Reasons to Believe

I received the following request:

If you have or know of any writing that not only explains salvation, but equally gives the reasons why a person can and should put all their faith in This Saviour, I have need of it.

In order to believe in Jesus Christ, several assumptions must be made. First of all, that there is a God. I do not think that this is that big an assumption. We are here, and so it follows that Someone put us here, though some try to argue that we made ourselves. Then, one must assume that God is good. This might seem a tall order to some considering all the bad things in the world, but considering the good things that are there, I think this becomes clear. These would not be there if God were not good.

Then, one must assume that God is interested in His creatures, and wishes to communicate with them. I do not think this is too much of a stretch, either, as a God Who is good, and Who has taken the time to create, we would expect that such a One would care about the beings He created, and would take an interest in their welfare. And it follows that, if God wishes to communicate, then He DID communicate. God cannot be foiled in anything He attempts to do. The final assumption is that that communication is the Bible, God’s Word. There are many good reasons for believing this, such as Its consistency despite being written over several thousand years by many different authors, and Its historical accuracy, which has never been disproven.

Can Believers Not Live For God?

Those who have read my messages on “Election” and on “Predestination, Omniscience, and the Foundation of the World” know that I believe that we all have the choice whether or not to believe in Christ for salvation. It has probably also become clear through my writings that I believe in what is also often called “eternal security” for the believer of today, and that once one is saved, that one cannot lose that salvation. I believe and teach that it is grace alone which saves us through faith, and that is apart from works. I firmly believe and have never doubted in the power of Christ to transform our lives.

Yet there are certain passages in the Bible that many use to suggest that those who display no fruit for God in their lives cannot truly be saved. Thus the question arises: were these people never saved in the first place? Is it possible for one to be saved, and then live a life of sin and godlessness, never showing forth the fruit that one would expect in the life of a believer? Or is there a rule that a true believer MUST show forth fruit in his life? If one seems to be a genuine believer with a changed life at one time, but then later seems to fall away from that and go back to a worldly lifestyle, does that mean that his salvation was never real? Or could it have been real, and he simply fell away?

True Worship

When we think of the word worship in connection with our relationship with our Lord and Savior, what do we think of? What does this mean? How do we worship the Lord? Let us turn our minds to this thought.

What does it really take to worship? Is it by doing something outwardly, by performing some ritual or maintaining some right? Is it by an uplift of emotions, a soaring of the soul, when we can truly say we have worshiped? How is it that we must truly worship God today? What does He want us to do?

Never Alone

“This you know, that all those in Asia have turned away from me, among whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes.” II Timothy 1:15.

“Be diligent to come to me quickly; for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica—Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me.” II Timothy 4:9-11a.

“At my first defense no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them.” II Timothy 4:16.

It is always sad to see some of your friends doing things that make you think they are turning away from the Lord. I know that’s hard when it’s people you’ve kind of looked up to and respected. I’ve had to go through that kind of thing a little bit myself. I mentioned Paul in a previous message, and how all his friends abandoned him. Think about it. He was a prisoner in Rome there in II Timothy, in the city where the believers were that he’d written Romans to. A whole group of believers there, and not one of them would even so much as come to speak for Paul to save him from death! How that must have hurt him!

Doors, Omens, and the Word of God

A story that I think is really instructive about how we as believers can be like when it comes to seeking God’s will is a tale I once heard told by the Christian entertainer Mark Lowry. He was single at the time, and said that he had had three different women write to him and tell him that God had told them to marry him! His comment was that God must have quite a sense of humor to tell three different women that He wanted them to marry him.

Although Mr. Lowry’s way of presenting the story was amusing, I couldn’t help but find it rather sad as well, for I know that there are believers around me who act in the same way. Oh, they might not act quite as extremely as writing to some popular figure they’ve never even met and telling him that God told them to marry him. But the fact is that believers often do go to what, when we get right down to examining it, are ridiculous extremes and highly unreliable methods for trying to determine the will of God.

Loving God

I think love is a greater sign of Christian maturity than is knowledge. Don’t be too impressed by these weighty things I talk about in my letters. If you saw me showing love and kindness toward those around me, you could take that as a much bigger sign of the depth of my dedication than if you read an exposition by me explaining Daniel’s seventy weeks, or something. Besides, a person’s true walk with God is something that is only the responsibility of two people…as Christians, we often try to make others into “better Christians,” but the fact is we are just trying to do something which is impossible. We might make others into better people, but only God can help someone in his relationship with Himself.

Trusting God

It is easy to say, “I trust God.” It is harder to do it. We talk a lot about having faith, but I think it would be better if we also talked about having trust. Too often we mix the two. Faith is taking God’s Word to us and believing it. There is no faith without a direct word from God. To quit my successful job and go to Haiti as a missionary is not to have faith. Why? Because God has not spoken directly to me and told me to do so. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” (Romans 10:17) Yet I have neither heard, nor read my decision within the pages of the Bible. No, it is not faith I show here, but trust. Trust that God will bring me through the decision I’ve made. Trust that He will lead me. Trust that He will protect me. Trust that even if I’ve made the wrong decision God will never abandon me.

A Faith Not Shipwrecked

“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

These are Paul’s words recorded in Romans 10:17.  By this we learn that, when it comes to faith, the word of God is all-important.  Yet God speaks in I Timothy 1:19 of the dangers that faith in His Word can face:

“having faith and a good conscience, which some having rejected, concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck.”

Yes, the faith of some can be shipwrecked.  Indeed, we see many influences around us today seeking to shipwreck those who are weak in faith.  Many are the critics of God’s Word who would seek to extinguish our faith in the word of God.

The Strength of Faith

Recently at a Bible study I was attending we were discussing the upcoming end of the year and how each of us had grown in that year.  In thinking about how I had grown in knowledge in 1999, I concluded that one of the things I could think of that I had grown in was my knowledge of faith.

Hebrews 11:1 states, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  By faith we have evidence of things that we have never seen.  What does this mean?

Faith, Works, Salvation, Grace

Some years ago I was talking with a young man who believed in the Calvinist idea of predestination.  He presented the idea to me that salvation could not come about by our own free choice to believe in Christ.  If this was true, he claimed, then salvation would be by works, since choosing something is in actuality a work…it is something that we can do.  Since salvation is not by works, he argued, salvation cannot come about by our choosing to accept Christ.  Therefore, he concluded, we are not saved because we choose Christ, but because God had already chosen us ahead of time.  Only this way, he claimed, can we say that salvation comes about by the grace of God and not by our own works.

Although I did not agree with this young man’s argument, it did serve to bring into my mind the realization that the relationship between faith and works, between salvation and grace, may not be as clear as I had thought it to be up to that time.  Although I had many times confidently asserted that salvation does not come about by works, I had to admit that choosing is indeed something that I can do, and therefore would seem to be indeed a work.  But is a choice really a work in the Biblical sense of the term?  Must we keep a strict line between salvation and works, and insist that our salvation can never have anything to do with a work that we do?  Must we also apply this to all other people and say that no one is ever saved or has ever been saved by the acting out of a work?  These questions are legitimate questions, I believe, and therefore must be examined in the light of the truth revealed in the Bible if we are ever to arrive at answers to them.

Now the works versus faith argument is one that I am certain all of us as believers have run into at one time or another.  Most of those of us who consider ourselves evangelicals have been taught that salvation comes about only by faith, and that works have nothing to do with salvation.  Yet is this really an accurate statement?