To believe in God, is more than believing that God exists. Believing in God is believing in yourself, that you were created by God. God has conceived your existence and you are created in His image. You were created for a purpose, which God has caused to be. You are not here by chance; you are here because there was a divine conception of your existence.
To not believe in God is to say you have no purpose to exist. Your very life is a mere incident of nature, without plan or reason. You are merely a piece of happenstance evolvements. You have no worth and no future beyond what you see and can comprehend about you. But to believe in God is to have reason to hope for an eternal life beyond this life.
Do you want to know your Creator personally? If you do, you must believe in Him. You have reason to know Him because He has an interest in your life here on earth and your future beyond this life. You must come to accept His purpose in your life. He wants you to desire to be like Him, free from all evil. That is the future He has planned for you. It is called eternal life which is an everlasting life with God.
No man can prove to you that God exists, but God can prove to you that He exists. You must give Him a chance to prove Himself to you. You must believe in Him and He will reveal Himself through His Holy Spirit. God is a spirit and He communicates through the spirit. You also have a spirit, and it is through your spirit that He can convey the knowledge of His existence.
God has created you both spiritually and physically. Your spirit will survive your physical death and you will return to God in your spirit. Your purpose of life is primarily in your future existence. Knowing God and what He wants for you will cause you to desire eternal life with Him. This is your incentive to obey God.
This life is a preparatory existence whereby you are given a time to prepare for life after death. This is also called a probationary state wherein you can choose to believe in God and desire to be like God or you can disbelieve in God which will deny you the privilege of eternal life with God. The consequence of your determined disbelief will cause you to spend eternity with those like you who have also disbelieved and disobeyed God until death. Your faith in God and your hope of spending eternity with Him is the initial means of your conversion from being a disbeliever to being a believer in God. To be fully converted you must fulfill the plan of salvation which God has provided.
To believe in God is to exercise trust in Him. To gain a full trust in Him is to seek the truth that is in Him. Beyond the normal reasoning of man is the wisdom and knowledge that can be communicated to man from God by divine revelation. He favors those who have a desire to gain knowledge from Him for a good purpose. He opens the windows of heaven to those who have humbled themselves as little children and who have recognized His superiority over the natural man.
God is always right which may cause a person to feel inferior and afraid of Him. His justice is a part of His personality and gives mankind an awareness of their human weaknesses and their inclination to sin against God’s will. God has given unto mankind His law through His word. The fullness of His word is contained in the Bible and the Book of Mormon and it causes mankind to have a conscience to guide them in the choices they make. Being aware of His law an individual exercises his agency to make the choice between doing good or doing evil.
Much is determined in the individual’s view of God. If the individual sees God as a demanding judge who is not tolerant of any sin, they may not even try to know Him. If they see Him as being easy going, tolerating mankind to the point of saving them in their sins, they fail to see Him as He really is. God wants mankind to be like Him, pure without sin. They must strive to overcome their sins to prove their sincerity. They must endure to the end of their lives by retaining a remission of the sins and asking God to forgive them as often as the sin.
God, being the great creator, hasn’t put mankind in this state to condemn them; His purpose is to give them the knowledge of good and evil that they may experience an opposition to Himself. Becoming aware of the opposition, they will have an opportunity to choose between good and evil. They must retain a faith in Him and a hope in His promises to save them from their sins. They must have confidence that God is on their side and will rescue them from their adversary, the devil. The devil is an enemy of God and seeks to destroy God’s plans, but God will succeed in the end.
God has provided the means by which an individual can retain faith and hope in Him. It is in His word. His word expresses the love God has for His creation. It expresses the grace of God. God loves the world—His Creation. He has given His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as a sacrifice to Himself. That perfect sacrifice atones for all the sins of mankind if the sinners repent and turn from their sins. Those who refuse to repent of their sins, refuse to ask God for His forgiveness, and die in their sins will be as the devil and his angels. They are in a state of misery beyond reclaiming.
Those who exercise their agency by obeying God’s commandments as He has given them through His Only Begotten Son, will be able to claim salvation. This is possible through God’s provision through His mercy. His love for mankind is the divine motivation of extending mercy unto the repentant soul. Through a broken heart and contrite spirit one can hope for their soul’s salvation.
God’s plan for your salvation is having faith in Jesus Christ, the remission of your sins through repentance, baptism by immersion and the laying on of hands for the reception of the Holy Ghost by one having authority. You then have hope for your resurrection, even as Jesus was resurrected, and for being judged acceptable for eternal life. In doing this you have responded to that which God has planned for you personally. He has invested the blood of His only begotten Son in your soul’s salvation. God so loved the world by giving His only begotten Son as an investment made for all mankind, but only those who respond and fulfill His plan will inherit the great reward of eternal life. We all have reason to hope and pray that we each will receive eternal life by the means provided by Jesus Christ.
The words of King Benjamin in Mosiah 2:13-23:
Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things both in heaven and in earth;
Believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth;
Believe that man doth not comprehend all things which the Lord can comprehend.
And again: Believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you:
And now, if you believe all these things, see that ye do them.
And again I say unto you as I have said before, that as ye have come to the knowledge of the glory of God,
Or if ye have known of his goodness, and have tasted of his love, and have received a remission of your sins, which causeth such exceeding great joy in your souls,
Even so I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and his goodness and long suffering towards you unworthy creatures,
And humble yourselves even in the depths of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the angel;
And behold, I say unto you, that if ye do this, ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins;
And ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true.
The words of Jesus Christ in John 3:11-21
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.
If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
