Hello,
On August 21, 2003, God spoke to me Good News. Then when I tried to find out what the Good News meant, I was guided to the church I no longer attended. My dad was there. We went to the church and held hands talking. When I asked him what the “Good News” meant, he went upstairs and brought down a Good News Bible. Now I know God exists for a fact, Jesus loves us and the Bible is legit. I’ve been telling people about God with complete dedication since that date.
Lets open with prayer:
Thank You, God, for letting me know you’re real.
Thank You for always being good and loving.
Thank You for teaching us to be good and loving always.
Thank You for always being beside us humans that you made.
Thank You for not turning your back on us.
Thank You for bearing your back for us on the cross.
Thank You for being an awesome and loving God.
Thank You for hope for healings.
Thank You for eternal hope even if healings do not come.
Thank You for blessing us down here especially through Abraham.
Thank You for forgiving our sins.
Thank You for your Grace.
Thank You for purpose in life.
Thank You for being love.
Thank You for there being something to find in every different person and type of relationship.
I also thank you for Victor Nunez, who has been with me on much of this journey and maintains this site with me. God, there is so much to be thankful for, and we’ll be around forever. I always find it amusing is that you’ve given us more than we can repay you even with eternity at hand, and then you still keep blessing and helping us out more. God is many many kinds of awesome. Please help me write this article to help others’ faith.
Amen,
James Sager
Well, the story goes that I had a great Sunday School teachers in Betty Swank and Bonnie Kaiser. At first, it was kinda random which teacher I had. But then eventually Bonnie took over for the older kids and Betty with the younger.
Bonnie taught us how God is good and loving. We would spend time in the Old Testament and talk about how God did everything he did out of goodness and love. There are people who don’t like God today who try and take the Old Testament out of context to try and judge God as wrong, but they themselves just bring judgment upon themselves when doing so. It is super easy to understand how God did everything out of goodness and love, and only needs a small explanation, but those who dislike God tend to be very impatient and argumentative. And you know how arguments go. No one ever wants to actually learn a new thing when they argue, they just want to win the argument. So if you argue with someone, you push them away from your position. We’ll talk more about arguments in a bit, let’s finish this background.
Sunday School was great. I learned a lot about God and how He is good and loving. But somewhere along the line, I wasn’t sure if God was real.
About when I was 11, I figured I’d pray, “God, I think serving you would be great. Serving you would give meaning to life in that you are the ultimate calling. But I do not know you are real. And if I am not sure you are real, how can I be an effective witness? Please let me know you are real, and I will dedicate all my life to serving you.”
Then I fell away from God and stopped going to church. I became basically an unbeliever, but I still tried to keep goodness and love close by. Without God, goodness and love can become corrupted easily since you have no concrete examples of anything good and loving when morally grey things happen. I tried not to disrespect God in mocking manners that some of the culture does, but I would tell people I didn’t think God is real. If someone would ask me about God, I would tell them,”If you’re asking about God, you should ask a religious leader, which I am not, so don’t ask me.” Ah, but funny how things change…
So 15 years after my prayer when I was 11, God answered me by speaking,”Good News” and getting me a Good News Bible. I actually gave that Bible away to a young girl. She has a kid now and is grown up. I pray she reads that Bible. I did it because I figured I wouldn’t see her much again, and wanted to help some. I have a copy of the Bible I use now. I think I even gave away another copy, but it is the same Bible thanks to the wonders of the printing press. :)
Anyway, 15 years passed since I was 11 and receiving the Bible. And on this 8/22/2018, 15 years will have passed since I received the Bible. This article is the celebration of 15 years of service to God after 15 years of waiting for him to let me know he is real. I actually forgot that prayer until years after God let me know he is real. I wasn’t even looking for God when he let me know he is real.
Romans 10:20 And Isaiah is even bolder when he says, “I was found by those who were not looking for me; I appeared to those who were not asking for me.”
I might not have been looking for God when he let me know he is real. But I want you to seek Him out now. Be good, loving and helpful to all. Pray selflessly. Read your Bible. Look to God answering your prayers. You might be surprised at how fast you see Him in your life. Even if you need to pray things statistically
not remotely probable just to see them answered, that’s fine. Don’t try and scientifically put God to the test though. No one can force the Hand of God. He does stuff when he wants. You can’t really set up a situation where God will always reacts in the same predictable way.
So the first 7 years of finding out God is real, I went to argue with anyone interested. I wanted to argue for the existence of God since I knew he was real. At first, I wasn’t great at arguing. But from practice, scripture, and my theology becoming better, I got really efficient at arguing. I often pointed out factual flaws of the other person’s position. Then instead of admitting they were in err, they would do a ‘Sand in the face’ style redirect. They might say something like,”No one knows anything.” And while that is easily disprovable, the conversation loses focus on their original error of their argument. This is when I discovered that people do not come to an argument to learn things, but that they just want to win an argument. I reasoned then that people actually move away from your position for they figure it is something they’re against. About 8 years after that, scientific studies found the same thing. It wasn’t a complete loss, I did get air tight theology from it.
Instead of arguing then, I focused more on this website www.FatherSpiritSon.com. Victor and I met about 6 years after God let me know He is real. This is just one year before I found out arguing is not effective. Before we talk about FatherSpiritSon.com, let me tell you about my friendship with Victor some.
In 2003 when God let me know he is real, I was one of the world’s best Warcraft3 players. I was first to 1500 wins, #1 1v1,2v2,3v3. My 3v3 team went 200-0 before my teammates started messing around and not playing serious. I grew up from a young age trying to be a professional video game player. I have been #1 in Starcraft ladders and a game called Diablo 2. I question video games by their names, but what media is allowable by a Christian is a different topic.
My problem with video game pro gaming is that I always quit games before the money tournaments show. I quit Broodwar in 99 when hackers and win traders showed and Blizzard didn’t put matchmaking in like I suggested. Eighteen years later they did. In Warcraft3, I quit because I wanted to make a massively multiplayer online action fighting game which has not been done. I’m still working on it 15 years later, but I quit before the Warcraft 3 expansion.
In the Warcraft 3 expansion(when I had quit earlier), Victor was #1 on the ladder, but I didn’t know this. I found out when posting about God in a random post on www.teamliquid.net. He contacted me. We talked some. We struck it off well. And we became partners to serve God.
Early in our conversation, Victor and I referenced the verse:
Proverbs 27:17 People learn from one another, just as iron sharpens iron.
And it is true, we keep each other from veering too far off course theologically which doesn’t happen often anyway. Staying true and straight on the path that Jesus laid out, we end up learning more wisdom.
Victor is an aspiring professional writer. I recommend you get his books especially Art of Fearing God. His writing has developed as we have known each other. He’s always had a heart for God, but he can put it into words more eloquently now.
Our first book, we wrote together. We would blog on FatherSpiritSon.com and then about after a year, we compiled about all the blogs into a book. We don’t make money off the book, but it is still invaluable. I gave copies to people I know, and my late Aunt Girty read it and confidently exclaimed,”I read Jim’s book. I’m going to Heaven because I believe in Jesus.” Nothing hits you as direct as that. You know you’re serving God right when people believe strongly in Jesus from something you did.
– Miracle of our book: Ancient Truths for Modern Living by Victor Nunez and James Sager.
We wrote about a diverse amount of theology, building upward and outward from the foundation of the Bible. I was worried about us being apostate. So I prayed a prayer to see if God would teach us if we should promote the book or not. I prayed, “God. I hope everything is cool.” Victor responded immediately on IM without hearing my prayer,”Everything is cool.” So God approved of our book. You can read more at www.FatherSpiritSon.com/book1.html
Victor is also a cool dude. We have conversations many nights. We just talk about random funny stuff on the internet and see if anyone made any new games lately. Maybe we play games and share our screens. That’s how life is done. You make friends with people and go on the run with how things go.
Mark 9:50 Salt is good; but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? “Have the salt of friendship among yourselves, and live in peace with one another.”
In all seriousness though, Victor is my most valuable ally in my service to God. We’re always writing stuff about God online. It is our hope that people read what we write then come to a deeper faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ matters more than you know. He’s our Savior and He is in charge of everything. Worship God. Esteem God more than you esteem anything else of value in your life. Remember, if you have anyone or anything in your life, it would not be there apart from God. Thank God for Victor Nunez.
As for evangelism, I primarily am found on Reddit.com now. Prior to Reddit.com, I was on Digg.com. Digg.com went all corporate and stopped sending articles of interest, but just all advertisements. Before Digg.com I was on random forums. I was on Twitter.com since about 2009. I ran an automatic tweet loader that posted scripture. I was able to get well over 2 million tweets about Jesus before they shut it down. What is disturbing is that Twitter and Facebook are censoring Christians now. I was censored. I got censored as a direct result of buying an advertisement to support their site that said,”God is real. Jesus loves you.” and had a link to www.goodnewsjim.com. Since Twitter is actively censoring people and violating the constitution of the US by breaking Free Speech, I no longer treat that as a powerful outlet to help people’s faith. They use the argument,”We need to be able to censor to stop hate speech”, but really, they’re censoring anyone that disagrees with their views politically, unspins the news, or criticizes advertisers. It is 100% dystopian stuff that should be taken to the Supreme Court lest more corporations feel they can censor anyone they want. Censorship is something that should always be talked about while you still can.
If we do not talk about censorship as being fundamentally wrong in our society, it could lead to censorship being accepted widespread and all the ills that follow it. However, we as Christians should not worry or fear anything! That is one of the cool things about being a Christian. We’re not to fret either. I find myself sometimes fretting that I could do more to serve God. But that is just the try hard in me. Fret is something we probably should avoid as it is a cousin to worry. If you let yourself fret too much on strategizing and plans, you can find yourself in a deadlock where you feel it is very important to strategize before making an action, but you’re unsure of what strategy to devise so you don’t take action. Don’t get stuck there, go with the best course you can take. Oftentimes educating ourselves is the way to go. Have a good plan though, don’t just jump to action.
Proverbs 19:2 Enthusiasm without knowledge is not good; impatience will get you into trouble.
Plans I normally go with involve witnessing about Jesus on forums. Encouraging others is always good unless you’re encouraging them in their vices. Please don’t do that. Find places where people are. Sometimes you can play video games, and witness to people you meet. You can make friends in video games without trying. You gotta go where people are to witness to them. I strategize to do that over say, just making a video game that no one sees me when I do it.
Before you witness, I suggest to at least read the Bible through once. Reading over it several times is preferable. There is so much to get, but always be good and loving. Help others get their basic needs is a good mission. You don’t have to have a masters in divinity to help people here and there. You can work a moral job, live a frugal life, then fly to a poor country and hand out money in a proper way. There are many ways you can serve, just make sure you have an education on the Bible. It will also immunize you against people who are not preaching what God taught us.
Let’s end with prayer, praise and acknowledgment to God.
Thanks God for teaching us. It should be easy that we should always do good and be loving. But it is often tough to see. We get so wrapped up in stuff that it is hard to see the truth sometimes.
I hope people reading this believe in You and Your son Jesus Christ.
I hope they want to be good and loving always.
I know You give meaning in my life to serve You.
I know You’re awesome. Just look at the works of your hand.
I know You’re awesome. Just look at the Bibles of the miracle. They aren’t bland.
I know You’re awesome. You love us. You’re our Father and friend.
I know You’re awesome. You never stopped loving us even at our worst.
I know You’re awesome. You are most excellent.
I know You’re awesome. Your mind is above ours.
I know You’re awesome. You answer prayers.
I know You’re awesome God. Everyone who learns about you learns how awesome you are.
I know You’re awesome. You give hope.
I know You’re awesome. Your love is stronger than death itself.
I know You’re awesome. May the Father, Son(Jesus) and Holy Spirit be blessed even more and more.
Amen,
James Sager
PS: Thanks for the last fifteen years. May people who witness about You be effective. May the knowledge of God fill the world. May everyone know the love of Jesus Christ.
Amen,
James Sager
1 Chronicles 16:34 Give thanks to the LORD, because he is good; his love is eternal.
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