Thanksgiving Essays
This site annually hosts essay contests in November/December entitled "Why I am personally grateful to God." The essay was to be written including reasons why the author was grateful to God and how He has helped him in his life. Entries were selected on the basis of how they gave glory to God.
| 2001 Essay |
| No Entry Received |
| 2000 Essay |
| There is one real reason I am grateful to God. It is that
I am able to sit here today and type this. My answer is very simple
here. The basic fact that I am able to convey my emotions, and that I
have emotions which I can share is a miracle in itself. Before, when I
was doubting God and Christianity, I had no direction, no reason. Now I
do. I know that everything that happens to me, good or bad, has meaning.
Through my mistakes and talents, pain and happiness, I have learned more
about myself and the world than I ever would have without God. Without
God, nothing kept me from being unfaithful, nothing moved me. Without
God, I became very apathetic and undriven. Now, I am criticized for my
beliefs. I attend school in the engineering department of a university
and few of the students are religious. Often I have a hard time
justifying myself to these people. This has only makes me stronger,
because I am logical myself yet I still have strong faith and emotion
when it comes to my religion. To turn around an individual like myself,
God deserves praise. God deserves praise for allowing me the ability to
convey my beliefs through science. God gave us the ability to find the
truth, to answer questions. God gave us wonderful emotions all for free.
My understanding of God has not only made me more faithful but a better
person in general. But this understanding is only possible by God!
Without God, nothing is possible, but with God, so much is possible, and
I have witnessed this first hand by accepting Christ simply by my own
investigation and questioning, not by force from parents, etc.
Adam |
| 1999 Essay |
| I am personally grateful to God, because I was uncertain in
the path that I had chosen in life. Just under a year ago, I tried to
commit suicide; However, I was unsuccessful, even though I had very high
and dangerous levels of poison in my body. I took this as a sign from God
to change my ways and better myself. A second chance if you will. I'm am
very grateful for this "second chance" that he has given me. I
have used it in a productive way, I went on to graduate high school with
my class, and I am now attending college and maintaining a 3.33 GPA as a
true freshman with 17 credits, while being an active member of the track
and field team. I have become an active member of a local Christian church
that is here near my college campus. I am serving God in any way that I
can through my newly found church, and I feel that he has shown me my true
friends, and how I would have hurt them if I would have accomplished my
horrendous act. Every morning I wake up grateful that I am alive and well,
thanks to God and the second chance that he has given to me.
Joe |
Reflections
We are what we think.
- 01/15/2019 04:00 PM
Scientific Discovery and God: The Universe, Part 1
How did the universe come into being? The last century has revealed a stark contrast between what secular scientists expected to find regarding the big “origins” questions and what scientific research actually uncovered. In part 1 of this series, I’ll discuss how this contrast played out concerning the origin of the universe. In future installments I’ll consider, in turn, the origins…
() - 01/08/2019 01:00 PM
Addressing Skeptical Challenges, Part 2
I’m not sure if the internet and social media as a whole are either an intrinsic good or an intrinsic bad, but as technologies they do afford opportunities to discuss Christian apologetics issues. In part one of this series I responded to an objection by a skeptic who raised questions about what I wrote in “The Historic Alliance of Christianity and Science.” Here in part two I’ll address his other major objection…
() - 01/01/2019 01:00 PM
Addressing Skeptical Challenges, Part 1
Social media and the internet allow ample opportunities to discuss the truth claims of historic Christianity. A while ago I interacted with a skeptic who had some questions about an article I wrote, “The Historic Alliance of Christianity and Science,” in RTB’s former magazine Facts & Faith (vol. 12, no. 3).1 The skeptic viewed belief in God as nonsense in light of the problem of evil,…
() - 12/25/2018 01:00 PM
God’s Existence Best Explains Life’s Most Profound Realities
Can we justify concepts like logic, moral values, and universals from a naturalistic, atheistic perspective? Or do we need a transcendent grounding like historic Christianity’s explanation for these meaningful realities? Using a type of abductive logical reasoning (referred to as an inference to the best explanation), I’ll illustrate how five profound realities are plausibly explained by Christian theism. Accounting for Five Meaningful Realities…
() - 12/18/2018 01:00 PM
The Difference between Mystery and Contradiction in Theology
The God of the Bible is infinite and eternal while human beings are finite and temporal. That means humans can never fully comprehend or exhaustively understand God.1 Yet those profound limitations do not mean human beings can’t know God or enjoy a personal relationship with him. Also, because many, if not all, of the things Christians believe about God involve mystery, it does not mean those beliefs…
() - 12/11/2018 01:00 PM
Virtue to Face the Challenges of Life
I have been very afraid at least four times in my life. On one occasion I fought a man who had attacked my wife in a dark alley late at night. On another, my daughter Jacqueline was extremely ill with a mysterious virus. A similar experience took place when my son Michael was struggling with serious health problems. And lastly, I was…
() - 12/04/2018 01:00 PM
Approaching End Times Prophecy with Care
One of the most controversial topics that the Bible addresses is eschatology. This theological term literally means the study of last things—popularly known as end times. Scripture speaks of both humankind’s past origin in creation as well as our future destiny in consummation. Yet rightly interpreting and properly understanding what the Bible teaches about the end of the world has proved difficult and controversial in…
() - 11/27/2018 01:00 PM
Take Up and Read: Nicomachean Ethics
I am writing this ongoing blog series on Reflections to encourage Christians to read more vigorously and enrich their lives with Christian classics in such fields as theology, philosophy, and apologetics. Hopefully, a brief introduction to these Christian texts will motivate today’s believers to, as St. Augustine was called in his dramatic conversion to Christianity, “take up and read” (Latin: Tolle lege) these…
() - 11/20/2018 01:00 PM
How JFK and C. S. Lewis Influenced My Life
Two men I’ve been reading about for virtually my entire life but for very different reasons died on the exact same day. For more than 50 years, I have been learning about the life and thought of both President John F. Kennedy and Christian thinker and author C. S. Lewis. What follows is a brief biography of these two twentieth-century…
() - 11/13/2018 01:00 PM
Take Up and Read: C.S. Lewis’ Case for the Christian Faith
I am writing this ongoing blog series on Reflections to encourage Christians to read more vigorously and enrich their lives with Christian classics in such fields as theology, philosophy, and apologetics. Hopefully, a brief introduction to these Christian texts will motivate today’s believers to, as St. Augustine was called in his dramatic conversion to Christianity, “take up and read” (Latin: Tolle lege) these excellent…
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http://godandscience.org/doctrine/thanksessays.html
Last updated November 25, 2001
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