Brent emails a very simple question, but a direct one. Pastor John, do you ever doubt the existence of God? The thought that God doesn't exist enters my mind periodically, and when you're reading atheistic literature, it's kind of put there. But what I would say is it doesn't get traction in my mind.

It lodges there, it sort of rumbles around. You ask it, you ponder it, you look at it, and by God's merciful grace, it doesn't hook. You know, it's not like a hook in a fish's mouth. It goes in your mouth, and you just keep it open. It goes out of your mouth instead of you come down on it, and then it hooks you right in the jaw.

It never has hooked me, and therefore it never has destroyed me or undone my ministry. And when I try to - let me just describe my experience a little bit so that maybe the person will be able to handle his own doubts. I was walking to church one day, having meditated on Romans 1, where it says what can be known about God is obvious to them in the things that have been made.

So God - Paul says in Romans 1, people do know God. They know God from the things that have been made, but they repress the knowledge. So I was pondering, okay, if that's true, then John Piper knows God by the things that have been made. And I looked at this tree right across the street from our church, right between the two big tall towers there.

It's just an incredible big tall tree, and I just looked at it and I thought, sap has to get to the top of those branches, and there's no pump in that tree. There's no motor. How's that happen? And then I thought about those limbs right now in March look as dead as a doornail, and in two months they are going to be waving and pulsating with green, beautiful, shaped, leafy life.

How in the world? And I went on pondering this, and I thought, I cannot not believe in God. That's what I felt. I just felt I cannot not do it. I can't do it. I can't deny God. It's not as though I'm trying hard to deny. I'm just not able to deny.

And then another way it works for me is that when I look at Jesus, I read the Gospels, and when I find Jesus talking and doing, I find C.S. Lewis is, this guy's an absolute deceiver, liar, or this guy is a lunatic, or this guy is son of God.

And emotionally, I'm just not able. God has so worked in my heart so that when I look at Jesus as he's presented in the Gospels, I am not able to call him a liar. I'm not able to call him a lunatic. I have to bow and say, "You are God.

You know God, and you represent God, and you embody God." And I feel the same way. I've never heard people unpack this the way I feel it. I feel the same way about the Apostle Paul. I've never heard anybody say, "Liar, lunatic, or faithful representative." But that's the way I feel.

I read Paul, all 13 letters, and I love the man, I trust the man, I admire the man, I reverence the man, and I cannot bring myself to say, "He's a knucklehead. He was swept away by some kind of experience that was unreal. He's just too rational. He's too reasonable.

He's too loving. He's too caring. He's too authentic." The man can't be the kind of idiot he'd have to be if he was putting forth a mythological system of salvation that had no bearing, or no roots, in reality. So God has used trees and galaxies and Jesus and Paul, and I haven't, by grace, had to take those things and say, "Oh, oh please, cause God to be real in my life." I've simply not been able to escape his reality.

Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You can find thousands of other free resources online from John Piper at DesiringGod.org as well. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.