The God You Can Know

“I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything that is in it […] for in Him we live and move and exist.” – Acts 17:23–24, 28 NASB

In a recent book, author Roy Abraham Varghese summarized arguments against belief in God. In particular, he described the struggles of philosopher Bertrand Russell, one of the twentieth century’s most vocal atheists.

Varghese describes how Russell’s daughter became a Christian but never was able to have any serious discussion with her father about God’s existence. She longed to convince Russell “that [she] had found what he had been looking for.” She wanted “to persuade him that the search for God does not have to be vain.” But his mind was closed, and she never could break through.

She believed her father’s “whole life was a search for God.” She sensed that, somewhere, “in the depths of his soul, there was a space that had once been filled by God, and he never found anything else to put in it.”

The apostle Paul found many like Russell in ancient Athens, where Paul proclaimed that God was real! But the miracle was that they could know God personally! Yes, He “made the world and everything that is in it.” But He also made each of us and wants us to know that we can “find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (v. 27).

Today, ask God to give you a greater burden for souls, so you can help lost lives find hope and salvation. Pray for breakthroughs. Pray that their eyes would be opened.

Reflection Question: For whose salvation are you currently praying?