How Can We Know If God Is Real?

Paying attention to the signals of creation, conscience, and Christ

This essay is the first in a 10-part series called “The Questions We All Carry: In Search of God, Truth, Beauty, and Meaning.” If these essays are helpful, please subscribe and share.

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In a time when doubt often feels like the most reasonable posture, it’s worth asking: if God is real, would He actually make Himself knowable? According to Scripture, the answer is a clear yes — and not only yes, but an invitation. God has not hidden Himself away in the clouds or left us guessing in the dark. Rather, He has woven evidence of His presence into the world around us and into the very fiber of our hearts.

This question — is God truly there, and can He be truly known? — was not theoretical for the late Francis Schaeffer, the Christian thinker and founder of L'Abri Fellowship. After years of ministry and teaching, Schaeffer found himself in a profound crisis of faith. Doubts crept in, not about the trappings of religion, but about the very foundation of it all: Is Christianity actually true, or had he merely inherited a comforting tradition? With great seriousness, Schaeffer went on a rigorous investigation, reexamining the claims of Scripture and the evidences for God’s reality from the ground up. After a season of wrestling, he returned to Edith, his wife, with a simple, profound conclusion: "There is only one reason to be a Christian — because it’s true."

Schaeffer’s story reminds us that faith as Scripture presents it is not a blind leap into the dark. It is a reasoned trust, a resting of the heart and mind in something — Someone — who is actually there. It is a discovery that withstands scrutiny and grows deeper through questions, not despite them.

The Bible opens with an affirmation that seems obvious to many, yet is denied by some: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 19:1). Creation itself, according to both the psalmist and the apostle Paul, points beyond itself to the Creator. Paul writes, "Since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made" (Romans 1:20).

In other words, the evidence for God is not tucked away in secret places. It is public, patient, and persistent — but it often requires the humility of a seeker to truly see.

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(Essay continued…)

Nature, Conscience, and the Invitation to Seek

One of the most accessible ways God reveals Himself is through the created world. The fine-tuned laws of physics, the intricate design of ecosystems, and the breathtaking beauty of a night sky all act as quiet signals from Home. Scientists across generations, from Isaac Newton to Francis Collins, have observed how the remarkable order and intelligibility of the universe imply a Mind behind it.

Consider the simple example of gravity. Physicists have noted that if the gravitational constant were altered even slightly, life as we know it would be impossible. This exquisite "fine-tuning" of the universe has led many thoughtful scientists — including a majority surveyed in a Pew Research study — to affirm belief in some higher power.

But creation is only part of the story. Scripture also tells us that God's signature is imprinted on the human conscience. Across every culture and every age, people exhibit a shared moral intuition — a basic sense that some things are right and others wrong. As C.S. Lewis observed in Mere Christianity, this moral law suggests not merely a social contract, but a moral Lawgiver whose character is woven into the fabric of reality.

Even more telling, Lewis pointed to the deep longings within us — longings for love, justice, meaning, and permanence — as further evidence of God's reality. He wrote, "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

Psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl witnessed this phenomenon even in the darkest places — such as the Nazi concentration camps — where human beings, stripped of every comfort, still retained a hunger for meaning, hope, and goodness. Such longings, even when battered by unimaginable suffering, point toward a source beyond the material world.

This is why Christianity insists that seeking God is both an act of the mind and the heart. Jesus Himself said, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7). In God's economy, questions are not threats to faith; they are the soil in which real, living faith can take root and grow.

Clues Across History and the Longing of the Heart

History, too, offers compelling windows into the reality of God's self-disclosure. Augustine, one of the early church fathers, spent much of his early life restless and ambitious, chasing fulfillment in every direction except toward God. Yet after all his searching, he came to this conclusion: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Augustine's story reminds us that even those who seem far from faith often carry a deep inner hunger — a hunger that only God can satisfy.

The same pattern shows up in the life of Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century mathematician and philosopher. Pascal spoke of a "God-shaped vacuum" inside every human heart — a space that no created thing can fill, no matter how hard we try. Importantly, Pascal recognized that God does not overwhelm the human soul with coercive proof. Instead, He invites freely chosen trust. As Pascal put it: "There is enough light for those who desire to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition." In other words, God leaves room for faith to be a relationship of love, not a forced submission.

Even the world of literature carries the echoes of this longing. In his Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis wove deep spiritual truths into simple children's stories, suggesting that the shadows and beauty we encounter in this life are hints of a truer, more beautiful world to come.

All of these clues — creation, conscience, history, art, literature — invite us not to a blind leap into the dark, but to a reasonable, hope-filled trust. Like tuning a radio, the signal of God's presence is already being broadcast. The invitation is to adjust the dial of our hearts so we can hear it more clearly.

Here are some of the clearest ways these signals come through:

• Creation — the complexity, beauty, and fine-tuning of the universe.

• Conscience — the universal human sense of right and wrong.

• Longing — the deep ache for beauty, justice, love, and permanence.

• History — testimonies from thoughtful seekers across the ages.

• Scripture and Christ — God's ultimate self-revelation in time and space.

Each of these signals gently, but persistently, points us toward a Creator who does not merely want acknowledgment — He desires relationship.

An Invitation, Not an Imposition

One of the remarkable things about Christian faith is that God does not strong-arm or coerce anyone into belief. He whispers; He invites; He waits. Just as relationships in human life cannot thrive on forced affection, neither does God desire robotic allegiance. He seeks free hearts drawn by love, not mere compliance.

Standing under a vast, starlit sky; walking through a hospital wing where hope and sorrow mingle; reading an ancient psalm that feels somehow written for today — these are moments where God’s presence often breaks through, not with fanfare, but with what some call a still, small voice.

As the writer of Hebrews says, "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Hebrews 1:1–2). In Jesus, we see the heart of God most clearly — not just a God who is real, but a God who is relational, self-giving, and near.

At the same time, Scripture teaches that something even deeper is happening when we respond to God's invitation. Yes, we have real agency — the freedom to believe or not believe, to respond or to turn away. But if we do find ourselves believing, if our hearts begin to stir with hope and longing for God, it is because He has already been at work within us. As Paul writes, "God, being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ—even when we were dead in our trespasses" (Ephesians 2:4–5). Faith is never something we manufacture on our own; it is a gift, planted and nurtured by the Spirit.

C.S. Lewis captured this mystery beautifully when he said, "We can only love Him because He first loved us. We would not even want Him unless He had already wanted us."

If you find yourself aching for more — if you wonder whether there is a meaning, a beauty, a permanence that outlasts the fragile goodness of this world — that longing itself may be God's gentle knock on your heart’s door. It is His invitation, and it is also His work in you to want to answer.

To seek God is not to embark on a wild goose chase. It is to come home to the One who has been seeking you all along.

"Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near" (Isaiah 55:6).