Lies that we believe
So most of us have been around church long enough to know the basics of what we believe, and those of you who were lucky enough to be brought up in a Christian household have been learning the Christian truths all your life. Truths such as;
God loves you John3:16
You are really important to God and he has big plans for you Jeremiah29:11
Jesus wants to and will forgive all your sins 2corinthians5:17
Christians are adopted as children of God John1:12
But I find it so easy to just know these truths with my head and not fully believe them with my heart. I'll give you an example, I've always known with my head God is a personal God who wants to communicate with me. But it was only about a year ago when someone challenged me on what I’d heard from God recently, that I realised I had actually been believing a lie that God had nothing to say to me. I had known the truth with my head but wasn’t believing it with my heart. This is just one example of how even as Christians we can believe lies that can really affect our lives. I know lots of Christians who struggle with guilt because of their sins, they think they’ve been so bad and committed such horrible sins that God cant forgive them, but actually they have fallen into the trap of not fully believing what Jesus has done for them.
Truth is what transforms lives, and we have a whole book full of the most amazing truths ever! The bible and the truths contained within it are what the world needs, they are what broken people need to hear and they will turn an lukewarm Christian into a Radical disciple of Jesus!
So how do we turn head knowledge into heart knowledge? We need to live out the truth;
When the bible says you are a child of God you need to act like it
When the bible says you are important and you really believe it, you wont feel useless
When the bible says God is always with you and you believe it, you wont feel lonely
ect..............
Something that I have found really helpful in my walk with God recently is to think about and write down the top 3 lies that you find floating around your head sometimes. Once you have written them down find out the truth of the bible and write that down in place of the lies, then whenever you find yourself thinking of a lie repeat the truth to yourself.
Preach to your own heart.
29 Mar 2011
23 Mar 2011
In Christ
We had a great time on the weekend away, having loads of fun together doing things like grass sledging, abseiling and pot holing.
We also had some great sessions of learning about God, and on Sunday we talked about what it means to be in Christ. I summarised it in 4 main points:
1) The wrath of God has been absorbed in Christ.
God is a holy God. Sin is completely disgusting and offensive to him, because he is so holy, and his wrath is the just anger that he feels towards sin. Because he is just he can't allow sin to go unpunished, but because he is also merciful he doesn't want us to have to face his wrath, so he sent Jesus to face it instead. It says in 1 Peter that Jesus bore our sins in his body when he was on the cross, he took the punishment for them and absorbed the wrath of God that should have been poured out on us.
2) We have been transferred from Adam into Christ.
Romans 5 talks about this. It tells us that “sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” We are all born into sin, and are in Adam; it's like being on a sinking ship. But Romans 5 also says “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” Jesus' act of righteousness, going to the cross, led to justification and life for us, he is like the lifeboat that has come to rescue us from Adam's sinking ship, we have been transferred from Adam's sinking ship and into Christ's lifeboat. The cross was the transfer fee that he paid to get us there.
3) We have been clothed in Christ.
Since we have been transferred into Christ, the bible tells us that we can approach God with boldness, because we are now clothed in Christ's righteousness. We looked at Zechariah 3, where it talks about how God removes our filthy garments and replaces them with pure ones.
4) We are secure in Christ.
Romans 8:37-38 says it best: “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation , will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Nothing in all creation can separate us from God!
Hope this is helpful!
Mary
We also had some great sessions of learning about God, and on Sunday we talked about what it means to be in Christ. I summarised it in 4 main points:
1) The wrath of God has been absorbed in Christ.
God is a holy God. Sin is completely disgusting and offensive to him, because he is so holy, and his wrath is the just anger that he feels towards sin. Because he is just he can't allow sin to go unpunished, but because he is also merciful he doesn't want us to have to face his wrath, so he sent Jesus to face it instead. It says in 1 Peter that Jesus bore our sins in his body when he was on the cross, he took the punishment for them and absorbed the wrath of God that should have been poured out on us.
2) We have been transferred from Adam into Christ.
Romans 5 talks about this. It tells us that “sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” We are all born into sin, and are in Adam; it's like being on a sinking ship. But Romans 5 also says “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” Jesus' act of righteousness, going to the cross, led to justification and life for us, he is like the lifeboat that has come to rescue us from Adam's sinking ship, we have been transferred from Adam's sinking ship and into Christ's lifeboat. The cross was the transfer fee that he paid to get us there.
3) We have been clothed in Christ.
Since we have been transferred into Christ, the bible tells us that we can approach God with boldness, because we are now clothed in Christ's righteousness. We looked at Zechariah 3, where it talks about how God removes our filthy garments and replaces them with pure ones.
4) We are secure in Christ.
Romans 8:37-38 says it best: “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation , will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Nothing in all creation can separate us from God!
Hope this is helpful!
Mary
15 Mar 2011
Everything means EVERYTHING
Part 1 in a series of blogs about how being a Christian means that you're totally secure in your relationship with God and the world.
In the book of Romans in the New Testament Paul writes this:
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”
8:28
Reflections
I could not love God if I had not been called. The Bible says that no one seeks after God. And that we are born into sin. My natural, fleshly heart is not only cold toward God but is opposed to His purposes. I am anti-God by nature.
But, something has changed within me. I know that I love God. In fact, I not only love Him but I want to give my life to pursue Him and know Him more. What’s changed then?! I have been born again! The old has passed away and the new has come.
Now it is true of me that I have been called by God and so love God, and since I love God and have been called by God, the rest of this verse also applies to me!
Two points of application are in this verse:
1. All things work together for good!
2. He has a purpose for my life!
All things work together for good; that means everything. Nothing finds its way out of this verse! Whether insults or encouragements; failures or successes; hurt or joy. Whatever it is, God works it together for my good. I need not fear anything since I know that everything works together for good. If only I lived and thought like this were true, my life would be so transformed! Nothing is going to happen to me that God does not plan to use for good.
I can be sure of this since the second part of the verse tells me that God has a purpose for my life: to live out His purpose for my life. Since it is His purpose that I have been called according to, I should make it my aim to always stick close to Him. And God’s ultimate purpose for my life is for me to be conformed to the image of His son, Jesus.
Believe it – it’s true!
In the book of Romans in the New Testament Paul writes this:
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”
8:28
Reflections
I could not love God if I had not been called. The Bible says that no one seeks after God. And that we are born into sin. My natural, fleshly heart is not only cold toward God but is opposed to His purposes. I am anti-God by nature.
But, something has changed within me. I know that I love God. In fact, I not only love Him but I want to give my life to pursue Him and know Him more. What’s changed then?! I have been born again! The old has passed away and the new has come.
Now it is true of me that I have been called by God and so love God, and since I love God and have been called by God, the rest of this verse also applies to me!
Two points of application are in this verse:
1. All things work together for good!
2. He has a purpose for my life!
All things work together for good; that means everything. Nothing finds its way out of this verse! Whether insults or encouragements; failures or successes; hurt or joy. Whatever it is, God works it together for my good. I need not fear anything since I know that everything works together for good. If only I lived and thought like this were true, my life would be so transformed! Nothing is going to happen to me that God does not plan to use for good.
I can be sure of this since the second part of the verse tells me that God has a purpose for my life: to live out His purpose for my life. Since it is His purpose that I have been called according to, I should make it my aim to always stick close to Him. And God’s ultimate purpose for my life is for me to be conformed to the image of His son, Jesus.
Believe it – it’s true!
8 Mar 2011
Filling the blanks with God?
God of the Gaps: By Alex J, Mr Science
The first time I was accused of using ‘God of the gaps’ reasoning, I was debating the existence of a creator God with some atheist friends.
It was a rather unpleasant, partly because of the manner of the accusation, but mostly because I had no idea what I was being accused of. Naturally I was unable to respond, and the conversation dwindled.
This prompted me do some research into the idea. The understanding that I came to is that God-of-the-gaps reasoning is essentially arguing that God must be responsible for an occurrence because there is no other means of understanding it. In his book released in 2004: Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Us? Victor Stenger, a physicist and religious sceptic, says that:
“Intelligent design arguments are modern versions of God of the gaps reasoning, where a god is deemed necessary whenever science has not fully explained some phenomenon"
Perhaps the most common example of such reasoning, and the argument for which I was accused of it, is that of the existence of the universe. Since, from a scientific perspective, the best explanation of how the universe came to be is extremely improbable, is it not more likely that God had a hand in it?
At first, I was rather dejected. Perhaps I was wrong to argue in that way. It doesn’t seem right to fill what is, currently at least, a gap in scientific knowledge, by plucking the word ‘God’ out of nowhere. But as I pondered all this, I realised that this was not actually what I, or most people who use this argument was doing for 2 main reasons.
The first is this: Imagine, for whatever reason, you have a black eye. Your wife, mother, or someone, asks how it happened. Would they be satisfied if you explained to them, that a fast moving object made contact with your eye, and as a result, the blood vessels in the tissue around your eye burst in such a way that it’s current appearance came about? Certainly not. They would ask if you got into a fight, or got mugged, or something like that. But that doesn’t mean that the answer you gave them wasn’t true. My point is that, whether something is understood from a scientific point of view, doesn’t always, or often, mean that God wasn’t present and working in that situation. So to say that it’s flawed to argue that God could have created the universe, because there might be a scientific explanation, is nonsense. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The second reason is that, arguing for God in scientific 'gaps' is not a good description of my argument. The odds of us existing as a result of mindless random chance processes like the big bang and evolution are staggeringly tiny. To explain this away by saying ‘There might be billions of universes, in which case it’s probable that life would come to exist in one of them’ seems very silly to me. Arguing that the possibility of billions of entities that we can’t see or prove explains the staggering odds against us, is completely an argument from ignorance.
If the only rational explanation of these tiny odds is that God is responsible, It makes the ‘Gap’ look distinctly like a shoe and God distinctly like a footprint.
What do you think?
The first time I was accused of using ‘God of the gaps’ reasoning, I was debating the existence of a creator God with some atheist friends.
It was a rather unpleasant, partly because of the manner of the accusation, but mostly because I had no idea what I was being accused of. Naturally I was unable to respond, and the conversation dwindled.
This prompted me do some research into the idea. The understanding that I came to is that God-of-the-gaps reasoning is essentially arguing that God must be responsible for an occurrence because there is no other means of understanding it. In his book released in 2004: Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Us? Victor Stenger, a physicist and religious sceptic, says that:
“Intelligent design arguments are modern versions of God of the gaps reasoning, where a god is deemed necessary whenever science has not fully explained some phenomenon"
Perhaps the most common example of such reasoning, and the argument for which I was accused of it, is that of the existence of the universe. Since, from a scientific perspective, the best explanation of how the universe came to be is extremely improbable, is it not more likely that God had a hand in it?
At first, I was rather dejected. Perhaps I was wrong to argue in that way. It doesn’t seem right to fill what is, currently at least, a gap in scientific knowledge, by plucking the word ‘God’ out of nowhere. But as I pondered all this, I realised that this was not actually what I, or most people who use this argument was doing for 2 main reasons.
The first is this: Imagine, for whatever reason, you have a black eye. Your wife, mother, or someone, asks how it happened. Would they be satisfied if you explained to them, that a fast moving object made contact with your eye, and as a result, the blood vessels in the tissue around your eye burst in such a way that it’s current appearance came about? Certainly not. They would ask if you got into a fight, or got mugged, or something like that. But that doesn’t mean that the answer you gave them wasn’t true. My point is that, whether something is understood from a scientific point of view, doesn’t always, or often, mean that God wasn’t present and working in that situation. So to say that it’s flawed to argue that God could have created the universe, because there might be a scientific explanation, is nonsense. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The second reason is that, arguing for God in scientific 'gaps' is not a good description of my argument. The odds of us existing as a result of mindless random chance processes like the big bang and evolution are staggeringly tiny. To explain this away by saying ‘There might be billions of universes, in which case it’s probable that life would come to exist in one of them’ seems very silly to me. Arguing that the possibility of billions of entities that we can’t see or prove explains the staggering odds against us, is completely an argument from ignorance.
If the only rational explanation of these tiny odds is that God is responsible, It makes the ‘Gap’ look distinctly like a shoe and God distinctly like a footprint.
What do you think?
1 Mar 2011
Christians, Tough Questions & the Dead Man Walking
There are a lot of tough questions about Christianity. Like, why is the Bible’s view on sex so different to the world’s? Or, why does God allow suffering? There are so many, and they’re all really important to think about and discuss, but something Andrew said to me last week changed the way I think about them. I asked him a tough question, and his response was yes, it is difficult to understand, but does that mean Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead?
The answer of course was no. I know that Jesus was resurrected, because there is so much evidence to prove that he was! Take, for example, the fact that the tomb where his body was laid was empty, a dead body simply disappeared, even Jesus’ enemies acknowledged that this was true, although they accused the disciples of stealing it. But the majority of the disciples died horrific deaths in the name of the resurrected Jesus, people around the world die for their beliefs every day, but would the disciples have been willing to meet such terrible ends if they knew they were spreading a lie?
Okay, so on its own the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty might not be enough to prove he was resurrected, but thankfully that isn’t the only proof we’ve got. Because Jesus didn’t just disappear from his tomb, he came back and revealed himself to loads of people, at one point he even appeared to over 500 people at once! Now I can’t believe that many people could all have hallucinated or imagined it, in our court system if one or two people give a testimony it’s counted as good evidence, but 500! Maybe all of those people wanted everyone to believe that Jesus is alive, but we know he appeared to people who hated him too, take Paul for example, he was the last person anyone would’ve expected to say he’d seen the resurrected Jesus, because at the time he was so against the spread of Christianity that he was going around persecuting Christians, but after seeing Jesus risen from the dead he did a complete turn around and proclaiming the gospel became his main mission in life!
So for me, the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead proves he is God. Science shows us that it can’t happen naturally, it takes some pretty awesome power, and that’s what Jesus has. Yeah, sometimes I don’t understand everything the Bible says, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is God, or that he died and rose again for me. I’m still gonna worship him even if I don’t have all the answers, and with his help I’ll work my questions through.
If you’ve got any questions about this please come and talk to me or one of the other youth leaders at True, we’d love to chat with you about it!
The answer of course was no. I know that Jesus was resurrected, because there is so much evidence to prove that he was! Take, for example, the fact that the tomb where his body was laid was empty, a dead body simply disappeared, even Jesus’ enemies acknowledged that this was true, although they accused the disciples of stealing it. But the majority of the disciples died horrific deaths in the name of the resurrected Jesus, people around the world die for their beliefs every day, but would the disciples have been willing to meet such terrible ends if they knew they were spreading a lie?
Okay, so on its own the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty might not be enough to prove he was resurrected, but thankfully that isn’t the only proof we’ve got. Because Jesus didn’t just disappear from his tomb, he came back and revealed himself to loads of people, at one point he even appeared to over 500 people at once! Now I can’t believe that many people could all have hallucinated or imagined it, in our court system if one or two people give a testimony it’s counted as good evidence, but 500! Maybe all of those people wanted everyone to believe that Jesus is alive, but we know he appeared to people who hated him too, take Paul for example, he was the last person anyone would’ve expected to say he’d seen the resurrected Jesus, because at the time he was so against the spread of Christianity that he was going around persecuting Christians, but after seeing Jesus risen from the dead he did a complete turn around and proclaiming the gospel became his main mission in life!
So for me, the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead proves he is God. Science shows us that it can’t happen naturally, it takes some pretty awesome power, and that’s what Jesus has. Yeah, sometimes I don’t understand everything the Bible says, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is God, or that he died and rose again for me. I’m still gonna worship him even if I don’t have all the answers, and with his help I’ll work my questions through.
If you’ve got any questions about this please come and talk to me or one of the other youth leaders at True, we’d love to chat with you about it!
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