Soli Deo Gloria!

What Doctrines Are Fundamental?

// June 23rd, 2009 // Comments Off // Bible Study, Godly Living

What Doc­trines Are Fun­da­men­tal?, Part 1 :: Grace to You.

How can a Chris­t­ian deter­mine which doc­trines are essen­tial and which are not? 

To begin with, the strongest words of con­dem­na­tion in all the New Tes­ta­ment are aimed at false teach­ers who cor­rupt the Gospel. There­fore the Gospel mes­sage itself must be acknowl­edged as a pri­mary point of fun­da­men­tal doc­trine.

But what mes­sage will deter­mine the con­tent of our gospel tes­ti­mony? Let’s turn to Scrip­ture itself and attempt to lay out some bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples for deter­min­ing which arti­cles of faith are truly essen­tial to authen­tic Chris­tian­ity.

The Rebelution: To Say, I Have Known God

// July 25th, 2008 // Comments Off // Bible Study, Godly Living

The Rebe­lu­tion: To Say, I Have Known God.

“We must learn to mea­sure our­selves, not by our knowl­edge about God, not by our gifts and respon­si­bil­i­ties in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I sus­pect, have no idea how impov­er­ished we are on this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us.

“Sec­ond, we must seek the Sav­ior… It is [those] who have sought the Lord Jesus till they have found Him — for the promise is that when we seek Him with all our hearts, we shall surely find Him — who can stand before the world to tes­tify that they have known God.”

~ Know­ing God, J.I. Packer ~

I am cur­rently read­ing “Know­ing God”. I’ve read it before, years ago, but I really didn’t READ it.  This time will be dif­fer­ent.

Good Reads: July 22, 2008

// July 22nd, 2008 // Comments Off // Bible Study, Good Reads

We must be con­stant wor­ship­pers — The Rebe­lu­tion

Which God do you wor­ship? –Part 8:  The Desert Pas­tor

“The doc­trine of irre­sistible grace is eas­ily under­stood. Once we under­stand the con­di­tion of man in sin, that he is dead, enslaved to a cor­rupt nature, inca­pable of doing what is pleas­ing to God, we can fully under­stand the sim­ple asser­tion that God must raise the dead sin­ner to life. That is all, really, the phrase means: it has noth­ing to do with sin­ners rebelling against God and ‘resist­ing’ Him in that way. It has noth­ing to do with the fact that Chris­tians often resist God’s grace in their lives when they sin against Him. No, irre­sistible grace means one thing: God raises dead sin­ners to life.”
–James R. White, The Potter’s Free­dom

The gospel of Satan is not a sys­tem of rev­o­lu­tion­ary prin­ci­ples, nor yet a pro­gram of anar­chy. It does not pro­mote strife and war, but aims at peace and unity. It seeks not to set the mother against her daugh­ter nor the father against his son, but fos­ters the fra­ter­nal spirit whereby the human race is regarded as one great “broth­er­hood.” It does not seek to drag down the nat­ural man, but to improve and uplift him. It advo­cates edu­ca­tion and cul­ti­va­tion and appeals to “the best that is within — It aims to make this world such a com­fort­able and con­ge­nial habi­tat that Christ’s absence from it will not be felt and God will not be needed. It endeav­ors to occupy man so much with this world that he has no time or incli­na­tion to think of the world to come. It prop­a­gates the prin­ci­ples of self-sacrifice, char­ity and benev­o­lence, and teaches us to live for the good of oth­ers, and to be kind to all. It appeals strongly to the car­nal mind and is pop­u­lar with the masses, because it ignores the solemn facts that by nature man is a fallen crea­ture, alien­ated from the life of God, and dead in tres­passes and sins, and that his only hope lies in being born again.

 

In con­tradis­tinc­tion to the Gospel of Christ, the gospel of Satan teaches sal­va­tion by works. It incul­cates jus­ti­fi­ca­tion before God on the ground of human mer­its. Its sacra­men­tal phrase is “Be good and do good”; but it fails to rec­og­nize that in the flesh there dwelleth no good thing. It announces sal­va­tion by char­ac­ter, which reverses the order of God’s Word — char­ac­ter by, as the fruit of, sal­va­tion. Its var­i­ous ram­i­fi­ca­tions and orga­ni­za­tions are man­i­fold. Tem­per­ance, Reform Move­ments, “Chris­t­ian Social­ist Leagues,” Eth­i­cal Cul­ture Soci­eties, “Peace Con­gresses” are all employed (per­haps uncon­sciously) in pro­claim­ing this gospel of Satan — sal­va­tion by works.” —A. W. Pink (1886 – 1952)

 

Taken from Another Gospel by A.W. Pink

 

HT: The Bororean

What is my goal?

// January 2nd, 2008 // Comments Off // Bible Study, Godly Living

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spir­i­tual bless­ing in the heav­enly places, even as he chose us in him before the foun­da­tion of the world, that we should be holy and blame­less before him.” – Eph­esians 1:3 – 4

“For we are his work­man­ship, cre­ated in Christ Jesus for good works, which God pre­pared before­hand, that we should walk in them. “– Eph­esians 2:10

“For the grace of God has appeared, brin­ing sal­va­tion for all peo­ple, train­ing us to renounce ungod­li­ness and worldly pas­sions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.” – Titus 2:11 – 12

I am using a book by John Macarthur, Draw­ing Near: Daily Read­ings for a Deeper Faith to help me dig deeper into study­ing and apply­ing God’s word. I’ve had it for a few weeks now, but I’ve decided to write about what I’m read­ing to enable me to really think about it. It does me no good to read every­day and not give it any more thought.

Today’s read­ing is titled: The Mea­sure of True Suc­cess. Right at the begin­ning it says:

God is more inter­ested in your faith­ful­ness

than in your accom­plish­ments.

This cul­ture mea­sures suc­cess by our sta­tus, wealth, and pos­ses­sions. How­ever, God is not impressed by any of that. God mea­sures our suc­cess by how faith­ful we are to His will. His will very often directly con­tra­dicts what the world says is suc­cess­ful. He tells us not to give thought to our pos­ses­sions, to be con­tent with what we have, to seek His approval rather than man’s approval. This is not easy to do, but it is what He requires.

If I am to be what God wants me to be, my focus has to be on being a suc­cess in HIS eyes, not in the eyes of peo­ple. I truly have to not care about what any­body else thinks of me, as long as I’m pleas­ing him. Now, I often say I don’t give a rip about what any­body else thinks of me, and for the most part it’s true. But I have to admit: I’m human, and at times, I’d love for oth­ers to approve of me. At those times, I have to ask myself: WHAT IS MY GOAL? Is it to hear the com­pli­ments and acco­lades of those around me, or is it to stand before God when it’s my turn (and we ALL will have a turn) and hear him say, “Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant? (Matthew 25:21). I can hon­estly say it’s the lat­ter. Approval from other peo­ple is nice, but it does not sat­isfy me. Approval from oth­ers will change like the wind. I’d much rather work toward pleas­ing God, who does not change. God, who works out every­thing for my good. God, who knew me before I was in my mother’s womb. God, who I will stand in front of and give an account for every­thing I did in my life. There’s really no com­par­i­son.

So how do I do that? First, I need to be more con­sis­tent in my obe­di­ence of His word. This means, I have to be more con­sis­tent in my STUDY of his word. I have to be more con­sis­tent in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him. I have to make a con­science effort to pray EVERYDAY, and not just God bless me and mine, but sit­ting still and med­i­tat­ing on His word and ask­ing him to guide me in liv­ing it out. And as the scrip­tures above say, I need to resolve to live holy and blame­less before Him. I need to live my life to do the good works He has pre­pared for me to do. I need to renounce ungod­li­ness and worldly pas­sions, and to live a self-controlled, upright, and godly life. I can­not do these things in my own power. I will have to fully rely on His grace and His Spirit within me to make this pos­si­ble in any way.

Fol­low­ing Christ in this world is not easy…..but it’s what I am com­mit­ted to doing. I’ve given up mak­ing New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions. What I’m talk­ing about here is not about the New Year at all. It’s just about want­ing to be faith­ful to God.

That’s the suc­cess I’m pur­su­ing.