God Exists Whether We Believe in Him or Not

"Now, in fact, I feel that the whole of history and civilization would be unintelligible to me if it were not for my belief in God. So true is this, that I propose to argue that unless God is back of everything, you cannot find meaning in anything. I cannot even argue for belief in Him, without already having taken Him for granted. And similarly I contend that you cannot argue against belief in Him unless you also first take Him for granted. Arguing about God’s existence, I hold, is like arguing about air. You may affirm that air exists, and I that it does not. But as we debate the point, we are both breathing air all the time."

~ Cornelius Van Til

Mark Driscoll on "The Shack."

This Should Keep Us All Thinking

Homer W. Hodge - Prayer

"Prayer should be the breadth of our breathing, the thought of our thinking, the soul of our feeling, and the life of our living, the sound of our hearing, the growth of our growing. Prayer in its magnitude is length without end, width without bounds, height without top, and depth without bottom. Illimitable in its breadth, exhaustless in height, fathomless in depths and infinite in extension."

~Homer W. Hodge

John Piper and Prosperity Gospel

Give up Yourself

"Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

~C. S. Lewis

Mere Christianity

2 Cor. 6:4-10

2 Corinthians 6:4-10
"...As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything."

This verse has so many things in it and it would take some time to explain all of it. But I will say that this certainly isn't what the Prosperity Gospel teaches. The Prosperity Gospel would most likely take part of the last verse ("as poor, yet making many rich") and then misinterpret it.

Now, I believe that what Paul is telling us is that though we are persecuted, though we are thought of as impostors, we have so much more in Christ. Though we die, we live (in Christ). Though we are poor, we are rich (in Christ). Though we nothing, we have everything (in Christ).

After reading this passage, read it again. You are sure to get more out of it a second time.
If you don't have time for God's Word, you may be too busy. I encourage you to study and read the Bible and, if need be, to change your priorities.

The Triune or Three Personal God

"An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God –that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying-the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on-the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kinds of life-what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself."

~C. S. Lewis

Mere Christianity

This is a Shocking Interview

Absolute Goodness = God

"...We know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness everyday, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger - according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way."

~C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity (We Have Cause to be Uneasy, pg.31)