Yes? No? Or?

Now, we can all improve the reasons we have for our beliefs.

  But for many, the Christian story makes good sense of reality as we find it. We all experience an exquisitely ordered universe that begs to be explained by a designing Creator.

 This is also a moral world. People have certain inalienable rights, and there are things that are objectively right and wrong. This is tough to explain if there is no God.

 We have also all experienced deep longings for the transcendent and it’s clear that nothing in this world fully satisfies. The Gospel addresses these deep longings and points us to a divine fulfillment.

 Perhaps the best reason of all is that you have experienced the living God for yourself as he’s convicted your heart and made himself real to you. If so, all of these constitute reasons for thinking that Christianity is true.

---

 Travis Dickinson, Wandering Toward God: Finding Faith amid Doubts and Big Questions

 

Counterfeit Post 4 (Revisited)

 All your needs and some of your wants are available in your journey with God.  Our disappointments, counterfeit gods and idols of them that are the most agonizing have to do with our most cherished, most personal idols. There are always some idols, things that we invest in to get an extra level of joy and fulfillment in our lives. Are those that are attacked, threatened or dissolved? 

 

 When that happens, we can respond in one of two ways. We can wallow in self-pity, despair and bitterness.

 We will feel entitled to wallow in those feelings, saying “I`ve worked all my life to get to this place in my career and now it’s all gone!” or “I’ve worked my whole life to give that woman all my life, and this is how she repays me!” We may feel at liberty to cheat, take revenge or throw away our principles in order to get some relief.  Many, too many break-away to commence another relationship with another person to salvage our ego and our foolish ways.  Or we may live in a permanent, despairing environment.

 

 Or else, like Abraham, you could take a walk up into the mountain that centuries  later was named Calvary. You could lay those idols down and take the necessary steps to align your will with God’s. There lies our solution to our multiple dilemmas.Our cherished counterfeit gods can be made to lie down,if we call upon God.

Forgo personal aggrandisement and see the solution for ourselves.

 You could always see that God may be calling you to live without something you and I never thought we could. But if I have God, I have all I have of wealth and health, love, honour, creativity and security. All I really need and cannot lose is found in God. 

 

  As many have learned and later taught, you don’t realize Jesus is really all you need until Jesus is all you have.

 Many, if not most, of these counterfeit gods can remain in our lives once we have “demoted” them below the level of God. No longer are they able to enthrall or enslave us.  No longer will these counterfeit gods or idols control and bewitch us with pride, anxiety, anger, stress and compulsion. 

 

A heavily edited book excerpt from Timothy Keller’s Counterfeit Gods.

 

Counterfeit Post 5 ?

While Reading The Book of Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller.

 Never in my wildest dreams have I received, experienced or learned so much more than I have since I gave my heart and life to Jesus the Son of God many years ago.

 I fell into a well of despair when I fell for the counterfeit gods in the world system that I was initially raised to believe.

 I elevated those idols (not those of stone, iron or gold) of sex, money, fame and power above the core values and norms of the Domain of God and then disaster struck while I walked the paths of this world for a time. Even while walking the new path of God, I was habouring some of the old ways of the self intertwined with the world system. 

 This book  startled  me causing me to re-awaken and to break free from those idols of sex, fame, wealth and power that had secretly enthralled me for so long. Thank God for individuals whose faithful walk with God has opened the way for others to be released.

I encourage and recommend it to you.

 

Timothy Keller's book entitled Counterfeit Gods. 

 

Counterfeit Post 3 ?

 

How do we lay down our idols in our hearts which are not spiritually safe to have them ?

We need to offer them up to God. We need to let go of them,to stop being enslaved and enthralled by them.

Their presence in our hearts are dangerous to have and hold. However being aware of them intellectually,as an abstraction to voice, leaves  them just as nestled in our hearts. 

We have to know deeply, that He so assures us, so cherishes us, that God so loves us, so delights in us that we can rest in our hearts in Him for our significance and security and love that He can deal with anything in our life.

A heavily edited excerpt from the book Counterfeit Gods  by Timothy Keller. 

Counterfeit Post 2 ?

The three great monotheistic faiths of the world today,  Judaism, Islam and Christianity,  name Abraham as founder. Over a half of the population of Humanity consider him as their spiritual father. 

That would never have happened unless God had dealt with the counterfeit God or idol in Abraham's heart.

An edited excerpt from the book of Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller.

Counterfeit Post ?

People who have never suffered in life have less empathy for others, little knowledge of their own shortcomings and limitations, no endurance in the face of hardship and unrealistic expectations for life.

As the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, anyone God loves experiences hardship 

( Hebrews 12: 1-8 )

Excerpt from the book Counterfeit Gods  by Timothy Keller.

Song Heralds Blogging?

 

 

An old song by Sting: Message in a Bottle.

 

It has a curious way of telling us how things really are. The song Message in a Bottle begins with these lyrics:

 

Just a castaway, an island lost at sea.
Another lonely day with no-one there but me.
Oh more loneliness that any man could bear,
rescue me before I fall into despair.
I will send an S.O.S to the world;
I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle.

And it finishes up like this?

Walked out this morning,
don’t believe what I saw.
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore.
Seems I’m not alone at being alone,
hundred billion castaways looking for a home.
I’ll send an S.O.S to the world,
I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle.”

 

It’s a song that connected with a lot of people, a song that tells it just the way things are for so many.  “Message in a Bottle” speaks to the heart. Just a lonesome bunch of people?

So what am I suggesting? Look, there are so many people doing amazing things. They are talented, able and committed. Good things being done in the world but mashed up with that, a lot of bad things too and it’s always been like that. I want to think for a moment about this whole ‘message in a bottle’ thing. Is it true? Are there a whole bunch of lonely people out there?

After reading a book some time ago about blogging. Now, that my blog is up and running. Why Blog?  It’s where people, mostly young and not so young as well, get online and share their thoughts, photos, and videos for the world to see.

How many people do you think there are on the Internet, blogging in 2024? There are over 600 million! Six hundred million sending out their message in a bottle, all crying out to be noticed, all wanting to be outstanding and significant. That's a staggering 1/3 of the 1.8 billion websites out there. With a tremendous 7.5 million blog posts each day or 2.7 billion per year.

This message in-a-bottle thing is happening in a way today that Sting could never have imagined when he wrote that song.

Maybe you’re not a blogger, but you know what I’m talking about. This deep search for significance! People are looking for that place where they can say,” I’ve found myself and now I have a deep sense of satisfaction about my life and how I fit in.” It’s not about circumstances but about who we are and where we fit. Many people send out their messages in a bottle in the most- unique ways.

There is a message, not in a bottle, but in a very significant book named the Bible. Have you heard about this  important book? If you have?

Then you probably heard about the Old Testament a large portion of the Bible, written by over 30 different people in many centuries before Jesus was born. There are very precise predictions about Jesus, e.g., he would be born in Bethlehem. He would be born of a virgin. He would be killed and the Roman soldiers would gamble over his clothes after they had killed him. Over 100 predictions. Things that Jesus himself would have found pretty hard to arrange unless He is who He says He is.

Unless? Those predictions throughout the Old Testament about Jesus are, because, God knows all of history from the very beginning. Centuries before Jesus Christ arrived. He was arranging the affairs of humankind with His boundless power, extraordinary wisdom and endless knowledge.

 God’s plan, I believe, is to be in our midst and to give us peace and joy at anytime and beyond. He quietly slipped into the world in this stable in Bethlehem.

What if God saw these messages in bottles lying on that beach? What if He heard the cry of our hearts? What if God always knew that the only way to quiet your and my heart, to still your heart, to satisfy our souls was for us to know Him? What if this Jesus is God’s message to you and me in a bottle? What if God’s plan was always to become a man and step into our world? God in the flesh, God’s message in a bottle.

Inspired initially by Pastor   B. Dymet of the Christianity Works