My Lived Experience Tells Me

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. // Hebrews 11:1

“How do you know that there is a God?”

My college dorm room suddenly felt even smaller than it already was, and the eyes of my doubting roommates rested upon me in anticipation of a reply. The question threw me off-balance. The secular atheism I faced at my very liberal women's college was something new for me. I was a cultural Christian who had grown up in a family of faith. Friends had been mostly Christian or Jewish up until that autumn when I entered an entirely new world. I explained the best I could that was easy for me to believe, and if I was wrong I hadn't lost anything by believing, but that they certainly had by not believing.

It wasn't perhaps the best theological response, but it was all I could muster in the moment.

And it was honest. Believing in Him was easy. We all believe in things we can not see. We believe the world is turning. We believe that we are breathing in oxygen. We believe in love. We believe in our own futures, dreams, and aspirations.

Now, as a mature adult, I have a somewhat different answer. My faith is a lived personal experience rather than an intellectual possibility.

I know Jesus is true God and true Man because I have encountered Him. I know God is my Creator and my good and loving Father because I experience His love. I know the power of the Holy Spirit because I receive His grace daily.

Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote: “Unbelievers are in ignorance of things that are of faith, for neither do they see or know them in themselves, nor do they know them to be credible. The faithful, on the other hand, know them, not as by demonstration, but by the light of faith which makes them see that they ought to believe them.”

Answering the question of our belief in God is not merely knowing the reasons for His existence with our minds. Faith in the unseen is itself an extremely personal act of free will that brings us closer to knowing Him more completely. Take a moment and ask yourself now: how deep is my belief?

“Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).