Admittedly, this was ripped of from John Piper’s “God’s Passion for His Glory” – I think . . .

The proposition is an adjustment to the common illustration of faith – sitting in a chair. It is stated that when you sit in a chair you put faith in it. You rest your complete weight upon it and thereby, exercise faith in it, right? Not exactly.

What you are actually doing is putting your faith in the chair’s future’s future – and actually thereby putting your faith in God. Let me explain:

1. When approaching the chair, you must have some prior knowledge that the device is for sitting and the holding up of weight and that it, or a form of it, has likely held you in the past. Chairs are for sitting.

2. Even though you have sat in the device in the past that is designed for sitting AND it held you up before, what is to give you the idea that the principles that worked in your favor before – while in suspended animation aloft this said chair? Why would the chair, or a form of it, hold you again – unless there is some stability of principle(s) that is/are consistent.  Chairs can hold people as a normal practice because of the principles that dictate its design and structure.

3. The principles must be from without and cannot be self-contained in the object itself. Someone has designed the principles that are used to design the materials.

4. So, you are trusting in the current chair, which is the future of the chair that embarked you upon the road of chair sitting, only confident that that’s chair’s future chair will hold you because of a consistency of things- chairs- thus, bringing you to trust in the original chair’s future’s future. It is the ultimate principle behind all of this that finds locus in God.

Hey . . . take a load off – sit down – and chew on that a while.