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Earthly pleasure supplies instant gratification from something that they can see and feel. God's pleasure isn't always instant, it may take a while to realize what God just did. He isn't always visible. So that's the pleasure bit.
Mainly people put their faith in things they can see. They rely on bank accounts, airbags and life insurance. but how many of us would take a Leap of Faith and put our faith in something that we can't see? Many people say "Oh I can see what science has proven therefore I believe in Science." That isn't faith. That's like calling walking across the Golden Gate Bridge a leap of faith. Christians and anyone with the audacity to believe in something that they can't see have true faith.

In some ways it is, yes. But in some ways it isn't. For example, atoms have been seen and measured, so it can be called fact and not faith.

So you think that you're holy and good?

Who is above God sir? Nobody.

Now if you were the divine creator of the universe, and don't take me as being rude, would you not punish evil and wickedness?

I see you here saying that whatever deity that there might be out there will reward you based on your goodness, from that I can see that you don't understand the grace of God.

It is by faith in him only, not by the seeking after knowledge or the doing of good works lest men boast. http://bible.cc/ephesians/2-9.htm

So in a sense here you are in the court room talking to the judge telling him, "Sir I know that I have done wrong, but I washed your car today." And to God our works are as filthy rags, we are born in sin, and God will not listen to the sinner unless they ask for his forgiveness for what his son did on the cross for you. Jesus is standing here saying, "Invite me in. Let me dine with you, and you with me. Accept what I did for you on the cross." But if you don't want to do that, nothing can make you, and God won't force you to do so, he never shoves his love down people's throats, he gives it to them freely, now if you don't want that, the only other option is hell.

And what if you are wrong? What if this life is the only life one gets, and what if the only reason you failed was because you didn't ask Jesus into your heart? Think about things 200,000 years from now in that aspect, think about what life is like if you rejected his love, the bible says that there is no in between, there is no Purgatory, no second chance. Accept or Reject. If we as individuals fail to accept the lord in this lifetime, we are forever doomed to be tortured with the Devil and his angels in the lake of fire.

You make it sound like a choice. I've tried before in the past. However, being Atheist isn't a choice. I surely don't believe and wasn't given a reason to. That's simply how it is. It's up to God or gods or whatever else to show his gracious love to me and all. If he expects me to just BELIEVE without any kind of reason....then what would be the point? What about the people that have had spiritual experience or contact? I haven't had that even in great and dire situations. So if believing in his presence is really that much of an importance, the task must be done in blind faith without reasonable doubt unless you were lucky enough to be given some kind of reason.

So...let's say he does exist and I was just wrong.
Why would he make it so complicated to believe in him where reasonable doubt is easily placed everywhere against his favor? Does he reward a following and punish those who are confused? He is suppose to help guide those, but he is no light if he expects people to just happen to expect him to exist beyond from written words in a book. He's more powerful than a book or even words themselves in a sense.

UNLESS, he doesn't care about your faith. There are so many beliefs in this world each with a different outlook and perception. If you did what he expects is 'good' and whatnot, I'm sure that's all it would take. If not, than the game to heaven is unfair, especially those who have no way of knowing what Christianity is.

This is where we Christians play our role as appointed by God. We're His followers (or we try to be because we're sinners as well or don't even try at all because not all professing Christians are true Christians), and God has sent us out in the world to introduce Jesus to them, so that they may also be saved by God's grace.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19)

As for living in times where there are countless beliefs and religions, we know that Satan is the author of confusion and will do anything to divert people away from God. Satan loves it when people die in their sins, so he'll go by any means to get as many people burning in hell with him as possible. Remember: he doesn't want God to win.

Want to check this out? It's a website with a whole bunch of comics, and hopefully you'll look into it? It will help you learn more about Christianity that you may not have known before. Chick Tracts

Hey, if some stuff confuses you, don't hesitate to ask. We'll do our best to answer any questions you may have.

Well... actually I had some experiences that were strange and could be considered help from God. One time when I was a little girl, I remember praying before I went to bed that I would be safe that night and angels of God would protect me. Then, while I was standing in my bedroom, the funniest thing happened: the atmosphere changed! It literally changed. Lol the whole room suddenly felt lighter as if a great heavy weight had been lifted that I had not noticed before, and I remember just standing there with a weird expression on my face, trying to figure out what had happened. xd

As for my dad, when he was a kid, his family weren't Christians yet, and they engaged in witchcraft before they were saved. My dad told me that they had bought a special table that levitated (kind of reminds you of Ouija boards), and when you asked it a yes/no question, it would tilt once for "no" and twice for "yes" (demons influenced it and told you whether the questions you asked would happen in the future). One time my dad asked a question about death, and suddenly the table started shaking uncontrollably as if it were angry. Then, according to my dad, his mom (my grandmother) slammed her hands down on the table's surface, and it stopped shaking for good. After that, nobody used that table anymore. I never really talked about these things with my dad, and my memory of what he told me happened in his life is opaque. My dad also recounted standing in front of a mirror with a bunch of his friends and chanting a spell to summon some sort of witch spirit. A glowing, green figure began to come out of the mirror, and my dad and his friends absolutely freaked and ran off, never to try that summoning again. But of course, my dad had not always had demonic experiences in his life. Once when he was very young, it was storming outside, he said, and he went under a tree for shelter. A voice told him, "Step away from the tree." My dad ran inside the house but turned around to see lightning strike a huge branch that fell where he had stood under the tree only seconds ago. Later on in life he was driving in his car without a seatbelt, and a voice told him, "Strap on your seatbelt." When my father was busying himself with the seatbelt, abruptly a car was speeding and skidding down the road, and if my dad had not heeded that disembodied voice he would have already lurched his car forward and had gotten killed in a bad crash. From what I can concur with these almost-death scenes, God was preventing my dad's death because He has some amazing plans for my dad in life. ^^

Even though I was raised in a Christian family and before I spiritually got closer to God, I experimented with witchcraft myself as a 13-year-old. To this day I still don't understand why I did what I did. I practiced mermaid spells and grew brown splotches on my legs, and running my hands over these splotches felt scaly. It was strange; I was thirsty for water all the time (drinking like 8 bottles of water in 2 or 3 hours) and craved salty snacks. I also summoned a demon around the time I was dabbling into the occult, something I should not have done. I remember after I had read the spell out loud that I found a blog website with a whole bunch of people talking about mermaids and spells. There was one girl who posted, saying something like, "Hey guys, you should stop doing this! My friend had been doing mermaid spells, and now there are spirits calling her name outside her window. She's scared to come out of the house now, and her dad had a dream that a spirit appeared by her bedside. Seriously, guys, no more. It's dangerous!"

Now, I am not as idiotic as I used to be to copy my dad's foolishness at a young age, and I'm glad God sent my dad to deliver me from black magic. If my dad had not stopped me, who knew what kind of person I would have turnEd into.

Yes, stuff sometimes happens in my life that can't be called a coincidence. This year and last year my city was threatened once with severe storms, hail, and tornados. I remember last year feeling very calm and praying to God to protect my family, home, and my dad's car parked outside. Hail rained everywhere, but my dad's car did not have a dent or a scratch while other cars in the neighborhood had hail-sized dents in their cars and roofs were damaged. Our roof was fine. I had prayed that we wouldn't get the worst of the storm, and the storm on the weather channel and on the radar split around Knoxville, the city I live in. This year I prayed and the storm once again split around Knoxville. Lol coincidence?

Ach! Sorry, I spoke too much. Here's two videos where they rebuke tornados. It's really cool; my dad randomly showed them to me today by email. The first one happened a long while ago, where a man is shouting at a tornado in the name of Jesus to jump over his office building and house so it would not harm them, and it obeys. The second video happened in Kentucky last Friday with a woman telling a tornado coming at them to leave in the name of Jesus. In the second video, it is harder to see but the tornado was strong and coming straight toward them, and then when the woman is rebuking it, its power weakens and veers over to the left, sparing them and their house.
Video 1
Video 2

Oh yeah, I forgot to add this yesterday. This is a personal testimony of mine, the first one I've ever recorded in detail but not the first I had experienced. It is the most recent event that had happened to me. Copied and pasted from my computer:

2/15/12
Here's an inspiration for you:

I am still shocked by what happened today after high school. Every student has to write a chapel talk and present it on a specific date in the year, and I had been postponing it because I was reluctant to do it; therefore, I waited until the last minute. Today was really pressuring for me because all the teachers came up to me to nag me about my speech and that it had to be done NOW because my practice presentation is tomorrow. I threw back a few resistant complaints and cried twice out of frustration and stress. I had a pretty bad day today on February 15.

When I got home, my mom was stern with me, telling me she had gotten a call from one of my teachers, and they had also noted I may have a sign of depression. I acted snappish and felt like a jerk.

I trudged upstairs to wash my face (I have oily skin), and when I patted it dry with a towel, a thought came to me in a very quiet voice saying, You need to have a talk with God. You cannot hide this from Him, and you cannot get through your problems alone. Go talk to Him. Now, this was merely a suggestion that the Holy Spirit strongly recommended me to do in what appeared to be a thought of my own... but the words didn't belong to me. I could have turned down the suggestion if I had wished to, but I was feeling like crud and agreed that I needed to converse with God.

So I began, wracking my brain for something to say and how to address God with my issue, "God, I'm sorry that I haven't been talking to you normally in a while. I've only been running to you when I needed help, and I feel like I haven't properly had a father/daughter talk for so long... I realize that I can't just think about myself when everything's fine and suddenly need your help when life goes wrong. Please forgive me. But Lord, I ask again for your help because I'm feeling depressed, and I don't know how I'll get my entire speech written. Lord, I really need you to give me the strength and motivation to finish my paper and to take away my depression. Amen."

I was sobbing a bit (for the third time) because it's so emotional for me to pray to God. I often cry when talking to Him because I love Him... I came back downstairs and sat at the kitchen table with my mom. I felt so strangely at ease, and I had the strongest urge to give my mother a hug and a kiss. I told my mom of my prayer to God and how I suddenly felt calm afterwards. We both knew God had immediately and willingly taken away the horrible feeling in my heart. He had heard me.

My mom and I began on my speech, going over brainstormed ideas written on a scrap sheet of paper, and I typed away on my iPad (with a separate keyboard that links to my iPad through wireless BlueTooth) with my mom helping me along. My dad finally came home from work, for we could see, sitting by the window, that his car pulled in the driveway. Supper was ready, and afterwards I returned to working on my speech. All of a sudden, the Pages document crashed, and I was unable to return back to my essay. I could open up any of my other Pages documents, but not the one that had crashed: the one with my speech. I started getting anxiety attacks, and my mom asked my dad to figure out the problem and recover the document (he's an engineer and a whiz on technology). My mind retrospected to earlier in the afternoon to the voice in my head that told me now was the time to speak with God and and to my prayer, trying to follow the voice's advice that I couldn't do this without Him, but I didn't have much luck calming myself down with those recent memories. I tried to assure myself that God was in control of everything that happened. And I had nothing to fear. But still...I was doubting.

Then, with such love shining in her eyes, my mom gazed directly at me, took both of my hands into hers, and said, "Have you ever heard of faith?" I was astonished, and I could only stare at her, dumbfounded, as she looked at me with such intensity...full of love!

"Mom, you read my mind," I could only answer.

She smiled. "God will do anything for you if you will only have faith in Him. You need to trust in Him completely that everything will work out."

Then we prayed together, still holding hands, for God to help my dad retrieve the document again. I still doubted that even if I put all my faith into God saving my speech document (which if it was never found again, I would burst into tears), the document would never be recovered, and all my hard work and effort would be lost. I was extremely worried and afraid something bad would happen. "But Mom, what if my paper's gone?"

"It won't be," she assured me confidently. "Your dad will find it again, I promise you. Put your trust in God, and your paper will be found. There's no reason to be scared because He is in control and always there for you."

I found myself holding hands tightly with her as if I was afraid that if I let my hands go, then God wouldn't recover my chapel talk document. It was a silly notion, but I felt rather safe and peaceful holding hands with her. I didn't want to let go. My mom casually suggested I write down any thoughts pertaining to the essay that could be added. I was hesitant and timidly explained to her I didn't want to write at the moment. She smiled as if she was amused and stated, "Are you afraid that God won't save your speech if we let our hands go?"

I sighed. "Mom, you read my mind again." So, I cautiously unlaced our intertwined fingers, breathing an inner sigh of relief when I found I was still in a calm state of mind. A Bible verse came to mind, and I told my mother, "Jesus said that if I had faith as small as a mustard seed, I could say to this mountain, 'move and it will be done.' Nothing will be impossible for me if my faith in God is strong enough." (Matthew 17:20 Paraphrased)

(An hour later)

My dad traveled back downstairs with my iPad and some pages printed out. He told me my speech document had corrupted, but he was able to copy the manuscript and email it to me. The pages printed out were the manuscript, my speech with a few strange symbols added here and there. I deleted the weird text from the document and – ta da – my document was a new one with my speech in it! I was so excited and thankful to God for supporting me as much as He did. I couldn't thank Him enough for what He had done. I later told my mom that I believed the Holy Spirit spoke to me through her because of the overwhelming love pouring out of her, and she said she believed so, as well, because she felt the love of the Spirit (yeah, at that time my mom had been acting freaky like she was somebody else). I also concurred to my mom that the Spirit aided my dad in recovering my crashed speech. He had no idea how or why it crashed when all the other documents were perfectly fine. Definitely something bizarre happened!

My mom and I came to the conclusion that God chose the right time for my document to crash on me. He allowed it to happen at the perfect time: after my dad had come home (to fix it for me later on). He made it crash on purpose, I believe, so that I could rely on Him and try to convince myself over and over: Everything will be fine! Everything goes according to God's plan! Trust in Him! He was helping me grow stronger in my faith as I had asked Him. This was where a Bible verse came to mind along with a mental image of Jesus standing on the waves and one of His disciples, Peter, coming toward Him before realizing he was walking on water and panicked. He cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus caught him so Peter wouldn't sink and said to him, "You of little faith. Why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:22-31 Paraphrased)

When those verses came to mind, I had asked God, "Lord I want to have faith in you. Please strengthen my faith!" In this case, God was doing exactly that. He caused my iPad to do a weird thing so my faith would grow even more.

Yes, my faith has been strengthened even more, and after my confrontation with God, He remained active all throughout the evening, making His presence obviously known. I'm just in a state of shock and admiration for what a wonderful Father He is!!! My speech is finally done, for I have been working on it for 8 hours. I'm relieved that it's over with and so proud with what I've written! Too bad I wasn't able to do any of my other homework. Still, I knew that God had helped me even if it wasn't what I expected. When you ask God for help, He often aids you in ways you do not expect or do not like. Whatever the reason God chooses to do it that way, He must see very good results and that this, whatever it is, is the best way out of all the possible choices.

"And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.." (John 14:13 KJV)

Yeah, that's my story. On February 22nd when I was leaving art class early so I can get to chapel where I would meet Mary Heyward and Kaylie, two of my classmates who were also going to give speeches, I went into the restroom to wash my clay-covered hands. Before I did that, I prayed to the Lord to give me the strength to speak and to calm my anxiety. Butterflies were wildly dancing in my stomach, and I knew I couldn't do this without God. When I had said, "Amen," the bathroom door suddenly opened and a girl casually walked in. I immediately went to washing my hands and pretended nothing happened.

"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (Matthew 6:6 KJV)

I had prayed in secret, and God rewarded me openly with my chapel talk presentation and with the compliments that soon followed for three days before the weekend and a little bit the week after. Countless people came up to me in shock, saying that my delivery was powerful and inspirational; one person had even admitted my speech made them shiver (because of the power). I couldn't do it like I did without a supernatural force such as God. I humbly refuse to take all the glory, because it was God who had delivered the speech, not me. So I'm giving all the credit to the Rightful Owner. He is faithful to me as I am faithful to Him, and I declare that without God I am nothing. I am nothing without God.

"Lord, I could not ever thank you enough..."

~Dramatica Angeliqua