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.