Would Your Life Make Sense If God Wasn't Real?

Some things just don’t make sense if God isn’t real.

Noah building an ark because God told him a flood was coming? Crazy — unless Noah actually did hear from God and took him seriously enough to obey him.

Abraham leaving his religious convictions and land for a place he’d never been? It’s simply not done, especially when it means living as a foreigner in tents. It makes no sense, unless God actually did promise to give the land to his descendants, and an even better city to Abraham after death.

When you’re born into power and luxury, you just don’t leave it. You especially don’t want to tick off the most powerful person not just in your household and the world — unless, of course, something is better than the fleeting pleasure of sin. Moses thought so, and he found God’s promises better than life in the royal household.

It didn’t always work out. Some people took God seriously enough to risk their lives, but the risk didn’t play out, at least in the short term. They “suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment,” we read in Hebrews 11:36-38). “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” It makes no sense, unless God is real, and God will make good on his promises beyond this brief life.

Following God should make no sense if you take God out of the picture. The things we do, the priorities we set, the sacrifices we make, the prayers we pray, the habits we cultivate — none of these should make sense if God isn’t real, and if he won’t make good on his promises.

So don’t look to the world for cues. They live with a completely different set of assumptions. Don’t make decisions based on the same set of principles they believe. Don’t make decisions based on actuarial tables that predict the date of your death. Make decisions based on how they will pay off in light of eternity.

Take the long view. Believe that some things will only make sense if you take the long view (eternity) instead of just years, decades, or even centuries. Be willing to be regarded as a loser here if that’s what it takes to grasp something far more long-lasting and satisfying in the future.

Our lives should really make no sense if God isn’t real. But, according to Hebrews 11, a group of people lived who believed God was real, who took him at his word, and who made decisions that only make sense to those who take God seriously too. That’s what it means to live by faith. It’s not so much a blind leap of faith as much as a willingness to trust that God and his promises are true.

I want to be like that, and I hope you do too.