Dear Sovereign Redeemer and other friends,

A request that I made in the introduction to my sermon on Psalm 5 this past Sunday was this: Keep in mind the term “practical atheism”.

Atheism, of course, is the denial of the existence of God. The atheist says “There is no God!” I called that intellectual atheism. A much more common and subtle form, though, is practical atheism, which is living like there is no God. No Christian would ever intellectually deny the existence of God, but every Christian has had minutes, hours, days where we live as if the God of the Bible does not exist. It is folly in the extreme, but sometimes we are fools.

The question I asked all of us to face was (and is) this: “To what degree am I a practical atheist?” Not “Am I?” but “To what degree?”

We are at the beginning of a new week. Let’s live this week, and every other week, like practical Christians! Let’s shed the shameful suit of mere intellectual Christianity, which comes with a profession of faith but doesn’t really show up in my pattern of life, and put on a practical Christianity which is shaped by the reality that everything I think, say and do is before a Father who has sent His Son to save me.

Your brother,

Jason