WHY IS GOD NECESSARY FOR US TO EXIST?

To believers, that's like asking why do our kids exist; we created them! God “himself gives all men life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25). God is the Creator (Genesis 1:1), the Sustainer, the Source of life; indeed, he is life (John 14:6). “All things were created by him and for him … and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16 – 17). Those are statements from God's Word which are important spiritual truths. My husband and other apologists can give you scientific evidences to support the existence of God. As an older adult, I can give you anecdotal evidences for the existence of a loving God who is actively involved in the affairs of humans. There are many scriptural examples of miraculous events where God acts outside the natural order of things to affect the world and directly touch the lives of believers.

From the beginning of mankind, humans have always searched for answers to our existence. God created us with a curiosity and a desire to seek knowledge and to seek him. “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). God not only made our physical bodies, but he created us in his spiritual image. He gave us a spiritual, eternal soul that seeks to know him and to be with him. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, Oh God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1 – 2). We have a deep spiritual void without God.

Some people live their whole lives without regard for God. They live as if God does not exist and they seek fulfillment and satisfaction in the only ways the world offers — relationships, job success, fame, material possessions, money, drugs, sex, self gratification, etc. They determine their own values, standards and morality — whatever works for them. People continually seek to be fulfilled and find happiness only to fall short because they are ignoring the One who made them. We want to love and be loved; yet, we ignore the One who IS love (1 John 4:7, 8, 16). When we reject God, we are rejecting the Source of all goodness, love, peace, joy, etc. (Galatians 5:22). God says, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Ignoring or denying God's existence does not negate his existence. It only creates a hole in our heart and soul that can only be filled by God. God created us with this longing in our soul so that we “would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’ ” (Acts 17:27 – 28).

— Cynthia Clayton

Picture credits:
© Patty Gibson