Audio Transcript
Welcome again to the podcast with longtime writer and pastor John Piper. There’s an atheistic tendency in each coronary heart — my coronary heart and even in your coronary heart, Pastor John. You mentioned so once we checked out this “highly effective atheistic tendency in each human coronary heart” a couple of 12 months in the past in APJ 1980, a sobering episode. So, it’s no shock that we often get emails from listeners combating doubt and unbelief — like James, a listener who writes us this: “Expensive John, I bear in mind listening to your biography of William Cowper some years in the past. It has stayed with me all these years later. There’s one thing about his darkish battle that, in my very own method, I can relate to.
“For about ten years now, it seems as if I’ve misplaced my religion. However I haven’t been profitable in fully shutting out the nagging questions and doubts. The battle seems to be in believing there’s a real narrative of how issues are whereas additionally believing that there’s no method of little previous me figuring that every one out, particularly when the perfect of the perfect inside varied educational disciplines disagree on these issues. I discover myself on this agnostic no-man’s-land. It looks like an intellectually sincere place, simply not an excessively satisfying one. The questions and doubts stay. So, I’m a little bit caught on the way to make any progress and would like to take heed to any recommendation you may need for me.”
Maybe God will use a number of prayerful observations that I make from Scripture to awaken some new perspective that will assist James get unstuck. That’s my prayer as we start.
Root of Unbelief
James, you say, “For about ten years now, it seems as if I’ve misplaced my religion.” To this let me reply with 2 Peter 3:17. It says, “Take care that you’re not carried away with the error of lawless folks and lose your individual stability.” Now, right here’s a warning to take care; that’s, to protect towards. Strikingly, the hazard is lawlessness resulting in deception, resulting in lack of stability — that’s, lack of religion. It goes again to lawlessness. What’s that? A disposition of coronary heart that chafes underneath authority after which comes up with authority-denying concepts that don’t match actuality. That’s, they’re misleading.
James, you say that you simply battle with believing that there’s a real narrative of how issues are. That’s wonderful. That could be a traditional manifestation of lawlessness — doubting that reality even exists. There isn’t a true narrative. Nothing may be extra lawless than carving out a spot to reside the place there isn’t any such factor as actuality outdoors your self that it’s important to cope with. You doubt, you say, that there’s any true narrative of what’s. In that world of lawlessness, the ego is completely untethered from actuality. Peter calls this an incredible deception. And he says it’s the reason for shedding our stability, our religion.
Certainly, what might be extra unstable than a world the place nothing is actual? There’s no true narrative. So, contemplate, James, and be motivated to regain your stability.
Methods to Regain Your Stability
The author to the Hebrews would say to you, “Right here’s the way you regain your stability within the fog of lawless deceptions.” He says this in Hebrews 12:3: “Think about him [Jesus] who endured from sinners such hostility towards himself, so that you could be not develop weary or fainthearted.” It’s so simple and harmful to develop into intellectually and spiritually weary, simply exhausted at attempting to contemplate lots of of concepts that blow like leaves round our ears and make us really feel disoriented and hopeless ever to regain any stability or religion in any respect. And Hebrews pleads with us: Think about Jesus. Think about the sufferings of Jesus. Think about the hostilities towards Jesus. Rivet your consideration on this. That is the place you will discover stability. Jesus authenticates himself by his sufferings.
Then, James, you add this to your doubt that any true narrative exists: you say, “There’s no method of little previous me figuring all that out, particularly when the perfect of the perfect inside the varied educational disciplines disagree on these issues.” To this I might say, “Watch out that within the title of humility — ‘little previous me’ — you don’t end up truly mocking God.” The entire Bible relies on the choice of God, the Creator of the universe, to make himself identified to peculiar folks to such a level that he holds them accountable to be keen to die for him.
So, if we are saying we’re simply too little, too insignificant, too confused, too humble to know or imagine what God has revealed concerning the true narrative of what’s, we’ve got determined that both God made a foul choice to speak, or he pulled it off very poorly. He has not carried out what he mentioned he would do — particularly, talk himself and his salvation compellingly to peculiar folks. That’s a really harmful factor to say. It’s an understatement when James describes his place as not an excessively satisfying one. No, certainly. There’s unwitting mockery of God constructed into it.
We Can See the Solar
If the solar is shining brightly at noon, and also you see it, and there’s a debate happening round you as as to if the solar is shining — and these are very sensible folks in comparison with little previous you — will you give up your eyes and your pleasure to the debaters? Would you give them that sort of energy over you? To which James would possibly say to me, “I’m unsure that’s a good analogy, to say that I’m wanting on the solar after I’m contemplating the reality of Christianity.” In speaking his reality to peculiar folks, God does maintain them accountable, to not develop into philosophers, however he holds them accountable to see the solar. And in the event that they don’t see it, his rationalization is that they’re blind, and the answer he presents is exactly a sight of the solar.
Right here’s what he says in 2 Corinthians 4:4: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to maintain them from seeing the sunshine of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who’s the picture of God.” I might dare anybody to say that the sunshine of the gospel of the glory of the Son of God is much less compelling than the solar shining at noon. Then Paul provides, “God, who mentioned, ‘Let mild shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to provide the sunshine of the data of the glory of God within the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). How vibrant is that? Right here’s what the apostle John says: “His face was just like the solar shining in full energy” (Revelation 1:16).
James, God is pursuing you. You wouldn’t have written to me if he weren’t. So, as you search him in contemporary methods now, contemplate one final exhortation from the Lord Jesus in John 7:17: “If anybody’s will is to do God’s will, he’ll know whether or not the educating is from God.” In different phrases, he’ll see the solar.
