Daily Encounter: A Week-day Devotional by a staff of ACTS International.

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."¹

I appreciate the way the Bible opens. No fanfare. No fancy words. Just the simple statement: "In the beginning God." It is a totally non-defensive statement. God isn't trying to prove himself or defend his existence. He doesn't have to. We can take his statement or leave it. It's up to us. It's our choice.

In his booklet, The Reason Why, Robert Laidlaw shared how a former president of the New York Scientific Society once gave eight reasons why he believed in God.

"The first one is this. Take ten identical coins and mark them one to ten, place them in your pocket, then take one out. There is one chance in ten that you will get number one. Now replace it, and chances that number two will follow number one are not one in ten, but one in one hundred. With each new coin taken out the chances that it too will follow in the right order are multiplied by ten, so that the chance of all ten following in sequence is one chance in ten billion."

George Gallup, the famed American statistician, is reported to have said, "Take the human body aloneâ€"the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity."

The bottom line is that belief in God is a choice. For some it's a faith choice. For others it's a moral choice. I say a moral choice because if we choose to believe in God, we know that we are morally responsible. If we choose not to believe in God, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are not morally responsible for how we live and, thus, can live any way we like. Whatever choice we choose, the choice we make will make us. It will also determine our eternal destiny. Forever.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please give me the wisdom to know and the desire and courage to always make the right choicesâ€"faith wise and moral. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

1. Genesis 1:1 (NIV).

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