Prepared for Faith

We know that God is beyond time because He is the creator of time. We also know that He has been planning our salvation since before we were created. So, if God has always known that we would follow Him, and if He has placed various prophecies and signs in our path, why didn’t God ‘just save us’ and move on? It is tempting to think that God would ‘just save us’ and move on, but that would not be an expression of His love. He didn’t want only to save us. He wants to be in communion with us, and for that He needs us to want to be in communion with Him. This is why He has continually placed signs in our paths. He has been preparing for faith.

IN THOSE DAYS, the Athenians took hold of Paul and brought him to the Areopagos, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you present? For you bring some strange things to our ears; we wish to know therefore what these things mean.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagos, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ – Acts 17.19-28

In today’s reading from Acts, we see that Saint Paul helped the Greeks to understand that God has already spoken to their hearts. They just weren’t aware of Who He was at the time. Saint Paul reminded them they already knew Him when he said, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” You may wonder who this “Unknown God” was in the ancient Greek world. Some think the Greeks were ‘covering their bases’ just in case there was a God they hadn’t figured out yet. This is the furthest thing from the truth. In fact, the Greeks KNEW long before Christ was on Earth, that there existed an Unknown (unknowable) God who was above all other Gods. God had prepared them for centuries to accept Christ and the Holy Trinity. Saint Paul only had to help them understand their own faith. I offered a lecture several years ago on this very topic titled, “The Transition of the Ancient Greeks from Polytheism to Christianity.”

God has prepared YOU to have faith in Him. You only need to search your heart and your past and see the signs He has left you. Follow the path knowing that it leads to Christ.