The Naked Truth about God
Week 1: The Naked Truth About God
Can God really be known? Romans 1 says the evidence is all around us. From creation to the longing for eternity within us, God has left His fingerprints everywhere. In Week 1 of The Naked Truth, we strip away assumptions and excuses to discover what God has revealed about Himself—and how He ultimately made Himself known through Jesus.
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Week 1 BLOG
There are some questions humanity never seems to stop asking.
Is there something more than this life? Is there Someone behind everything we see? Can God actually be known?
Long before churches, Bible apps, podcasts, or modern debates about faith existed, people were asking those questions. Across civilizations and continents, humanity has searched for something beyond itself. Ancient cultures built temples. Artists painted images of the divine. People studied the stars, told stories about eternity, developed systems of worship, and tried to make sense of life and death.
The details have changed, but the search has remained.
Deep within us is a sense that there must be something more.
Romans 1 takes that longing seriously. In fact, Paul makes an incredibly bold statement: God is not hiding.
The naked truth about God is that He can be known.
God Has Left His Fingerprints Everywhere
Romans 1:19–20 explains that what can be known about God has been made evident because God has shown it to humanity. His invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—can be understood through what He has made.
In other words, creation is evidence.
God has left His fingerprints everywhere.
Look at the scale of the universe. Look at the precision with which creation operates. Look at the complexity of the human body. Look at an ocean stretching beyond the horizon, a night sky filled with stars, or the details of something as small as a cell.
Creation continually points beyond itself.
Psalm 19 says that the heavens proclaim the glory of God and the skies display His craftsmanship. Creation is preaching a sermon every day.
The order of the universe points toward intelligence.
Its beauty points toward artistry.
Its magnitude points toward power.
And according to Romans, none of that is accidental. God has allowed His creation to reveal something about its Creator.
We cannot look at creation and learn everything there is to know about God. The stars cannot tell us the entire story of salvation. An ocean cannot explain the cross. But creation can cause us to look beyond ourselves and ask the question humanity has been asking for thousands of years:
Who made all of this?
Eternity Is Written Into Us
The evidence of God isn't only around us. There is also something happening within us.
Human beings have an unusual relationship with eternity.
We know our lives are temporary, yet something within us resists the idea that death should be the end. We long for permanence. We search for meaning. We want our lives to matter beyond the few decades we are given.
We feel it at funerals when something inside us says that death isn't the way things are supposed to be.
We feel it when we hold a newborn child and are overwhelmed by the miracle of life.
We feel it when we stand beside the ocean or look into a sky filled with stars and suddenly feel incredibly small and strangely significant at the same time.
Temporary things never seem capable of completely satisfying us because we were created by an eternal God.
We can accumulate possessions, accomplishments, experiences, relationships and success, yet still discover a hunger for something more.
That longing is not necessarily evidence that we need more things.
It may be evidence that we were made for Someone.
Our Conscience Points Beyond Us
There is another clue written into humanity: our sense of right and wrong.
Across cultures and generations, human beings have recognized ideas such as justice, guilt, sacrifice, goodness and evil. We may disagree about specific moral questions, but we instinctively understand that some things should not happen.
We become angry at injustice.
We grieve when innocent people are harmed.
Even children quickly learn the phrase, "That's not fair."
Why?
Romans 2 describes God's law as being written on the human heart, with our conscience bearing witness to it.
Our moral awareness points toward a moral Creator.
We recognize justice because God is just.
We long for goodness because God is good.
We understand that evil deserves judgment because something within us recognizes that there is a standard greater than our individual preferences.
But this creates a problem.
The same conscience that points us toward God also exposes how far we have fallen from Him.
We don't only recognize evil in the world. If we're willing to strip away our excuses, we recognize it in ourselves.
We've lied.
We've hurt people.
We've acted selfishly.
We've chosen our desires over God's desires.
We've known the right thing and still chosen something else.
And suddenly the question changes.
Instead of simply asking, "Is there a God?"
we have to ask,
"If there is a God, what does that mean for me?"
The Truth We Sometimes Don't Want to Know
This is where Romans 1 becomes uncomfortable.
Paul says humanity doesn't simply lack information about God. We often suppress the truth about Him.
Why would we do that?
Because if there is a Creator, then we are created.
If there is a King, then we aren't the king.
If God defines what is good, then we don't get to redefine truth according to whatever feels right to us.
And if there is a holy God, then our sin matters.
That's the part we would often rather avoid.
We live in a culture where truth is increasingly treated as something personal. We talk about "my truth" and "your truth." We tailor beliefs around our experiences, preferences, politics and feelings.
But truth doesn't become true because it fits us.
The whole idea behind The Naked Truth is to strip all of those layers away.
No filters.
No spin.
No pretending.
No tailoring truth until it fits comfortably into the life we already want to live.
We want to ask what God says about Himself, about us, about our beliefs and about the world around us.
Because biblical faith was never intended to be one small drawer in the dresser of our lives.
We sometimes treat life as though we have a work drawer, a family drawer, a sexuality drawer, a politics drawer, a money drawer—and somewhere among them is our faith drawer.
But following Jesus doesn't work that way.
Faith is the dresser.
Every other part of life belongs inside it.
If God is truly God, then He has something to say about all of it.
Knowing There Is a God Isn't Enough
Romans 1 tells us creation gives humanity enough evidence to recognize that God exists. The theological term for this is general revelation. God reveals something about Himself through what He has made.
But general revelation creates another question.
If God exists, who is He?
Creation can tell us that God is powerful, but it cannot tell us His name.
Nature can point toward a Creator, but it cannot tell us how sinners can be forgiven.
Our conscience can tell us we're guilty, but it cannot cleanse us from that guilt.
We need more than evidence of God.
We need God to reveal Himself.
And that is exactly what He did.
God Came Near
The God who created the universe did not remain distant from it.
He stepped into human history.
John 1 tells us that the Word became human and made His home among us. Colossians describes Jesus as the visible image of the invisible God.
For generations, humanity attempted to imagine what God might be like.
Then God showed us.
Jesus came near.
He walked among ordinary people. He touched the sick. He welcomed outsiders. He confronted sin. He demonstrated compassion. He taught truth. He showed us the character of the Father.
And ultimately, He went to a cross.
The Creator entered His creation to rescue the people who had rebelled against Him.
That is where the search for God ultimately leads.
Not simply to a philosophical argument.
Not merely to evidence in the stars.
Not simply to a feeling that there must be something more.
It leads to Jesus.
The Naked Truth
God can be known.
His fingerprints are visible throughout creation. His eternal nature echoes within the human heart. His moral law is reflected in our conscience.
We have evidence all around us.
But God didn't stop there.
He revealed Himself personally through Jesus Christ.
So perhaps the most important question isn't whether God has made Himself known.
Maybe the question is whether we are willing to know Him.
Because knowing that there is a God and actually surrendering our lives to Him are two very different things.
The naked truth removes our excuses.
There is a Creator.
We are His creation.
And the God who made us has gone to extraordinary lengths to make Himself known to us.
The stars point toward Him.
Our hearts long for Him.
Our conscience reminds us that we need Him.
And Jesus came so that we could know Him.
The question now is what we will do with the truth.
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Small Group Curriculum – The Naked Truth
Download Week 1 Guide Here
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