Soli Deo Gloria!

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.

Some­thing Worth Think­ing About After Church « The Black Infor­mant.

For Chris­tians that are Pro-choice, Duane asks a good ques­tion:  How do you jus­tify your views in light of Scrip­ture? 

Take a moment to read the entire arti­cle.

Pure Church: What A Hus­band Must Be.

THIS is what Chris­t­ian women should be look­ing for in a hus­band.  And we should NOT set­tle. I won’t. Which is prob­a­bly why I’m not mar­ried. LOL

“Imag­ine your­self as a liv­ing house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, per­haps, you under­stand what He is doing. He is get­ting the drains right, and stop­ping the leaks in the roof, and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and you are not sur­prised. But presently He starts knock­ing the house about in a way that hurts abom­inably, and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The expla­na­tion is that He is build­ing quite a dif­fer­ent house from the one you thought of — throw­ing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, run­ning up tow­ers, mak­ing court­yards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent lit­tle cot­tage: but He is build­ing a palace. He intends to come and live in it Him­self.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Chris­tian­ity (Lon­don: William Collins, 1970), 172.

“How dif­fer­ent is the God of the Bible from the God of mod­ern Chris­ten­dom! The con­cep­tion of Deity which pre­vails most widely today, even among those who pro­fess to give heed to the Scrip­tures, is a mis­er­able car­i­ca­ture, a blas­phe­mous trav­esty of the Truth. The God of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury is a help­less, effem­i­nate being who com­mands the respect of no really thought­ful man. The God of the pop­u­lar mind is the cre­ation of a maudlin sen­ti­men­tal­ity. The God of many a present-day pul­pit is an object of pity rather than of awe-inspiring rev­er­ence. To say that God the Father has pur­posed the sal­va­tion of all mankind, that God the Son died with the express inten­tion of sav­ing the whole human race, and that God the Holy Spirit is now seek­ing to win the world to Christ; when, as a mat­ter of com­mon obser­va­tion, it is appar­ent that the great major­ity of our fellow-men are dying in sin, and pass­ing into a hope­less eter­nity: is to say that God the Father is dis­ap­pointed, that God the Son is dis­sat­is­fied, and that God the Holy Spirit is defeated. We have stated the issue baldly, but there is no escap­ing the con­clu­sion. To argue that God is “try­ing His best” to save all mankind, but that the major­ity of men will not let Him save them, is to insist that the will of the Cre­ator is impo­tent, and that the will of the crea­ture is omnipo­tent.” —A. W. Pink (1886 – 1952)

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.

Sym­phony of Scrip­ture » Blog Archive » A.W. Tozer: We Need Men of God Again.

“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.