Tag: Truth
Updated on April 7, 2015
Freedom From Religion
Around every Christian holiday, I can count on seeing a post or two shared on Facebook from an organization whose mission in life is to be free from religion. Strangely, I strongly endorse their efforts – but likely not in the way they imagine.
To understand what religion is, you must travel back to the beginning. God created Adam from the dust of the ground and filled him with spiritual life. He placed His children in the Garden and gave them dominion over the Earth.
However, they weren’t alone for long. There was an enemy present, Satan. His rebellion before led to a catastrophic judgment of Earth, leaving it in darkness, and covered with water. This was the condition when God recreated the earth in Genesis 1. He was an outsider, an intruder, and had Adam or Eve exercised their authority, they could have sent him packing. Instead, he engaged in a conversation with Eve. And she listened to what he had to say.
Updated on March 4, 2014
Did God Really Say…
In my last post, I discussed the Blessing, the fall of man, along with Satan’s temptation of Eve. If you missed the article, I recommend taking a quick peek back before continuing. One of the most common weapons the devil uses to undermine faith, is to get people to doubt God’s Word. Because if you doubt God’s Word, your faith will definitely fail. How can you have faith in someone, if you don’t trust their word?
Just the other day I was sitting in a church listening to a sermon on Hezekiah, the Assyrian invasion of Judah, and the siege of Jerusalem (2 King 18:13-37, 2 Kings 19:1-37). This is a wonderful story of how God supernaturally destroyed the Assyrian invasion force, 185,000 men in a single night. Hezekiah had heard Sennacherib’s threats, and instead of worrying about it, or focusing on the circumstances, he turned the problem over to someone who could handle it, God. But that’s where the sermon derailed a bit. The pastor started to undermine the story – maybe it wasn’t 185,000 killed, or perhaps there was a plague, or maybe the writer embellished the story. Though momentarily offtrack, he somewhat recovered by mentioning the decline of the Assyrian Empire from that point, and the fact that Judah would remain independent for another 100+ years until Babylon invaded. Unfortunately though, the damage had already been done. Because you don’t believe the story because historians, theologians, or even archaeologists think its true. You believe the story because God’s Word is Truth. Natural evidence may put your mind at ease, but faith rests in your spirit. You KNOW the Word is true in your heart first, and you renew your mind with the Word of God until it falls in line with your spirit. Faith comes from hearing the Word of God. But you must have spiritual “ears that hear.” (Matthew 11:15, Mark 4:9, John 16:12-15, Romans 10:17, 12:2, 1 Corinthians 2:4-16, Galatians 3:1-6, Ephesians 4:15-23, 5:6-10)
