Often a good starting point when trying to help those who do not believe in God or accept Christ as Lord is to get them to deal honestly with the question: Would I like for there to be a God? Or, would I like it if Jesus turned out to be Lord? This may help them realize the extent to which what they want to be the case is controlling their ability to see what is the case.

It is one of the curiosities of Western intellectual history that, during the last century or so, those with no serious involvement with practical Christianity—maybe totally ignorant of it or even hostile to it—have been allowed, under the guise of "scholarship" or innovative thought, to define what religion is and to reinterpret Christian teachings in the light of their own biased definitions and purposes.

We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with him through our minds, and our actions are based on the understanding that results from the fullness of that contact. There is nothing mysterious here. This is why the mind, and what we turn our minds to, is the key to our lives.

Had to believe or do because otherwise something bad—something with no essential connection with real life—would happen to them. The people initially impacted by that message generally concluded that they would be fools to disregard it. That was the basis of their conversion.

That is the function of the will or heart: to organize our life as a whole, and, indeed, to organize it around God.

We demean God by considering him a cosmic boss who orders humans around

One of the greatest weaknesses in our teaching and leadership today is that we spend so much time trying to get people to do things good people are supposed to do, without changing what they really believe.

What has to be done, instead of trying to drive people to do what we think they are supposed to, is to be honest about what we and others really believe. Then, by inquiry, teaching, example, prayer, and reliance upon the spirit of God, we can work to change the beliefs that are contrary to the way of Jesus. We can open the way for others, Christians or not, to heartily choose apprenticeship in the kingdom of God.

Reason functions as a basis of responsibility before God precisely because of its ability to serve in the instigation, nurture, and correction of faith. Because of this ability, we are responsible before God if we do not abide according to its results. To disparage the role of reason in the production and sustenance of faith is to contradict the plain intent of the scriptures, according to which reason provides adequate grounds to support a right worship of God.

Remember, to believe something is to act as if it is so. To believe that two plus two equals four is to behave accordingly when trying to find out how many dollars or apples are in the house. The advantage of believing it is not that we can pass tests in arithmetic; it is that we can deal much more successfully with reality. Just try dealing with it as if two plus two equaled six.

A great deal of what goes into "training them [us] to do everything I said" consists simply in bringing people to believe with their whole being the information they already have as a result of their initial confidence in Jesus—even if that initial confidence was only the confidence of desperation.

Our search for safety and contentment is endless and inexhaustible precisely because of the intrinsic futility of relying on human abilities to provide resolution to our problems.