Hi, and welcome to seektruth.online. This platform exists to help you find answers to life's difficult questions, such as: Who is God? Is He real? How can this world be created versus just poof out of nowhere? Does He love me? Is He personal? Am I worthy?

All of these questions I have asked personally in my life. I have been anywhere from a close, intimate relationship with God to flirting with atheism. It has been a difficult journey, but this journey has allowed me to ask a lot of these tough questions and to hear from God.

And so what I want to do is help you learn how to seek truth: how to search for information, how to educate yourself well on information, how to engage with that information, and then finally to know, to be certain of what you believe. That is the SEEK model, and that's what I want to share with you. So this first video is just an introduction into me, who I am and why you should follow.

So, my name is Krystal Sanchez, and I have been all over the place with God. I thought I knew Him when I was a teenager, right? I didn't grow up in church. I knew about God. I was taught about God, and I was taught that He was real, but we didn't really start going to church until I was in middle school. And so I didn't really have a depth of information, a depth of knowledge as to who He is and why He's there, why we're here, right?

And so I thought I was getting to know God simply because I was really struggling in life, and I was wanting to take my life quite a few times in middle school and high school. And so I just searched out God so that I could know who He is and what He wants and, frankly, what was going to happen after I died.

But it wasn't until I graduated from college that I realized I don't really know Him, right? I know about Him. I've heard of Him. I've learned about Him. But I don't know Him personally. I haven't allowed Him to speak into my life.

And so just a few months after graduating from college, I decided, you know what? I'm going to go all in here. I am going to follow after God and really see who He is and what He does and how He could make my life be different.

And so I started following after Him. And you know what? I completely changed. I really did. I didn't lose who I was, the essence of me, fun Krystal and all of that. But before I knew God, I didn't really have a love for people. I didn't really care about them. I was like, whatever. You do you. I'm going to do me. And I didn't really care what was going on in their lives.

And then like nine months later, all of a sudden, I'm like, who is this person? I suddenly love and care about other people and actually want to know how their lives are going and if I could be of any help. I mean, it was totally new to me. And that was proof to me that God is real. I didn't change because I wanted to change. I simply opened myself up to Him, started learning who He was and asking Him to change me, and just being open. And that openness allowed Him to come in and change me to be a better version of myself.

But it wasn't easy. All throughout my 20s, I had ups and downs and struggles. There were times when I wanted to take my life again. There were times when things were going great. There were times when I was like, "Where is He? What is going on? Why can I not figure out life? Why can I not figure out what is good? Why can't things work out?"

And so all throughout my 20s, I was asking many, many questions, but those questions always drew me back to God. Always drew me back to: He is the truth, right? There is no other way. And of course, I'm going to share the whys and the arguments behind that as we go in this series. But I personally had to ask a lot of those questions and figure out why, right? Why is this like this? And God gave me such certainty...

However, in my early 30s, I started remembering early childhood trauma. And I'm going to be frank with you, my life just about fell apart. I was struggling so much to even just live day to day. I went through another bout where I was really close with God at the beginning, as I started remembering and realizing what had happened, to all of a sudden, why would He allow this? Why did He let this happen in my life? Why am I remembering it now? Why is this tearing my life to shreds?

And I came to this conclusion that He's not real. There's no way that a God who loves me would have allowed that to happen and wouldn't allow me to remember it now, when it's tearing my life apart.

So I looked into atheism. Frankly, and this is not to be rude, I was too smart to be an atheist. It just didn't add up. The science didn't add up. It didn't make sense. There had to be something beyond that started everything. So I was like, "All right, fine. Something created us."

So then I started looking into, "All right, is this God that I have believed in most of my life at this point, is the God of the Christian Bible the real God? Is that the God that I should be following after?" And I'm not going to give too much here. You'll have to follow along for other videos to find out why that was the conclusion that I came to.

But I will tell you right now that I looked and I looked and I looked at all these other religions and all these other gods that could have created, and none of them fit. None of them were as truthful and honest and cohesive as the God of the Christian Bible.

So I was like, "All right, you know what, God? I've been hurt and I've been angry and I don't understand what's going on, but I've done my due diligence. I looked around. I didn't just sit here and be like, 'Oh, forget it.' I searched, and I realized the God of the Christian Bible is the real and only God."

So then that left me with, "What do I do now?" Well, what I realized is I had to reconcile my hurt and my anger and my shame and everything that I had been feeling over the last few years of that journey. I had to reconcile that with God. I had to ask Him to show me, to educate me.

And so I engaged with that. I didn't just wander off. Well, sometimes I would bury my head in the sand and just play video games or watch Netflix or whatever. But I would often try to engage with that knowledge. What is God trying to show me? What is the truth?

And now I'm certain. And I've been certain for a while. And to be fair, I've been certain off and on throughout my journey with God. But now I am so certain, right? I'll be real with you. Of course, there's always that little question mark that says, "We'll see when I die," right? But it's a teeny tiny little question mark. But generally speaking, I am certain. I am certain that God is real. I am certain that He cares for me. I understand why bad things happen. And I understand that He loves me through it all.

That journey gave me so many opportunities to ask questions. But here's the problem. Sometimes we ask questions, but we don't engage with them. "Oh, I wonder if God loves me." And then I just go about my day, go about my routine, and I don't actually ponder, and I don't actually search, and I don't actually engage with the information that I'm gathering.

I can say one thing: though I have been up and down, I have been diligent about continuing to engage with that truth. Even as I get distracted, right, I come back and engage with it. And that's what I want you to do. Don't just ask random questions and then stop. Search out. Search out so that you can know.

So here at SeekTruth.online, we are going to go through a weekly video series that is going to look at the main questions, right? And if you have questions that you want me to answer, hey, I don't always know, right? I cannot know with absolute certainty on all questions. But I can give you the main arguments and allow you to soak that in and make good choices for yourself, a good, sound reason for why you believe what you believe.

But if you've got questions, I want you to submit them. Visit SeekTruth.online and sign up for our weekly newsletter, and you can reply to that newsletter, and I will start piling in all those questions, and I will answer as many as I am able to answer. So I hope you know that in following this, you can gain your knowledge base and you can gain some certainty in what to do, how to move forward, what to believe.

I forgot to mention that I am a mental health counselor. I've been doing that for about eight years, and I offer Christian counseling for those who want it. And so that's another reason why I have a good background in these kinds of questions. It's not just because I've asked them myself, but because I've heard from so many of you that have so many of the same questions over and over and over. And having to answer these questions on a daily, weekly, monthly basis has helped me understand what it is that you all want to know and how we can go about resolving that.

So again, if you've got any questions or want to know any more information, please follow along. Bye.

If you're struggling with thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.