The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom

[Yoder]

Here is something that I just experienced that made me realize Christianity has made me different.

I opened my water bill last night and it was $817! I shut off the main inside my house and checked the meter at the top of my driveway and it was showing about 1 Gallon every 10 minutes or so. I finally got my driveway paved 4 years ago after having gravel for 16 years. The water line runs directly under my driveway. It's going to cost me $7k to dig up and replace the water line and then I'll have to get the driveway patched. We were just getting ready to sell this house in the next year. I already had a bunch of other home improvements planned out, so this is a bummer.

My typical reaction to something like this used to be "why does God hate me?" Poor me, boo hoo. I would have also been overwhelmed with anxiety worrying about everything like I can somehow control the outcome. I was all kinds of pissed last night, but I have actually come to realize how fortunate I am to be able to afford this. So many others would be completely screwed. This is the first time in my life that I have ever been grateful to have something happen that sucks this much. I actually thanked God in a prayer that I have the means to have this repaired. I know I can't control it so there is no sense worrying about it. I trust it's God's plan and that I will be better off because of it somehow. This is what I believe is the Holy Spirit working in my life.

 

[Sandhills]

Praise God!

 

[NVUplandHunter]

Here is something that I just experienced that made me realize Christianity has made me different.

I opened my water bill last night and it was $817! I shut off the main inside my house and checked the meter at the top of my driveway and it was showing about 1 Gallon every 10 minutes or so. I finally got my driveway paved 4 years ago after having gravel for 16 years. The water line runs directly under my driveway. It's going to cost me $7k to dig up and replace the water line and then I'll have to get the driveway patched. We were just getting ready to sell this house in the next year. I already had a bunch of other home improvements planned out, so this is a bummer.

My typical reaction to something like this used to be "why does God hate me?" Poor me, boo hoo. I would have also been overwhelmed with anxiety worrying about everything like I can somehow control the outcome. I was all kinds of pissed last night, but I have actually come to realize how fortunate I am to be able to afford this. So many others would be completely screwed. This is the first time in my life that I have ever been grateful to have something happen that sucks this much. I actually thanked God in a prayer that I have the means to have this repaired. I know I can't control it so there is no sense worrying about it. I trust it's God's plan and that I will be better off because of it somehow. This is what I believe is the Holy Spirit working in my life.

thats amazing bro.. sucky you gotta deal with that but still a great story and thank you for sharing.

its crazy what happens in your life when you turn it over to the Big Man and let Him take care of you.

 

[eddielasvegas]

I either forgot this or am learning it for the first time today.

Pastor Mike never says what the end result will be to the non-believers during the Second Coming (it's not good) but the bible is quoted in the comments to reveal an NB's fate.

Link HERE.


Eddie

 

[Yoder]

yeah man i guess in the end one of us will be right and the other will be pretty disappointed.

If we are wrong, there's no downside. We will just be dead. We won't even know we are dead. At the end, I will know that I spent at least some of my life trying to love my neighbors and enemies the best I could. That sounds ok to me. I am a much better version of myself.

 

[NVUplandHunter]

If we are wrong, there's no downside. We will just be dead. We won't even know we are dead. At the end, I will know that I spent at least some of my life trying to love my neighbors and enemies the best I could. That sounds ok to me. I am a much better version of myself.

i 100% agree with you. in the end, if there is no heaven i wont be mad. i know i followed something that at the very least made me strive to be better every day and treat people well. my disappointment would only be that i dont get to spend eternity in heaven with Jesus. but i wouldnt not be mad.. i would just be dead like you said. kinda one of those i have nothing to lose and everything to gain situations if you ask me. makes me wonder why people are soooo deeply against it.

and i agree.. after driving head first into the deep end, im a much better human than i use to be. a lot of work to go but knowing the backing and support i have from above in that makes it a lot easier.

 

[go_deep]

@Yoder if you would have known me in my late teens, early twenties, and now, you'd wouldn't believe we were the same person.
429 times the word peace is used in the Bible, not happiness, peace. I'm at peace with many things that happened to me, and forgiving others and being at peace with those things, is very peaceful.

 

[Customweld]

Here is something that I just experienced that made me realize Christianity has made me different.

I opened my water bill last night and it was $817! I shut off the main inside my house and checked the meter at the top of my driveway and it was showing about 1 Gallon every 10 minutes or so. I finally got my driveway paved 4 years ago after having gravel for 16 years. The water line runs directly under my driveway. It's going to cost me $7k to dig up and replace the water line and then I'll have to get the driveway patched. We were just getting ready to sell this house in the next year. I already had a bunch of other home improvements planned out, so this is a bummer.

My typical reaction to something like this used to be "why does God hate me?" Poor me, boo hoo. I would have also been overwhelmed with anxiety worrying about everything like I can somehow control the outcome. I was all kinds of pissed last night, but I have actually come to realize how fortunate I am to be able to afford this. So many others would be completely screwed. This is the first time in my life that I have ever been grateful to have something happen that sucks this much. I actually thanked God in a prayer that I have the means to have this repaired. I know I can't control it so there is no sense worrying about it. I trust it's God's plan and that I will be better off because of it somehow. This is what I believe is the Holy Spirit working in my life.

If I was closer, I would help you pull a new service line through.

 

[Jason Snyder]

My sense is many of the posters here are not use to having the evidence for their beliefs challenged and find it unsettling

Not unsettling at all, because as I have already mentioned numerous times, there is no 100% concrete evidence. Faith is taking what’s there and finding it enough to believe in Jesus Christ as our savior. For some, it’s not enough and that’s their individual decision.

 

[Jason Snyder]

Don’t worry if this thread lasts until deer season I will mostly magically disappear then.

It’s become a bit of Groundhog Day anyways.

Believer’s - faith and the Bible

Nonbeliever - evidence and reason

Nonbeliever - not enough evidence to satisfy the individual.

When you say a believer is absent of any reason, it’s rather insulting. My reasoning is based on my personal experiences, which I don’t expect you to take at fact because their is no documented record

 

[Cwsharer]

Here is something that I just experienced that made me realize Christianity has made me different.

I opened my water bill last night and it was $817! I shut off the main inside my house and checked the meter at the top of my driveway and it was showing about 1 Gallon every 10 minutes or so. I finally got my driveway paved 4 years ago after having gravel for 16 years. The water line runs directly under my driveway. It's going to cost me $7k to dig up and replace the water line and then I'll have to get the driveway patched. We were just getting ready to sell this house in the next year. I already had a bunch of other home improvements planned out, so this is a bummer.

My typical reaction to something like this used to be "why does God hate me?" Poor me, boo hoo. I would have also been overwhelmed with anxiety worrying about everything like I can somehow control the outcome. I was all kinds of pissed last night, but I have actually come to realize how fortunate I am to be able to afford this. So many others would be completely screwed. This is the first time in my life that I have ever been grateful to have something happen that sucks this much. I actually thanked God in a prayer that I have the means to have this repaired. I know I can't control it so there is no sense worrying about it. I trust it's God's plan and that I will be better off because of it somehow. This is what I believe is the Holy Spirit working in my life.

Not to derail the thread but can you just dig a new line in next to the driveway?

God bless !

 

[GSPHUNTER]

Not to derail the thread but can you just dig a new line in next to the driveway?

God bless !

Or tunnel under driveway using water jet. I did it under a 10' wide driveway.

 

[Yoder]

Not to derail the thread but can you just dig a new line in next to the driveway?

God bless !

You have to cross the driveway to get to the house.

 

[Yoder]

Or tunnel under driveway using water jet. I did it under a 10' wide driveway.

I think a glacier stopped at my house. There are an incredible amount of rocks and it has to be buried below the frost line.

 

[ODB]

Here is something that I just experienced that made me realize Christianity has made me different.

I opened my water bill last night and it was $817! I shut off the main inside my house and checked the meter at the top of my driveway and it was showing about 1 Gallon every 10 minutes or so. I finally got my driveway paved 4 years ago after having gravel for 16 years. The water line runs directly under my driveway. It's going to cost me $7k to dig up and replace the water line and then I'll have to get the driveway patched. We were just getting ready to sell this house in the next year. I already had a bunch of other home improvements planned out, so this is a bummer.

My typical reaction to something like this used to be "why does God hate me?" Poor me, boo hoo. I would have also been overwhelmed with anxiety worrying about everything like I can somehow control the outcome. I was all kinds of pissed last night, but I have actually come to realize how fortunate I am to be able to afford this. So many others would be completely screwed. This is the first time in my life that I have ever been grateful to have something happen that sucks this much. I actually thanked God in a prayer that I have the means to have this repaired. I know I can't control it so there is no sense worrying about it. I trust it's God's plan and that I will be better off because of it somehow. This is what I believe is the Holy Spirit working in my life.

Good stuff.

 

[Beagle1]

Nonbeliever - not enough evidence to satisfy the individual.

When you say a believer is absent of any reason, it’s rather insulting. My reasoning is based on my personal experiences, which I don’t expect you to take at fact because their is no documented record

I did not say a believer is absent of any reason so you can stop being insulted.

 

[Beagle1]

Here's a list of scientist that are world renown, have spent more time in a week digging deep into science then I have in my life, extremely well documented individuals because of their discoveries, research, writings in their own words, that through there scientific research helped them become strong believers in God, because of what scientific discoveries showed them and proved. I will not speak for anyone else, but these people are light-years smarter than me, and if some of the smartest people in the world are scientifically convinced and convicted to believe, due to what science proved to them, that is a testament of fact and truth in what is written in the Bible to me.

Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Blaise Pascal, Francis Collins, Galileo Galilei, Gregor Mendel, Francis Bacon, James Clerk Maxwell, Nicholas Copernicus, Arthur Compton, Leonhard Euler, Lord Kelvin, Max Planck, René Descartes, Werner Heisenberg, Antoine Lavoisier, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Charles Townes, George Washington Carver, Georges Lemaître, Guglielmo Marconi.

It’s true that many great scientists like Newton, Kepler, and Francis Collins were religious but citing their belief doesn’t make Christianity scientifically verified or objectively true. Their faith wasn’t the result of scientific discovery. Einstein, for example, explicitly rejected belief in a personal God. Others lived in times when disbelief could carry social or professional risks.

Belief in God by scientists simply shows that it’s possible to hold both a scientific and supernatural worldview. But that doesn’t turn personal faith into empirical evidence. A scientist’s brilliance doesn’t validate every belief they hold. whether that’s belief in God, reincarnation, or UFOs. No major scientific discovery in history has confirmed the supernatural. The personal religious convictions of even the greatest minds aren’t evidence.

Now turn your logic around. Do you accept the non-belief of former Christian pastors, theologians, or brilliant scholars as proof that God does not exist? After all, these people were deeply immersed in Scripture and theology—shouldn’t their deconversion carry weight? If their departure from faith doesn’t disprove God, then a scientist’s faith doesn’t prove him either. Truth isn’t determined by a résumé, it’s determined by evidence.

 

[Beagle1]

One thing that has made me laugh this whole thread, how easily some are dismissive of the most accurately written book in history, literally thousands of times more accurate than other books, yet the history in it is dismissed because they “don't like the contents” “its filled with magical miracles” and “it relies on faith to believe”

Yet the same people full 100% believe that life originated from some sort of primordial soup because that is what their “book” told them, not realizing that “book” has been trying to replicate the origin of life with all the ingredients and every possible (yet far fetched) manner in which this could have happened. Literally the imagination run wild and they still can not get it to work.

I know, the “book” hasn’t figured it out but it will eventually.

What happens then you might ask…does that disprove God. Heck no. It simply makes the process get even smaller. Figure out how dna can be made without first having the enzymes made which requires protein to he made…the biochemical reactions that have to take place in some “environment” are astronomical and simply magical. When you get down to the nitty gritty of life, the processes that had to take place to get anything here, let alone us, are so mind boggling and complex. One minir shift in a protein’s tertiary arrangement and the whole thing falls apart at the seams and bo life. And that is at EVERY step of the way. Not even getting into how those proteins came into existence, since it takes a huge amount of steps to get from raw universe matter to a primordial soup.

Faith? It takes more than faith to get there. It takes giant leaps of magocal thinking and pure imagination to just approach the landing pad.

The origin of life is incredibly complex, no argument there and science doesn’t claim to have all the answers. It openly admits the gaps and keeps working to fill them through evidence and experimentation. But you know all this. Religion, on the other hand, gives a complete answer up front “God did it” case closed.

Calling that “more accurate” or “less faith-based” flips the logic. Science doesn’t demand belief, it builds models that can be tested, challenged, and revised. But you know all this. Religion demands belief first, and often discourages doubt.

And let’s be honest: the Bible contains talking animals, 900-year-old humans, and people rising from the dead. If those stories were in any other ancient book, they’d be called mythology.

Not knowing everything yet isn’t magical thinking. Saying a divine being outside of time created DNA with a word, that is magical thinking. Science works with what we know and tries to learn more. Faith often stops at “because God.”

That’s the difference.

 

[dylanvb]

@Beagle1
How does science disprove God exists when the Bible has no scientific claims?

Other than the miracles of the Bible which still happen in today’s age. We have plenty of modern stories of people who had stage 4 cancer and miraculously are healed from cancer all together with no other explanation. I can go on and on about these other stories that we all know and hear about. Science can’t even explain those.

 

[go_deep]

It’s true that many great scientists like Newton, Kepler, and Francis Collins were religious but citing their belief doesn’t make Christianity scientifically verified or objectively true. Their faith wasn’t the result of scientific discovery. Einstein, for example, explicitly rejected belief in a personal God. Others lived in times when disbelief could carry social or professional risks.

Belief in God by scientists simply shows that it’s possible to hold both a scientific and supernatural worldview. But that doesn’t turn personal faith into empirical evidence. A scientist’s brilliance doesn’t validate every belief they hold. whether that’s belief in God, reincarnation, or UFOs. No major scientific discovery in history has confirmed the supernatural. The personal religious convictions of even the greatest minds aren’t evidence.

Now turn your logic around. Do you accept the non-belief of former Christian pastors, theologians, or brilliant scholars as proof that God does not exist? After all, these people were deeply immersed in Scripture and theology—shouldn’t their deconversion carry weight? If their departure from faith doesn’t disprove God, then a scientist’s faith doesn’t prove him either. Truth isn’t determined by a résumé, it’s determined by evidence.

Science lead then to be deeply immersed into their faith, because science showed them there was a creator.

I do believe we can shake hands and agree to disagree on this topic, have a good day.