This topic is in two parts. Part one should take about 13 to 16 minutes when played without stopping. New Topic: Why Should I Believe in Jesus? Short Answer Version: There are many good reasons to believe. We will look at them in several general categories of ''Why'' that apply to this question. They include Benefits Offered, Needs Met, Evidence Provided, and other similar topics. After reading about them below, if you wish to delve deeper, you will find a large number of menu items at the bottom of this page. There are so many good reasons and answers to why you should believe in Jesus, that they are impossible to count. But they are possible to experience with just a little faith. Long Answer Version: First Category: Benefit Offered. The reasons to believe in Jesus start with these: His promises to believers His track record of fulfilling His promises Knowing Him He makes a really good friend Eternal life, inheriting God's kingdom New purpose and meaning He provides practical guidance and solutions to your problems and isues Forgiveness His presence, which combats loneliness and comforts us The benefits of salvation also include many other blessings, like lifelong help from God, and royalty as a child of the most royal King. You will have an improved sense of identity and belonging that will lift your spirits. New and great value is placed on you. You become a partaker of God's nature so to speak. When you spend time with Him, His nature rubs off on you somewhat. Innumerable believers have attributed their high level of success to Him. You are given availability to peace that passes all understanding. You are given a future and a hope. There is an immense sense of freedom that comes. I could list a hundred more benefits, but I'll confine the rest of my list to these: You are set free from sin and emotional bondage. Your past sins are cleansed off of you, and your future sins are paid for. You can feel cleansed from present sins as well by confessing them to God, when you realize they have occurred, and turning back to Him. Perhaps the most powerful reasons for believing are that He always loves you for who you are, and also sees your potential to grow more into your better self. He provides spiritual power for you to overcome temptation, side with Him in spiritual light against the influences of spiritual darkness, turn away from harmful thinking patterns, experience fredom spiritually and emotionally, and be healed of past hurts. I believe God is not limited to time, seeing that He created it. Therefore, He can see The Future You right now. He sees you living in the realization of your great potential during this lifetime, and shining with even greater potential eternally in His kingdom. I have heard many people tell about miraculous things that Jesus did in their lives. If I were to name the large number of wonderful things He has done so far in my life, it would bewilder you. I realize it is intriguing to hear the juicy details of such a claim, but I would prefer to keep your mind on the main point. It is that YOU can experience many positive and miraculous experiences in your own life when you believe in Jesus and put your trust in Him. You will not experience them all in the beginning, but with time you will look back on your life and see He was there all along doing incredible things for you, starting with one of the greatest miracles of all: you becoming born again from His Spirit. You get a new nature growing within you, kind of like a seed. It is full of joy, love, and peace. You can tap into all these things by seeking to be close to God, trusting Him, and living in His ways. The popularity of self improvement books, seminars, websites and videos indicate people, even those who are ''comfortable in their own skin'', want to become better. Believing in Jesus is the best way possible to improve yourself. He can help you change your life for the positive in a better and more powerful way than any human teacher can. One thing to remember is that God gives spiritual tools to those who believe in Jesus. So after you choose to believe in Him, use your tools! If you don't use them, they won't help you. You can grow in the use of those tools, including faith, believing prayer, trust in God, teaming up with His Holy Spirit in you, and operating with confidence and authority to use your God given talents and giftings. The Bible itself is a powerful spiritual tool, and is full of insight on how to use specific tools God gives. There are many other benefits of becoming saved that I could list, but it is better for you to experience them yourself. He is calling you in a gentle way to come to Him and be saved. Second Category: Needs Met I have found that the various sources of evidence for Jesus, as convincing as they are, have not been as impressive as the many ways He proved Himself to me personally. He met my needs, and not only when I first believed. As new needs arose, He met those too, and I can say that in His timing He fulfilled my true needs above and beyond anything I could have expected before I first believed. After you are in a strong relationship with Him, I would be surprised if He does not prove Himself to your heart over and over. There is no greater evidence for Jesus than when He makes Himself real to you. It is undeniable. It is need meeting. Even though every believer experiences God's presence and His evidence differently, we all have the same promises from scripture to tap into. Pray that God will reveal the answers to His promises of relationship with Him. The many accounts of answered prayer in the name of Jesus are prevalent wherever He is believed in to meet needs. Many thousands of incidents considered miraculous have taken place and associated with Jesus. I have been the recipient of too many to count. The list of need meeting evidence of Jesus continues to increase every day. What are your needs today? Are you aware of what they truly are? Start asking God to meet your true needs now. Once you are saved, watch Him work on your behalf to meet those needs and more that you never realized. You may not see it happen immediately, but you will see it happen when you find you no longer have needs you once had. Use wisdom when praying for God to meet your needs. Refrain from stipulating how your needs must be met. For example, if your need is loneliness, pray for healing of loneliness, not a hot date. When I was a single and lonely man, I had to be healed of the related depression and strong impulses to try prematurely to solve my own problems, rather than depend on God. I knew, I would not be a good match for any woman in my current state. I decided to go to a special place once a week, spending an hour praying for my future spouse. I prayed that God would prepare her for me and prepare me for her. I did this faithfully for about a year. When the day arrived that she was ready for me and I was ready for her, God brought her into my life in a miraculous way. She turned out to be the hottest date I could imagine! We have been happily married for decades and have risen two wonderful daughters. Over the course of time a person's needs change with the season. God provided for my needs in many incredible ways in each season, whether it was an easy or difficult season to make my way through. Financially, He blessed me beyond my expectations time and again. Positive outcomes are the result of our good God meeting needs. We might not have realized it when we had a particular need, but a positive outcome by God reveals what the true need was. Should you become a lifelong believer, you will look back on many God given positive outcomes. You will see He was good at meeting the desires you thought were needs, but also the needs that He knew were the true, deep needs. Third Category: Evidence Provided If you are hesitant to experience the evidence found in relationship with God, consider the next best thing, finding the perspective of good Christians as to the benefits they have experienced from their relationships with Him. No human alive on earth today, is perfect. However, some are better representatives of Christianity than others. I have known several non Christians who attended churches, Bible studies, and home worship groups, for the purpose of learning about Jesus, and observing the people who love Him. I knew one, who came for a year before accepting Jesus into his heart. But he kept coming back because of the people and, ''that something different'' about them. Many times I have heard of a person saying to a believer, ''I want what you have.'' But this only comes from getting to know believers. You might have heard the expression that something is ''better caught than taught''. That is definitely true about knowing Jesus and seeing His Holy Spirit alive in people you know. Look for people like that, without expecting them to be non sinners, non hypocritical, or non judgmental. Expect them to be fallible human beings that care a lot about Jesus. Be forgiving with them if it seems they are ever being difficult. See what happens. Believers in Jesus, might be able to tell you first hand accounts of miracles God has performed in their lives. Ask them. Perhaps the events might prove credible. I have met hundreds who have told me their personal stories involving God working in mercy and love to do what is considered impossible by many people. These incidents are treasured memories to those who received or witnessed them. Overwhelming External Sources There is more evidence from external sources for why you should believe in Jesus than any of us could absorb in a lifetime. Some of them are so well known and easily taken for granted, that people don't grasp the evidence value they hold. To start, you are probably aware that He is such a significant figure in history that our calendar starts on the date people considered to be His birth. It was the beginning of our current age. That should give us a clue as to His positive impact on the world. Starting with only 12 believers, now more than 2.7 billion people consider themselves followers of Jesus as He is depicted in the Bible. Jesus currently has more followers than any other human being has ever had, by far. If you believe God does not exist, you might want to consider how far in the minority you are. About 79% of the world's population believe in a Most High God and claim to follow his ways. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations I have met a large number of people who are shocked to hear that the vast majority of people believe God exists. Why are they shocked? Because throughout their lives, they have been exposed mostly to people who are unbelievers or, are negative about the God they imagine might exist. Those who identify as athiests, believing God does not exist, are in an extremely small minority. 99.7% of people living outside China or Russia believe in God or are have not shut the door to believing. About 3% of the world's population are atheists. Of that 89% live in China or Russia. That amounts to 2.68% of the earth's population. In Russia, only 13% of the 36 million people are athiests. In China, the percentage not believing in a religion is 67%. That leaves up to 462.6 million possible believers in China. By simple subtraction it leaves about 0.32% of the world's population other than in China and Russia self identified as athiests. All of these statistics indicate a relatively infinitesimal percentage of athiests in the world. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism , (Wikipedia's statistics appear well documented as of the date posted.) Similarly, very few people outside China and Russia, can be counted as agnostics. An agnostic is a person who holds that it is unknown whether God exists, at least to them personally. Although agnosticism is a well known stance, there are so few agnostics in the world, that a trustworthy record of their numbers does not exist. Ironically, the few that do exist seem to have a very large voice, especially in certain influential circles. I have experienced an elevated presence of agnosticism among professors in secular universities, their students, and influencers in secular media industries. When small groups like this have wide scale influence, it seems they are not so small. Of course, a truth is not determined by how many people believe it. However, the facts indicate belief in the Most High God is by far, the most prevalent of intelligent choices. It indicates most people find belief in God credible. Another compelling, yet widely overlooked piece of evidence is this: The book that tells Jesus' life story is the book that has sold the most copies of all time, namely the Holy Bible. This should indicate that many people read it and give it great value. The Bible demonstrates God's existence thousands of times in various ways. It portrays the life of Jesus from many human witnesses. It tells His habits, His unique oratory acumen, His sense of humor, His sarcasm against deceptive evil doers, His friendship, His empathy, His compassionate emotions (crying, lamenting, healing the lepers), and many other intimate and intricate personal details. Nearly everything we see that indicates a strong anti Jesus sentiment in modern western culture, is ironically evidence of Jesus. Why? Because if Jesus wasn't real, nobody would be so militantly trying to discredit and disrespect Him! If Jesus wasn't real, there would be no Easter Bunny to subtly obscure the real meaning of Easter, or Santa Claus to rob Christmas of its main character. All Saints Day would not be superceded in our culture by Halloween as a holiday. Website Theme: All You Need to Do To Be Saved is Believe in Jesus Christ as Your Savior. He Has Already Done the Work to Earn Your Entry into Heaven. To continue to the second part of this Topic, please click the link below.