The Reason for God

Timothy Keller

Epilogue: Where do we go from here?

• If you are ready to explore what it means to put your faith in Christ, where do you go from here?
• Examining Your Motives
  • Motives are nearly always mixed.
  • We must recognize that virtually all of us begin our journey toward God because we want something from him.
  • But we must come to grips with the fact that we OWE Him everything just because of what He has done for us already.
  • So it's not "What do I do to get what I want?" but "What do I do to get Him?"
    • We will never succeed if we don't make this final transition.
• Counting the Cost
  • A Christian is "Christ's One", someone who has switched his or her most fundamental allegiance to Jesus.
    • Indeed, as the early Church confessed Christos Kurios, Jesus is Lord.
  • See the long quote from Bono about Jesus and His Lordship leading to his death (page 229).
  • This claim by Christ forced the all-or-nothing choice.
  • Christians are people who let the reality of Jesus change everything about who they are, how they see, and how they live.
• Taking Inventory
  • If you still have reservations, a good idea is to take inventory to find the basis of your hesitation.
    • Content Issues - Are there parts of the Christian message that you don't understand or agree with?
    • Coherence Issues - Are there doubt and objections to the Christian faith that you cannot resolve.
    • Cost Issues - Do you believe that a move to full Christian faith will cost you something dear?
  • While this is an important and valuable exercise, it is best not to do it alone
    • Spend some time in a Christian church in worship and fellowship with its members.
    • Hear how others have come to grips with their doubts and concerns.
    • One pastor suggested: "What if God hasn't given us a watertight argument, but rather a watertight person?"
  • Are you returning to a faith you abandoned? Or are you finding it anew?
    • It doesn't matter!!!
    • To Connect or Reconnect requires the same two things.
• Making the Move (Keller says you must do "two things and a third")
  • The first thing you must do is repent
    • The repentance that really changes your heart and your relationship with God begins when you recognize that your main sin, the sin underlying all the others, is your own self-salvation project.
    • So repentance is confessing the things besides God himself that you have been relying on for your hope, significance, and security.
  • The second thing you must do is believe in Christ.
    • Birth, atoning death, life giving resurrection.
    • Remember, it is not the strength of your faith that saves you, it is the OBJECT of faith.
    • Strong faith in a weak branch is useless.
    • This means that you do NOT have to eliminate all doubts and fears to take hold of Christ.
• Committing to Community (the "third" thing - more a way of doing the others).
  • Becoming a Christian has always had both an individual and a corporate aspect.
    • But people of the West often underestimate the power of families, community and culture (as opposed to the popular concept of the sovereignty of the individual). [Or they place ALL power in them as in the intense group identity politics of our current age.]
  • We must personally approach God in prayer and publicly identify with him through the Church.
• The Trauma of Grace
  • But those who enter a relationship with God inevitably look back and recognize that God's grace had sought them out, breaking them open to new realities.
  • It was NEVER by works!

  Reason for God