In one of my previous articles, I proffered that “[a] single Odyssey article could never detail [whether there is a God] or the many [arguments] that stem from it, but I promise I will write more about this topic.” My next seven articles will be the fulfillment of this promise. Each one looks to answer a common question about the nature of God to reveal his presence on our lives through simple observation.

Question #1: “Who/what is God?”

According to Wikipedia, “God is conceived of as the Supreme Being and principal object of faith.” But if you really take the time to look, you will see that this definition, while true, is extremely vague. Consider why one group would believe in killing for their god and another group believes their god is one of pacifism. Anything can be a supreme being and a principal object of one’s faith. The real difference occurs when one notices that this object is not always able to be perceived. In fact, most times it can’t be, and when it is, many people search for answers in the natural world.

That is folly. Today, after thousands of years of existence, we have witnessed and empirically defined all sorts of natural phenomena, some of which many may never live to see. If anything new were to happen, it is therefore highly improbable that it would simply be another normal demonstration of the natural world. No; it would have to be either God or something similar.

But I digress. God is hard to detect, and most rational people would say that it’s quite hard to define something that they don’t know even exists. So, we’re sent back to square one, or so it seems. You see, many of my friends, family, and I can testify to the effect that there is a God. We have heard him as a voice in our heads, seen him as a face in the clouds (what are the odds that naturally moving water droplets could form a scale replica of a human face?), sung his praise as Bibles have survived fires, and prayed to him even if he didn’t answer right away.

There really is no real way to quantify this God in the same technical fashion as conventional reference sources. He looks a little different to everyone, and, as there are probably 100 billion people who have ever lived on this Earth, it becomes, then, quite difficult to pinpoint who he is. Perhaps, after hearing who he is from my perspective, you will be one step closer to understanding who God is.

Again, this is only God as he has shown himself to me. Your experience may be vastly different. This is only how I know there is a God. Perhaps it would be very easy for me to ramble on about the past 17 years, but I’m not going to do that. Instead, I am only going to talk about how I discovered God in my own life and why.

I am a proud Christian, having been raised as such, yet six or seven years ago, I began questioning the veracity of what was in the Bible. I believed in the historicity of Jesus as a person, but I began wondering if the same God in the Bible was around today. I didn’t see miracles, or ghosts, or demons, or anything supernatural in my own world. Slowly but surely, I began to feel God’s wisdom creeping back into my heart as I was baptized and joined a youth group at my church and began learning more about what God had to say to me. Yet the messages repeated themselves—they did not satisfy my intellectual cravings for new perspectives. While I formed many a wonderful friendship, I did not feel like there was enough of who God really was in my life. I mean, I went on a church retreat and just opened my heart and prayed to God, could feel his presence overwhelming me, but nothing really changed for some time. I took to macroevolution (more on that in my next article) as a scientific belief and, by and large, became a far less spiritual person. My experiences at Mill Springs served as something of a wake-up call; although I was not able to have the invigorating, direct contact with God that I had had on the retreat, God has put me in a better place now than ever. I am seeing immense blessings as a result.

So, how do I know there is a God? Because if there were not, I would not be as successful I am today. I don’t think it’s chance that my accomplishments simply happen; in fact, it’s not even my blood, sweat, or tears. It’s the same God we read about everywhere, and regardless of what you think of Him, it would be more absurd if He didn’t exist.