Why We Believe, Part 1
Peace in the Midst of Chaos
New
Terrific Podcast and Blog
So on my daily exercise walk, I listened to a terrific Frank Turek podcast, in which he interviewed Alisa Childers, a blogger and apologist with a great perspective as a young mom, former musician and non-intellectual, who now understands the importance of apologetics. You gotta listen to this one. It’s so pertinent today, with liberal views slowly filtering into the Church and deceiving even Christians. https://crossexamined.org/problems-with-progressive-christianity/
You can also access Alisa’s blog here: https://www.alisachilders.com/blog/5-signs-your-church-might-be-heading-toward-progressive-christianity
Seeing the Plan
Gods Part – My Part – #5: The Fruit of the Spirit
We’ve been looking at how so much of the church today has been led to believe God does everything for us in salvation and we don’t have a part to play. We’ve seen (I hope) that this is wrong, and it’s harmful, because it keeps us from fully experiencing salvation and carrying out our mission in the world. What is needed today is a return to the disciplines of Christianity as taught by Jesus, His apostles and early disciples. As John Wesley said, “It was a common saying among the Christians in the primitive Church, “The soul and the body make a man; the spirit and discipline make a Christian;” implying, that none could be real Christians, without the help of Christian discipline. But if this be so, is it any wonder that we find so few Christians; for where is Christian discipline? In what part of England (to go no farther) is Christian discipline added to Christian doctrine? Now, whatever doctrine is preached, where there is not discipline, it cannot have its full effect upon the hearers.” (sermon 116) Let’s continue to look at this in today’s study. Continue reading “Gods Part – My Part – #5: The Fruit of the Spirit”
Gods Part – My Part – #5: The Fruit of the Spirit
Gods Part – My Part – #4: Other New Testament Examples
In this series, we’ve been looking at how the Bible teaches us that while salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9), there is also always a part human beings must play. This doesn’t mean we save ourselves or earn our salvation by our works. What it does mean is that spiritual life is really a divine-human partnership in which we cooperate with the Lord in order to experience the life He has provided for us. We’ve seen how this was really obvious in the Old Testament, in the way in which God gave Israel the Promised Land, and yet they had to go in there and confront the Canaanites, fight battles, and really cooperate with God to take the land. Then their responses made all the difference during the years they were in that land. Likewise, when Jesus came, He modeled for us what a Spirit-filled life is supposed to look like. He didn’t just live as He did because He is the Son of God, but because that’s the way the spiritual life works. When we looked last time at how He trained His disciples and raised them up, we saw how they too had to learn to walk out the spiritual life day to day by things that they did. They actively participated in things, baptizing, praying, studying scripture, ministering, and that’s how it worked for them. Why we would think it should be any different for us is not very sensible! Even on the Day of Pentecost, we saw how the Spirit was poured out, but the disciples spoke in tongues, preached, got people to respond, then baptized them and started them down the same road of discipleship they themselves were on.
In this podcast, I want to go on to look at other examples in the New Testament. I hope you’ll see how prevalent this kind of thing is. Once our eyes are opened to it, we begin to see it everywhere! Just about every single book in the NT demonstrates this reality. For example, the next book after Acts is Romans. Continue reading “Gods Part – My Part – #4: Other New Testament Examples”