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, you look at it, and

by God's merciful grace, it doesn't hook, you know, it's not like a hook in a fissious

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 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, 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,

just incredible, a big tall tree, and I just looked at it, 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?

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