My background is about as same as everybody else's in here. I grew up in a family of 5, 2boys and a girl. I am the youngest. My father worked swing shifts at the local factory and mom stayed at home. We never went to church, talked about God or had any involvement with religious beliefs. All that I knew about God was that I recited, one nation, under God, every morning in school. The school system taught me that I evolved from a fish that had arisen from a primordial soup. I was a believer, I mean science and math says so. It makes perfect sense if you think about it. Just as man is starting to climb down out the trees they start to explain away things they couldn't conceive has being a God. So obviously man is the creator of the gods. And has all my text books taught me, through the centuries science has stepped up and disproved all gods. Draughts are explainable acts of nature, not the rain gods being unhappy with us. Thunder and lightning comes from a storm cell full of warm moisture and static electricity, not the gods being pissed off and angry with us. And Darwin's theory of macro evolution explained away the remaining God, the creator of all life. Sound tidy and neat, the history of life all spelled out in science text books. I am a firm believer in science, hated in school, love it as an adult. As an adult I picked up a bible for the first time, I was 28. My intentions were to disprove what was in the bible. It didn't take me long to find my first few footholds in my attempt to tear the bible apart. God created everything we see in six days. Seriously??? Science says that everything we see is 14.3 billion, BILLION, years old and it took millions of years for the planets and stars to form. This is going to be easier than I thought. And then came all the begetting of who beget who, and then come to find out, some of these people were still getting to begetting well into their elderly years, like 150 years and 300 years and lived to be 900 years. This stuff is fairytales for sure, so I got bored with discrediting the bible and put it all off to the side, still knowing that God was not real. In the meantime my father had also picked up a bible for the first time, he was 61. About a year later I saw something I never had imagined, my father got up in front of church service and got baptized. I still held fast to my guns and me and him debated the existence of God a few times. He would always end his arguments with, "I would rather live the rest of my life like there is a God, to die and find out there isn't; than to live like there is no God and die only to find out that there is." Word's of fear?
The second time I opened a bible, I was in jail, I was 31. I had 180 in the county for beating the shit out of 2 "cage fighters" after they called me a "biker bitch" out back of a bar. At the time of my commitment my father just found out he had cancer. He was at his home with hospice care the morning I turned myself in. He was sitting on the front porch when I went to see him and told him what I had done and that I was on my way to jail. He looked square in the eyes and told me to, "Go do what you have to do, pay your time and then straighten your shit up." Those were the last words he ever said to me, 5 days later a co came into the dorm, pulled me out, took me to booking and told me I needed to call my parents. Mom put the phone up to dad's ear, I could hear his gasping, I told him to hang on and I would be there as soon as they let me out, I told him I loved him, the gasping stopped, mom screamed, the phone went silent. The co was cool enough to let me chill out in the mess hall for a while so I could compose myself before going back into the dorm. Some kid came from the corner of the room and asked if he could pray for me, I didn't know what that meant, but I told yeah sure. He said his lil prayer and he left a bible on my foot locker. When I opened the book it opened nice and neat to the book of James. My dad's name was James. I started reading it, and I can't tell exactly what it said, but I remember it talking about controlling your anger, or at least that is how I understood it. Was that just a coincidence, or was something more profound at work. At any rate it didn't change my life or my concept of what God was. In fact it probably made me even more cynical. Why would God accept my fathers baptism and then turn around and let him die?
Fast forward 8 more years, I am still the cynical non believer, added a few more trips to county, a few more busted knuckles and scars, a few more years of probation, a busted up relationship, and an overwhelming feeling of guilt that I never turned out to be somebody to make my father proud. His words still echo in my ears, to straighten my shit up.
So now it's just the same old story, but with a new cast of characters. I found a woman, who despite ALL my flaws, loves me like I have never felt love before. She actually married me!! lol So now I am 39, I am drunk, my wife is mad, her words, my words, more alcohol, more of her drunk blabber and I pick up a kitchen chair and throw it across the kitchen, at her, it hits the countertop and explodes, she doesn't get hurt, but she leaves, goes to her sister's. A few days later I am on the phone with my wife's mother, very religious person. She asks if she can pray for me, second time somebody has prayed for me in my life, I told her I really think I need it. After she prayed for me she told me a silly story about how she sometimes prays aloud that she rebukes all evil, I laughed, she didn't. That night I replaced a broken door knob on the back door. Wanting my wife to come back home, and knowing that now she has no keys to house, I wrote a lil letter and New backdoor key in it and left to go to her sister's. As I was leaving, the wife's cat ran out door, I yelled him a few times to get back in the house but he being a cat, he refused. I pulled the door shut, double checked the new door knob, and kicked at the cat as I walked to my truck. I tucked the letter and key on the dash of my wife's truck and headed back home. I was still thinking thinking about the phone conversation from earlier and as I drove I said this aloud, "I rebuke all evil and I pledge my alledgence with God". I suddenly felt 3 shivers, almost like getting a cold chill, but not being cold. Strangest thing that had up to that point ever happened to me. I immediately convinced myself that it was a figment of my imagination, I gave myself the cold chills by thinking that there was a God. I pondered this the rest of the way home, and even asking, "if that was real, if you are real, show me, make me believe", it didn't take long for God to give me answer. I pulled up out back, yelled for the wife's cat as I walked through backyard, shook my keys, he was nowhere to be found. I walked across the deck, double checked the new door knob, unlocked door and as I walked into the house, the wife's cat walked towards me from inside the house. As a 6'9" 300# 39 year old grown man, I have never felt fear like that. I tasted fear, worse than putting your tongue on a 9v. I still get a shiver when I think about that moment. And then as clear as all get out I hear the words "you took that better than we thought", but it wasn't aloud, it was in my head. Everybody has a lil voice in their heads, but this wasn't that lil voice, and as soon as I heard that voice, the calmest feeling fell over me. So now my attention is back on this dam cat, a cat who runs from the room when I walk into it, a cat that doesn't like me as much as I don't like him, this cat walks up to me and figure 8s through my legs. I immediately spent the next half hour going from room to room and back again, double, triple and quadruple checking every door and window, everything was shut and locked, just like it was when I left, except for the cat being in the house. And I must have kicked that cat a dozen times as I tried to walk from room to room and he tried walking figure 8s through my legs. Him loving on me like that, he must have been just as scared as I was.
So that is how I know there is a God. I don't know much about religions, and I don't know a lot about God, but I do know that there is a supernatural being who comes to us in our weakest hour, and he works miraculous works in mysterious ways.
God bless all of you who believes in his miracles.
Maybe 10 yrs ago, it would have been a shitfest by now. Good on everyone for keeping it civil. 
