Can you trust and believe in the Bible?

1 Peter 3:15 NIV But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.

How to share your testimony?

We must always share our testimony and in this do so with uncompromising truth and unconditional love.

Unfortunately, we typically make 2 errors when sharing.
We either have total skepticism. Which means we doubt everything.
Or we have blind acceptance. In which the Bible does not encourage us to have blind acceptance.
We actually have the evidence as to why we can trust and believe in the Bible. So let’s learn it and in this way have informed faith based on evidence. God is not intimidated by our questions.

Why can we Trust the Bible? The Bible is internally consistent, textually accurate, historically reliable, scientifically compatible, prophetically fulfilled and experientially transformative.

The Bible has a bunch of reliable evidence and it changes lives. So what is the Bible? The Bible is a collection of 66 books, written by over 40 different authors across three continents in three languages, over a span of 1500 years with evidence of divine inspiration.
We know it is divine because it was written by 40 different authors over 1500 years and it still has the same message. It is internally consistent.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

There are 64000 references where the Bible connects with itself. The entire Bible is connected and the central theme in all of it is Jesus Christ. From the beginning to the end.

The Bible is textually accurate. The Bible has not been changed over time.

Matthew 24:35 NIV Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

We have over a mile high of evidence, literally, that the Bible has not changed. When we stack all the text in Greek, Latin and other languages, it measures a mile high.

The Bible was written and shared with everyone. It was sent out immediately. Revisions were not made. It was even sent out before it was finished in its entirety. The Bible is not a series of one offs. It is a collection of examples to share 1 message.

The Bible is historically reliable. It is rooted in real history. Archaeologists keep finding evidence of its reliability.

The Bible is scientifically compatible. Science and the Bible are not at odds. They don’t contradict each other, they just ask different questions. Science is asking how. The Bible gives us the why. All the answers to the questions point to God is the master and sovereign king of all.

“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” -Albert Einstein

Science is not threatened by God, it is enhanced by God. Science does not create anything. Science discovers. You can’t discover what does not already exist. Science had to catch up with the Bible.

The Bible is prophetically fulfilled. Over 300 prophecies are fulfilled in the Bible. Trying to fulfill just 5 prophecies is proven to be 1 out of 100 trillion odds.

Micah 5:2 NIV “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

700 years before Jesus was born, prophecies in Micah talked about Him.

In Psalm 22, David writes about Jesus' death 1000 years before execution was invented.
Matthew 27:46 NIV About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)

Jesus quotes Psalm 22 in Matthew 27:46. These are just 3 of over 300 prophecies that connect in the Bible.

The Bible is experimentally transformative. It transforms because it addresses all the aspects of our lives. The more we let it get inside of us the more it transforms us. We don’t just read the Bible, the Bible reads us. God preserved His word for 1000s of centuries so that we could have His love letter in our hands. So that we can know our identity.

John 6:33 NIV For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

Read the Bible. It will address all your issues. Then we will fall in love with the author. The divine author will sit with us when we read it and if we don’t understand it the Holy Spirit will help us.

Dive into His word because it changes lives. It changes life. Don’t struggle when we have the answers. You have never and will never meet someone who has read the Bible and regrets it.

No other book can change your life. Every word is life changing even if you don’t understand it.
We can have hope and not live in the brokenness of our past.