Keeping Your Kids on God's Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith by Natasha Crain

Author:Natasha Crain [Crain, Natasha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736965095
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
Published: 2016-02-29T23:00:00+00:00

24. How can Christians believe miracles are even possible?

I recently had the opportunity to watch apologist Sean McDowell speak to my church’s high school youth group. McDowell did a presentation he calls the Atheist Encounter, in which he role-plays an atheist and raises tough questions for his Christian audience. It was a fantastic chance for teens to get exposed to atheist thinking, and McDowell held nothing back—calmly and confidently challenging them on everything from why they believed in the Bible to why they thought morality was anything more than a product of evolution.

The group seemed to thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to “stump the atheist.” But, toward the end of the session, a 14-year-old girl in the back stood up with tears streaming down her face. She confidently cried out to McDowell, “I can prove there’s a God! I was born six weeks early and my mom didn’t know if I would live. She prayed that I would be okay, and here I am today. I believe in God because I’m the result of a miracle! What do you have to say to that?”

You could hear a pin drop as the room waited to see how McDowell would respond. By that point in the session, most of the older kids realized the “atheist” on stage wouldn’t be convinced by such an argument at all. Clearly, there could be a perfectly natural explanation for the girl’s survival. One of every nine infants in the United States is born premature, and most survive.1 We typically don’t consider every premature birth survivor a miracle. McDowell graciously ended his role-playing at that point and gently explained how atheists believe there are natural explanations for any proposed miracle—from personal experiences to Jesus’ resurrection.

My heart went out to this young girl, who had obviously been taught that her survival was a miracle that proved God’s existence. Perhaps her survival was a miracle. I have no idea. But basing your faith on whether or not you’ve experienced a modern-day miracle misses the boat completely. For Christians, it misses the boat because our faith should be grounded first and foremost in the truth of one particular miracle: the resurrection of Jesus (see chapters 21-23). For atheists, it misses the boat because a lack of personally-experienced miracles says nothing about the truth of a possible resurrection miracle.

The common question “How can Christians believe miracles are even possible?” therefore needs some clarification before we answer. When our kids are challenged in this area, it’s important that they immediately understand there’s just one miracle that determines the truth of Christianity. The specific question they need to be able to answer is “How can Christians believe the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection is possible?” Giving them this clarity can help them quickly wade through the many tangential conversations that take place around this topic.

In this chapter, we’ll look at three key questions that will help our kids navigate the issue: What is a miracle? Are miracles possible? And why believe in biblical miracles?

What Is

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