Knowing in Your Knower

. I want to start off by asking you this If you were in a conversation with someone that you sort of knew , but they weren't a really close friend or anything , and they said to you I don't believe God exists , what would you say to them ? How would you try to prove to them that God actually does exist ?

See , the situation for many of us is that we'd really believe that God exists . In fact , it goes beyond simple belief . We know it , and we know it not only just in our heads , but I call it knowing in our knower . We know it deep in the depth of us , down in the part of us , that it really is at our core .

We know deep within us that God exists , and we can know it in our knower and still not be able to explain it to somebody else , and that can be frustrating sometimes , both for us and the person we're talking to , that's trying to understand why we believe what we believe or where we're coming from .

Well , I want to tell you a story this morning that I think will

help you a little bit . This story is about a man named Bob who went to his regular barber shop to get his hair cut and get his beard trimmed . He'd been going to the same barber now for a number of years , so he knew the barber , but just as an acquaintance . But they always had good conversations together .

So , as usual , as the barber began to do his work , they had an ongoing conversation about football and family and hockey and all kinds of things . Finally , the conversation got around to talking about God and the barber said I don't believe that God exists . Well , bob looked at him and said why do you say that ?

The barber stopped clipping at the moment and stepped back and said well , you just have

to go out into the street to realize that God doesn't exist . Tell me , if God exists , would there be so many sick people ? Would there be abandoned children ? Would there be people starving and suffering all around the world ?

If God existed , there wouldn't be any pain or suffering or pandemic , there wouldn't be all kinds of political unrest , there wouldn't be racism , there wouldn't be any of those things . I simply can't imagine that a loving God would allow anything like that to happen . Bob thought for a moment . He didn't respond right away because he was uncertain of how

to put into words what he was thinking and , most of all , he was a little bit shy about getting into an argument . He really didn't want to make a scene there in the barber shop . The barber finished his job . Bob left . Just as he was walking away from the barber shop , bob saw a man in the street with long , stringy , dirty hair and an untrimmed beard .

He looked pretty dirty and pretty unkept . Bob stopped , turned around and went back into the barber shop again and he said to his barber friend you know what ? Barbers don't exist . The barber looked at him and said how can you say that I'm here , I'm a barber and I just worked on you ?

Bob said no , you say that I'm here , I'm a barber and I just worked on you . Bob said no , barbers don't exist because if they did , there would be no people with dirty , long hair and untrimmed beards like that man outside . The barber

laughed and said oh , but barbers do exist . What happens is the people don't come in to me . Exactly said Bob . That's the point . God also exists . What happens is that people don't go to him . Isn't that the truth for a lot of people ?

They look at all the negative things in the world and they say , hey , you know , if there really was a God , none of this negative stuff would be happening . Everybody would be living in peace and getting along , there would be no sickness , there would be no sorrow , there certainly wouldn't be people dying from a pandemic . But the truth is God exists .

People are just not relying on Him to help them and to be in control Over . In 2 Timothy , chapter 4 and verse 2 , it tells us that we are to be prepared in season and out of season . We're to be ready to give an answer to people who want to know , want to know about who God is and God wants and how he works and where is he if he's real .

And so that challenge is there for all of us to be ready at all times to be able to say what we know in our knower about our God , to let people know that he is real , that he is real in our lives and that he's important to us . And often God will work in us to give us insights and ideas and stories that we can use .

That will help to relate to the person who's asking the question , just like Bob did with the story about the man who needed a haircut . God bless you . Ask God to use you , expect him to open doors for you . Be blessed , my friends . Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday , right here on Starting Right with Danny Mac .