Carol Henderson Facebook ad: “If you are a Christian believer read this.”

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"Grandma, why do we believe in God?" My grandson looked up at me on the sidewalk outside chapel last Sunday — and the silence that came out of my mouth may have done more damage than any answer ever could. I wish I could tell you I said something beautiful. Something that made his little face light up with understanding. Something worthy of the 43 years I've spent in a pew every single Sunday morning. But I didn't. I said, "Well, honey, because... we just do." And then I pointed at a bird in the parking lot to change the subject. He's seven. He let me get away with it. He said "okay" and started talking about his friend Marcus at school. But I saw something shift behind his eyes before he moved on. Just for a second. Like a tiny door closed. I didn't sleep that night. I kept replaying it. Not just what I said — but the look. That fraction of a second where my grandson learned that Grandma doesn't actually have an answer. I'm the one who drives him to Sunday school. I'm the one who prays with him before bed. I'm the one who bought him his first children's Bible with his name engraved on the cover for his baptism. And when he asked me the most basic question a child can ask about faith — why — I had nothing. I told myself it was fine. He's seven. He won't remember. But I knew that was a lie because I could already feel it — this sick, hollow feeling in my chest like I had failed him in a way I couldn't take back. My daughter-in-law called me that Wednesday. Just a normal call. But at the end she said, "Oh, Tommy told me he asked you something about God after church." My stomach dropped. She wasn't accusatory. She just said, "He told his dad that you didn't really know the answer. He said maybe nobody knows." Maybe nobody knows. My grandson walked away from a five-minute sidewalk conversation with his grandmother and concluded that maybe nobody knows why we believe in God. He is SEVEN. I sat in my kitchen that night and I cried. Not dramatic crying. Just quiet tears into my coffee at 9:30 at night because I realized something that terrified me. I believe with my whole heart. I have never once doubted that God is real, that Jesus is who He says He is, that the Bible is true. My faith is the foundation of everything in my life. But I have never — not once in 43 years of attending church — been given the WORDS to explain WHY. I know WHAT I believe. I cannot tell you WHY I believe it in a way that would satisfy a second-grader. How is that possible? I started thinking about every Bible study I've ever done. Every women's group. Every Sunday school class I sat through as a young mother and then later as a grandmother sitting in the back row. And I realized something that made me feel sick all over again. Not a single one of them ever taught me how to answer "why." They taught me the stories. They taught me the verses. They taught me how to apply Scripture to my marriage and my parenting and my prayer life. They gave me devotionals and fill-in-the-blank workbooks about trusting God with my anxiety and finding peace in hard seasons. And I loved every one of them. But none of them — not ONE — ever sat me down and said, "Here is why the Bible is historically reliable. Here is the evidence outside of Scripture that confirms what Scripture says. Here is how to respond when someone says it's all made up. Here is why your faith is not blind." I was taught to believe. I was never taught to explain. And the worst part is I didn't even realize the gap existed until a seven-year-old exposed it on a sidewalk. I was up until almost 1 AM that night looking things up on my laptop. I didn't even know what to search. "How to explain faith to a child." "Why do we believe in God." "How to defend Christianity." Every result was either a 45-minute YouTube video from some man at a podium I'd never heard of, or an academic article that made me feel like I'd need a seminary degree to understand the first paragraph. I wasn't looking for a degree. I wasn't trying to become some sort of debater. I just wanted to be able to look my grandson in the eyes next Sunday and give him a real answer. My friend Diane — she's been in my small group for eleven years — called me the next morning about something unrelated. I told her what happened. And she went quiet. Then she said, "Linda, the same thing happened to me with my granddaughter last Easter. She asked me how we know Jesus actually rose from the dead. I told her we know because the Bible tells us. And even as the words left my mouth, I thought — that's not really an answer, is it?" She told me she'd been working through something for the past few months. A weekly workbook. Systematic theology, she called it, but she said don't let that phrase scare you. She said it wasn't like any Bible study she'd ever done. It didn't ask her how she FELT about a passage. It walked her through what the belief actually is, why it matters, what the evidence is, how to answer the most common objections, and then how to explain it to someone else. Every single week. One belief at a time. She said something I haven't been able to get out of my head. She said, "For the first time in my life, I can tell you WHY I believe the Bible is true — and it has nothing to do with 'because the Bible says so.'" I almost dropped my coffee. I ordered it that afternoon. I was skeptical. I've done so many Bible studies that sit on my shelf half-finished because they either bored me by week three or made me feel like I wasn't spiritual enough. But the very first week — I sat at my kitchen table with a pen and I worked through the lesson on the reliability of Scripture. And by the end of it I had actual reasons. Not feelings. Not circular answers. Reasons. Historical evidence. Manuscript data. Things I could say OUT LOUD to another human being that didn't start and end with "you just have to have faith." I cried again. But this time it was different. Because I realized the problem was never ME. I didn't fail my grandson because I'm a bad Christian or because my faith isn't deep enough. I failed him because in four decades of faithful church attendance, nobody ever handed me the words. It's been nine weeks now. I'm not a theologian. I'm not a debater. I'm a 64-year-old grandmother who likes gardening and spoiling her grandchildren. But last Sunday, Tommy and I were walking out of chapel — same sidewalk, same sunshine — and he said, "Grandma, my friend at school says God isn't real." And this time I didn't freeze. I knelt down right there on the sidewalk and I said, "Well, sweetheart, let me tell you some of the reasons I know He is." And I talked to him for three minutes in words a seven-year-old could understand. And when I finished, he smiled and said, "I'm gonna tell Marcus that tomorrow." That moment was worth everything. The workbook is called FaithSteps Foundations. It's 52 weeks. It sits on my kitchen table and I do one lesson every Sunday afternoon. It's the only Bible study I've ever done that didn't just teach me WHAT to believe — it taught me WHY I believe it and how to say it out loud. If you've ever stood in front of someone you love and felt that silence — that awful silence where your heart is full of faith but your mouth has no words — please hear me when I tell you. That silence is not your fault. You were never given the language. But you can learn it. And it is not too late. Tommy still holds my hand on the chapel sidewalk. But now when he asks me questions, I have answers. And I will never let that silence speak for me again.

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If you are a Christian believer read this..☝️

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