What’s your story, friend?
Well basically for me, I now truly believe that God is constantly trying to reach us. At every moment in life, if we pay attention, and are open God is drawing us closer, but it is our choice to accept or reject him.
The reason I believe this, is because of prayer.
Back in May, I lost my belief in God. Philosophically I could agree that he existed, but that didnt make him real in my life. I simply didn’t know wether or not he was there, but I did know one thing, that if he existed, the surest way to know, was through prayer. So I tried that.
Everyday for a month I prayed some variation of “God, I’m tired of you being merely an intellectual idea, I need you to be a reality to me”. Each day I prayed this, and nothing. It was like I was just talking to my four walls.
Then on June 14, I prayed it again one final time. I had resolved that I simply couldn’t go on praying and not getting an answer. So I said it one last time, and said so be it.
That night, after I got done praying, and finally accepting that I was just talking to my walls, I got ready for bed. As I was laying down in my bed, I pulled out my phone, and got on a new app I had downloaded a few days earlier.
This app was a website aggregator that randomly took you to random sites from all over the internet. When I opened the App, the first site that came up was a Catholic website that said “Why do Catholics believe God exists?”.
When I saw this, I didn’t care. I had read every classical argument and apologetic for the existence of God, but I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted God to be real in my life, I didn’t want a philosophical God.
Regardless though, I read the article. Expecting that I was going to encounter more of the same philosophical arguments. I was dead wrong.
Aside from a general overview of philosophy, something really caught my eye. It was the story of the Eucharist miracle of Lanciano. In the story, the monk was “wise in the ways of the world”, and doubted the real presence of Christ, but then God made himself real to him by turning the Eucharist into heart tissue and blood. Then in the 1970’s medical exams were done on the relics, and it was concluded that the piece of flesh was human heart tissue, and the blood was human type AB. It said “the flesh was real flesh, the blood was real blood”.
I don’t know why, but it just convicted me so strongly. I just put my phone down, and looked out at the world in awe and said “You are real”.
Here I was someone who had an intellectual grasp of God, but didn’t know whether or not he was real. I was just like that monk, I was wise in the logic of the world, but not in that of God. Just like him I doubted his reality. Then he made himself real to him, in a way that He could understand, and God made himself real to me in a way I could understand.
I prayed that he’d be a reality to me, and by the end of the night, on which I thought I would never pray again, I looked out at the world, and for the first time ever, genuinely knew that God was listening to me.
Ever since then, I pray everyday. Since that day I have asked for many different prayers, and each one has been answered. This is why I never give up, because I pray, and remain faithful that he will answer, because he always does.
