Practical Atheist

I started reading the new Francis Chan book, "Forgotten God" last night, and it seems to be alot like our new series that started today at church, called "Practical Atheist". I love it when that happens!

Our Pastor said that if we will be open to this series, it really could change our lives. I sure hope so! I love to go to church and hear something that could be life-changing! It was nice to be back at church today, after having no church last Sunday.

This series is going to be awesome! Today was part 1 and it was "I believe in God, but I don't fear Him." We started by looking at 2 Timothy 3:1-5, where it talks about all the things we will see in the last days. Lovers of money, ungrateful, unholy, "having a form of godliness but denying its power." Every single thing it said we will see in the last days, we see today in our world. 94% of people today believe in God or some type of version of Him, yet still we see all these terrible things. Alot of those people go to church, but don't fear God. They continue to do whatever they want and don't really want to change; they just want to be saved from Hell.

So, what is a practical atheist? It is someone who believes in God, but lives as if He doesn't exist. We seem to treat God as we treat buffets. We want to be able to take the parts we want, the way we want, the amount we want, etc. We treat faith as a buffet.....yes, we'll take some grace and mercy, no thanks to the discipline. Psalms 36:1-2 says that "sin whispers to the wicked, deep within their hearts. They have no fear of God to restrain them. In their blind conceit, they cannot see how wicked they really are." Sin tells you that you deserve these things, that no one will ever know. Sin compares you to the world, telling you at least you're still better than most. God created us in His own image and we try to return the favor, creating an image of Him that suits us.

When you truly fear God, you will see two things:

(Keep in mind that "fear" is not cowering under an angry God. It's being in awe of Him. It's coming to the realization of how awesome He is and that He loves you and that idea blowing your mind. The more you get to know Him, the more you are blown away and say "Wow!!". It's not about the do's and dont's. Fearing God creates a desire to obey and follow Him, because you are so in awe of a God like Him who would do what He has for you.)

1. You'll serve him wholeheartedly without any conditions.

Even demons believe in God and fear Him. If you don't fear Him, you don't really know Him. The greatest evidence of fear is obedience. A great example of obedience was Abraham being willing to sacrifice his only son. We always seem to put limits in our serving Him. We try to bargain with God, saying that we might just serve Him, if He can fix "this certain thing" in our lives. We try to bargain with Him. A lot of times God will ruin you, instead of fixing you, and you will never be the same.

2. You'll be forever ruined.

In the church world, too many have not been ruined. Many believe in Him, but don't fear Him. Their lives don't reflect their beliefs. A great example of being ruined, was when Isaiah saw God in Isaiah 6:5. Once that happened, he couldn't go back from there......everything changed. He didn't care what it cost, with no hesitation, he said "Yes" to God, before he even knew what God would ask him to do. How many of us are asked, "Can you do me a favor?" And the first thing we do is ask, "What is it?" We want to know what the favor is before we agree to do it, right? Well, Isaiah was saying yes to God, no matter what the favor was, before he even knew what it was. He didn't care. He just said, "I am ruined!" and when the Lord asked who He should send, Isaiah said, "Here I am. Send me!"

Our Pastor said his New Year's resolution for us all was that God would ruin us, that He would mess us up to the point that we don't say anything else but "Yes, God". To where we don't look or think or act anything like we once did.

I am very excited about this series!