Do You Ever Doubt God’s Existence?
00:00:00.000 | Brent emails a very simple question, but a direct one.
00:00:08.800 | Pastor John, do you ever doubt the existence of God?
00:00:12.800 | The thought that God doesn't exist enters my mind periodically, and when
00:00:23.120 | you're reading atheistic literature, it's kind of put there. But what I would say
00:00:28.800 | is it doesn't get traction in my mind. It lodges there, it sort of rumbles
00:00:36.360 | around. You ask it, you ponder it, you look at it, and by God's merciful grace, it
00:00:45.040 | doesn't hook. You know, it's not like a hook in a fish's mouth. It
00:00:49.800 | goes in your mouth, and you just keep it open. It goes out of your mouth instead
00:00:53.360 | of you come down on it, and then it hooks you right in the jaw. It never has hooked
00:00:59.200 | me, and therefore it never has destroyed me or undone my ministry. And when
00:01:05.720 | I try to - let me just describe my experience a little bit so that maybe the person
00:01:10.440 | will be able to handle his own doubts. I was walking to church one day,
00:01:17.320 | having meditated on Romans 1, where it says what can be known about God
00:01:25.960 | is obvious to them in the things that have been made. So God - Paul says in
00:01:32.680 | Romans 1, people do know God. They know God from the things that have been made,
00:01:38.520 | but they repress the knowledge. So I was pondering, okay, if that's true, then John
00:01:44.520 | Piper knows God by the things that have been made. And I looked at this tree
00:01:49.040 | right across the street from our church, right between the two big tall towers
00:01:53.160 | there. It's just an incredible big tall tree, and I just looked at it and I thought, sap
00:01:58.800 | has to get to the top of those branches, and there's no pump in that tree. There's
00:02:02.920 | no motor. How's that happen? And then I thought about those limbs right now in
00:02:09.280 | March look as dead as a doornail, and in two months they are going to be waving
00:02:16.600 | and pulsating with green, beautiful, shaped, leafy life. How in the world? And
00:02:24.280 | I went on pondering this, and I thought, I cannot not believe in God. That's what I
00:02:31.640 | felt. I just felt I cannot not do it. I can't do it. I can't deny God. It's not as
00:02:38.040 | though I'm trying hard to deny. I'm just not able to deny. And then another way it
00:02:45.760 | works for me is that when I look at Jesus, I read the Gospels, and when I find
00:02:51.360 | Jesus talking and doing, I find C.S. Lewis is, this guy's an absolute deceiver, liar,
00:03:00.160 | or this guy is a lunatic, or this guy is son of God. And emotionally, I'm just not
00:03:10.680 | able. God has so worked in my heart so that when I look at Jesus as he's
00:03:16.800 | presented in the Gospels, I am not able to call him a liar. I'm not able to call
00:03:22.040 | him a lunatic. I have to bow and say, "You are God. You know God, and you represent
00:03:29.240 | God, and you embody God." And I feel the same way. I've never heard people unpack
00:03:34.960 | this the way I feel it. I feel the same way about the Apostle Paul. I've
00:03:40.520 | never heard anybody say, "Liar, lunatic, or faithful representative." But that's the
00:03:47.360 | way I feel. I read Paul, all 13 letters, and I love the man, I trust the man, I
00:03:54.440 | admire the man, I reverence the man, and I cannot bring myself to say, "He's a
00:04:01.720 | knucklehead. He was swept away by some kind of experience that was unreal. He's
00:04:09.320 | just too rational. He's too reasonable. He's too loving. He's too caring. He's too
00:04:14.720 | authentic." The man can't be the kind of idiot he'd have to be if he was
00:04:22.000 | putting forth a mythological system of salvation that had no bearing, or no
00:04:26.680 | roots, in reality. So God has used trees and galaxies and Jesus and Paul, and I
00:04:36.240 | haven't, by grace, had to take those things and say, "Oh, oh please, cause God
00:04:43.360 | to be real in my life." I've simply not been able to escape his reality. Thank
00:04:49.800 | you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your
00:04:53.040 | questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You can find
00:04:56.920 | thousands of other free resources online from John Piper at DesiringGod.org
00:05:00.120 | as well. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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