Five Ways that Showed Me Christianity is True

I share my faith on social media a lot, and sometimes I get asked how I was persuaded to become a Christian.

Given how common it is for people to just go down the path of least resistance (and how easy it is for the people who do to think everyone else is just doing that), let me share the five ways I am persuaded Christianity is true.

How did Isaiah 53 go so deep and have so much to say about Jesus over 5 centuries before Jesus was born ?

My dad asked me to read Isaiah 53 when I was 11 and then asked me who I thought it was about.

You can do this now here.

When I told him it seemed pretty clearly to be about Jesus, he asked me how that could be true more than five centuries before Jesus was born.

At the time, that didn’t seem like a big deal because I just thought God told Isaiah what He was planning to do all along.

I’ve talked to a lot of people since then who don’t think that is true, and their views fall into one of several places.

Some don’t think the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 is referring to Jesus but the nation of Israel. I’m not sure how they ever got that idea since the main person in that chapter is presented as innocent, even though Isaiah spends the breadth of his book reaming out the Jews for their disobedience.

Others say Jesus just read what Isaiah said and then retro fitted his life story around that. Well, easier said than done living a righteous life and and then laying it down for everyone ! Also, you can’t just decide to start teaching in the temple at twelve years old (Isaiah says he grew up like a young shoot). Also, who wants to be despised by men and crushed to death ?

Read the chapter and decide for yourself who it was written about.

Jesus has the words of life, no one else comes close!

Have you taken the chance to read through Matthew or Mark or Luke or John ?

It’s super simple to just pick it up and decide whether you think Jesus talked like a person who was sent from God.

You can read the book of Mark in an hour and a half ! [1]

I started reading Matthew when I was 11 years old, and I was convinced I had never heard anyone talk like Jesus.

Jesus told His followers to stop judging by appearances and judge by rightouesness. He told people to stop loving other people based on whether they were friends or enemies. He taught about how flesh gives birth to flesh but the spirit gives birth to spirit.

He warned people about how your demons can come back to haunt you (and with worse demons).

Check it out for yourself. Don’t take my word for it. Or as Jesus says :

“Everyone who seeks, finds.”

The Colton Burpo Story

I read this book about Colton Burpo and it checks out.

Colton Burpo had what might be called an NDE (Near Death Experience).

He describes spending time with Jesus and came back demonstrating that he had learned things (details about his grandfather’s life) that he could not have known due to the timing of his grand father’s death.

Colton lists a lot of details about Jesus that I’ve never heard of before, and I’ve read pretty extensively about Jesus from sources inside the Bible and outside of it.

Colton looks at a lot of the implications too. After the incident he got very afraid when heard about a person who died and was immediately sure whether or not they died trusting in Jesus.

There have been similar claims around the same time period as Colton’s which have been called out for fraud and been confused with Colton’s story.

Who is feeding the hungry and taking care of orphans ? It’s the church.

Here’s a study from Baylor showing men who attend church regularly are 72% less likely than the general population to abuse their partners:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1077801207308259

The Roman Catholic church is the largest health provider in the world.

Christians give three times as much money as non Christians. [source]

70% of Americans trust non profits more than the government. [source]

I’ll also add to that one that here in North Carolina, I’m hearing many reports about how churches and para ministries are taking much better care of people than the government.

When you factor out “religious” people who aren’t going to weekly services, the religious countries have less crime. [source]

Many studies show people who go to church are much less likely to commit suicide. [source]

These are just a small number of statistics I’ve come across that show how the followers of Jesus care about their neighbors and are the ones actually making an effort to take care of them.

Also, in my presonal experience, the people I knew in my life growing up have been followers of Jesus. They have been very forgiving toward me, and very generous too. They’re reliable people who are not in and out of work because they were committing crimes and taking recreational drugs.

Inner Joy And Fulfillment

When I am eagerly seeking after the things Jesus wants and told me to do, I experience an inner joy and satisfaction that I’ve never found anywhere else.

This is a lot like the way that Paul and Silas were put into prison for telling people about Jesus and they ended up singing songs, rejoicing and thanking God for what He did in their lives.

How many people have you known who can be so happy when they are thrown into prison ?

That’s the power of God right there.

And you can find it in your life too !

Ask Jesus today to forgive your sins, and the start reading the New Testament to learn how you can grow in the knowledge of His love and riches !