersonal laws that just happen to work in your favor?

Have you ever really thought about that?

How hugely insignificant we are in this vast universe that seems to consist primarily of empty cold planets?

Yet we decide to “just believe” that it all is aimed in our favor and we can “manifest” what we want anyway?

And then when we find things actually working in our favor we say to ourselves, “Well look at that! There really must be a law of attraction!”

It’s pretty crazy really if you think about it!

And dishonoring to God.

As Paul says in Romans 1, we “worship and serve the creature instead of the creator.”

We thank the universe for God’s good gifts to us. Worse yet we drop the article “the” and capitalize the letter “U,” and start to talk about “Universe” as if it is a person.

This is idolatry.

This universe is an impersonal place where we’re at the whim of impersonal chance plus space plus time like the evolutionists tell us.

Or we are the recipients of the goodness of God in our lives, though we fail to acknowledge this and be thankful to him for it.

It is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance.

And that is what God is doing in my life right now in the spring of 2010, as this thought enters my consciousness.

He is pointing out the kindness he has always shown me by guiding and providing in my life.

He is calling me to repent and believe in him.

Not to take a “leap of faith.”

Not just “believe first.”

He is calling me to acknowledge the evidence he has been showing me.

Evidence that he exists and is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

He is calling me to believe the evidence that he has always been working in my life.

Calling me to acknowledge his kindness toward me.

Calling me to faith.