The God Who is There

"For by Him all things were created,

both in the heavens and on earth,

visible and invisible,

whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities,

all things have been created through Him and for Him.

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

He is also head of the body,

 the church; and He is the beginning,

the firstborn from the dead,

so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything."

Colossians 1:16-18

Christianity is not merely a set of ideas and practices and feelings designed for our psychological well-being—whether designed by God or man. That’s not what Christianity is. Christianity begins with the conviction that God is an objective reality outside ourselves. We do not make Him what He is by thinking a certain way about Him. As Francis Schaefer said, He is the God who is there. We don’t make Him. He makes us. We don’t decide what He is going to be like. He decides what we are going to be like. He created the universe, and it has the meaning He gives it, not the meaning we give it. If we give it a meaning different from His, we are fools. And our lives will be tragic in the end. Christianity is not a game; it’s not a therapy. All of its doctrines flow from what God is and what He has done in history. They correspond to hard facts. Christianity is more than facts. There is faith and hope and love. But these don’t float in the air. They grow like great cedar trees in the rock of God’s truth.

 I am deeply convinced from the Bible that your eternal joy and strength and holiness depend on the solidity of this worldview putting strong fiber into the spine of your faith. Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. And wimpy Christians won’t survive the days ahead. Rootless emotionalism that treats Christianity like a therapeutic option will be swept away in the Last Days. Those who will be left standing will be those who have built their house on the rock of great, objective truth with Jesus Christ as the origin, center, and goal of it all.

John Piper

Overcomers in the last days will be those who are grounded in Jesus, The Rock, and in the rock of God's truth, His Word.