God is Real After All

The weirdest thing happened.

I asked God to help me believe. I did not expect an answer.

I got an answer.

---

Last year when I wrote my last blog post, despite spending the last six years attending church with my younger son (more accurately, for the sake of my younger son; I would not have attended church without him), I did not believe in the existence of God—that is, the existence of a divine, sentient “person” (specifically three divine “persons”—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). I also did not believe in an afterlife, or anything supernatural.

Being surrounded by Christians who were convinced God is real wasn’t enough, as if I’m somehow supposed to absorb their certainty by osmosis. Being dunked in a large vat of water “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” didn’t flip any mental switches for me and allow me to “get it” and make that leap of faith (although my depression ended after I began attending church, before my baptism). I needed evidence. As far as I was aware, there was no evidence.

The best I could do was go through the motions regardless of my disbelief—go to church every Sunday, pray for people despite not actually believing my prayers were making any difference. Nod and pretend, saying “uh huh, yep” when anyone commented about how much they looked forward to going to heaven and meeting Jesus someday.

What I believed was that loss of faith was driving an increasingly godless world toward madness. The most recent example: the rising antisemitism in America, especially among affluent college students—and faculty—who supported the Hamas terrorists who massacred 1,400 innocent Israeli citizens on October 7th, 2023. This is beyond madness. It’s evil.

I believed by becoming a Christian, I was doing my small but meaningful part in taking a stand against evil and bringing a little piece of heaven to Earth. At a minimum, I understood this to mean: go to church; obey the Ten Commandments; follow the Golden Rule to “love your neighbor as yourself”; be humble; and be mindful of my own shortcomings and forgiving of the shortcomings of others.

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Ephesians‬ ‭4‬:‭32‬ ‭NKJV

After discovering the Eastern Orthodox Church, I began taking introductory classes about the Orthodox faith that included the history of the early Church. I mentioned how I appreciated the Orthodox emphasis on imitating Christ, as opposed to the Protestant focus on “faith alone” and belief. The priest replied, “You are supposed to believe.” He also said when you struggle with something, you should pray about it. So that’s what I did.

On the night of December 18th, 2023, I prayed for God to help me believe He is real. Not just “follow,” or “trust,” or “imitate,” but to actually BELIEVE. FOR REAL.

December 19, 2023: Near Death Experience Testimonies

The next day, on December 19th, a near death experience (NDE) testimony appeared in my YouTube feed. It was titled (at the time) “Maybe Christians Were Right?” It was the first NDE testimony introduced by my YouTube algorithm. I clicked it. Of course, clicking the first video caused the algorithm to introduce more NDE testimonies that caught my interest. It took me almost a week to realize the first video was the first “answer” to my prayer. I had no prior interest in near death experiences and had not been watching any videos about this topic. Of course, it could have been a coincidence. I was watching a lot of videos about Christianity at the time, and given the title, it could have been pure chance that the video was introduced. That’s what I assumed.

January 19, 2024: Catholic House Blessing with Eastern Orthodox Holy Water

The next “answer” occurred a couple of weeks after my Catholic mother-in-law blessed my house with holy water on January 19th, 2024. I noticed one day that the phone stopped ringing. There were no more robocalls. The silence was so profound, I thought my phone stopped working. I checked the phone and it worked fine.

Okay, your phone quit ringing. So what?

I’ve been dealing with unwanted robocalls for years—at least once per hour, all day long. I registered my number on the National Do Not Call Registry. I turned on the spam blocker in my phone carrier account. Neither worked. I finally gave up, turned off the ringer in my office, and learned to ignore the phone. This was probably why I didn’t notice the cessation right away. I’m not aware of any “Stop Robocalls” law that went into effect on February 1st, 2024. I thought this was also another weird, interesting coincidence.

Sunday, February 18, 2024: Lilac Fragrance During Church Service

On Sunday, February 18th, 2024, during the worship singing at the Protestant church I attend with my younger son, I noticed a floral scent so strong, it smelled like it was being pumped into the room—it was everywhere and not coming from any particular direction. During this time, the clouds broke, and the sun shone through the south-facing windows, so the singers were lit up too. When the music ended, so did the scent. When the pastor began his sermon, the same floral scent briefly returned.

A couple of months later during the “Holy Week” Matins services at the Orthodox church, the incense the priest used on Holy Thursday and Friday (May 2nd and May 3rd, 2024) was exactly the same scent I noticed a few months earlier on February 18th at the Protestant church. When I asked the priest what kind of incense he used, he told me it was lilac, and that he likes to use lilac to represent Christ.

February 19, 2024: The Holy Cross

What finally convinced me happened during the early morning hours of February 19, 2024, exactly two months after the first “answer.”

I woke up in the middle of the night, sometime around 3 a.m., and couldn’t fall back asleep. An hour later, I crossed myself and prayed, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, please help me sleep.” 

What happened next blew me away.

There was a light spreading across the inside of my eyelids, as if a light was slowly turning on in the room. I opened my eyes for a moment to see what was happening, but I didn’t notice anything different—or maybe I did, but I didn’t want this strange effect to stop, so I closed my eyes again. The light continued to increase and spread, then a cross pattern appeared in the center of my vision, radiating outward like waves. I could have sworn I saw a face in the center of the cross, or the vague shape of a face. This continued for a minute or so until the light faded. I did not cross myself again.

From my journal, February 19, 2024.

I SAW THE HOLY CROSS.

I WAS NOT ASLEEP. I WAS NOT DREAMING.

That was the point of praying in the first place—I couldn’t sleep. All I was hoping for was the equivalent of a spiritual melatonin pill so I could fall back asleep and get a full night’s rest.

So many weird things have happened after my house was blessed with holy water, too many to include in this blog post. I’ve been taking notes and screenshots, jotting them all down in my journal. Maybe I’ll post them in another blog post. Maybe I’ll write a book. I don’t know. I’m still trying to process the jaw-dropping, mind-blowing realization that GOD IS REAL AFTER ALL.

(I didn’t notice the pattern until now. The first answer occurred on December 19th, 2023. A month later, on January 19th, 2024, my house was blessed with holy water. Then on February 19th, I saw the Holy Cross.)

Is it really that simple? Ask God to help you believe?

Having God answer you directly is WAY more convincing than any argument anyone has tried to come up with. All these philosophers, theologians, and apologists throughout the centuries—St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kierkegaard—and their attempts to prove the existence of God with the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument, arguments from Scripture, etc. when all they had to say was, “FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, ASK HIM YOURSELF WHY DON‘T YOU???”

The existence of God changes everything. It means:

• We have a soul that’s eternal.
• Our lives have a purpose.
• Death is not the end of our existence.
• We will be judged (either by God, or by our own guilty conscience).
• Heaven and hell are real.

Seriously, I feel like I’ve woken from the Matrix.

I’ve told a few people. Close family. A few friends. Almost no one believes me.

I recognize the irony. I’m a speculative fiction writer (and, so far, not a particularly successful one either). I get it. It’s okay. I forgive you.

I’ve been searching for evidence of God’s existence that’s more convincing than my story. It turns out there are a lot of stories of the miraculous and supernatural, especially in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church. Eucharistic miracles for example, where the communion bread miraculously turned into blood.

Eucharistic Miracles

According to a June 11, 2023 article from the National Catholic Register, “the three apparent Eucharistic miracles that have undergone the most extensive scientific analysis happened in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1992, 1994, 1996); Tixtla, Mexico (2006); and Sokólka, Poland (2008).” Scientific studies concluded that the blood samples were fresh, and came from a heart muscle (myocardium) that showed signs of being under severe stress. “It was inflamed and had white blood cells, meaning the heart was alive and pumping when the sample was taken.”

The Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin, an ancient linen burial cloth bearing the front and back image of a crucified man, is another example. Previously thought to have been a medieval hoax after a flawed 1988 study used a sample taken from the edge of the Shroud, more recent studies have confirmed that the Shroud is, in fact, 2000 years old, that the image is a photo negative, which rules out forgery, since no one could have possibly known what a negative of an image was before the invention of the camera. The image also includes 3D details impossible to detect without today’s technology.

Tim Tebow John 3:16 Miracle of Numbers Story

On January 8, 2009, during the college football national championship, Tim Tebow wore “John 3:16” under his eyes. Exactly three years later, on January 8, 2012, during the 2012 NFL playoff game between the the Broncos and the Steelers:

• Tebow threw for 316 passing yards
• Tebow averaged 31.6 yards per completion (highest in NFL postseason history)
• CBS’s final ratings for the game was 31.6
• Pittsburgh’s final time of possession was 31:06

Near Death Experience Testimonies

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of near death experience (NDE) testimonies of people who claim to have experienced the afterlife. It’s possible some of these testimonies are made up. I can’t believe every single one of them are made up. The visual and sensory details they use to describe their near-death experiences are way beyond the (abysmally lacking) level of detail I see in an average speculative fiction story. Take it from me—making up convincing details for a made-up story is not easy (if it was, I’d be published by now, and I wouldn’t be wasting my precious made-up details for a blog post).

I doubt this blog post will convince anyone. All I’m hoping for is to knock a few percentage points off your 100% certitude of God’s non-existence, and get you to wonder, maybe?

Trying to convince anyone God exists isn’t really the point of this blog post. The point is that now I KNOW, with 100% certainty, that God exists. And that changes everything.

The reality of God’s existence means I’m realigning my fiction—and my life—to a higher purpose. While I don’t plan to necessarily write “Christian” fiction with a Christian protagonist, my plan is to align my writing to point toward everything God represents—love (vs. hate), truth (vs. lies), free-will (vs. coercion), humility (vs. arrogance), altruism (vs. selfishness), forgiveness (vs. revenge), and the redemptive value of suffering. The reality of God means there is an actual, no-kidding, spiritual battle between Good and Evil. It’s an existential, high-stakes battle to save every human soul.

---

In the summer of 1990, when I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy, I asked God a question.

I was in the middle of SERE: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. It was a three-week program designed to teach future Air Force officers how to survive in the woods if we end up behind enemy lines.

I was tired, cold, hungry, and miserable. I had no experience with camping, or being in the woods. I hadn’t taken a shower for days. I was thinking the Air Force Academy was the biggest mistake of my life. The sky was overcast, and it started to rain.

I looked up at the clouds just above the treetops, at the falling raindrops. I thought, If You stop the rain, I’ll believe in You.

The rain stopped. Immediately.

I was astonished. A moment earlier, raindrops were falling. In the next, they stopped. Impossible, I thought. I didn’t believe in God at the time, so I don’t know why I thought to address God in the first place. It wasn’t a question; more like a deal with God that I immediately broke, because I couldn’t believe it. I took it as a weird coincidence and didn’t think much about it again.

Until now.

I think the first step to believing in God is to be open minded, and to WANT to believe. Otherwise you’ll do exactly what I did in the summer of 1990—dismiss God’s miraculous answer as a weird coincidence.

Think I’m going crazy? When’s the last time YOU asked God to help you believe He’s real? 

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

Matthew 7:7

More to the point—if you ask and get an answer, will you write it off as a weird coincidence? Or will you commit to following Him?