What are we missing today?

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. At the core of his dispute with the Catholic Church was Luther's contention that salvation was by faith alone, not works of any kind. The declarations made by Luther caused such an uproar that they resulted in the Protestant Reformation.

There are two things I find troubling by this story:

1. From a few centuries after the apostles until the Reformation, one of the key foundations of Christianity, salvation by faith, was lost to much of the Church and not understood.

2. Many of the average church-goers in Luther's day sided vehemently with the Catholic Church. They had been taught that the truth was one thing for so long that it was difficult (if not impossible) for them to consider another alternative.

Why do these things trouble me?

I am troubled because I wonder how many of the things I believe so strongly will be later revealed as untrue. I am afraid that it will probably be quite a few.

Why do I say that?

Because there are too many Bible verses that don't fit in my life yet. For example:

- I still don't get everything I ask the Father for (John 16:23)
- I'm not doing greater works than Jesus did (John 14:12)
- My life is not yet littered with the evidence of the power of God (Mark 16:20; 1 Corinthians 4:19-20)

This lack in my life is a clear message that things are not right. I (and most of the Church) am not walking in the fullness of what it means to be a Christian.

Now, we can come up with all kinds of theologies that can explain away verses such as this. But I am left wondering if, like salvation by faith, we are missing the truth and developing false theologies to justify our shortcoming. Then, our lack of faith validates the false theology we are clinging to.

Maybe it is time to stop coming up with ways to justify our lack and to begin to seek after everything we are promised. I'm willing. Are you?

Two Random Thoughts on Emotions

Just because they're in my head . . .

Thought #1

The secret to emotional survival is to become soft-hearted, not hard hearted. Avoiding pain keeps it around. Experiencing it lets it go.

Thought #2 - from a friend

The enemy wants to hang as much emotional pain as he can on the door to your freedom.

Faith and Unbelief

In general, we think of faith and unbelief as being two separate things. What we miss, though is that there are a couple of different types of unbelief.

The first type is ignorant unbelief. In this situation, we don't believe something because we don't know that we could believe it. For example, before we hear the Gospel, we are ignorant unbelievers.

At some point, though, we may discover our lack of faith. Then, we enter a place of conscious unbelief. Now we know what we do not believe. Our lack of faith may be a purposeful rejection or a simple inability to believe. For example, some people do not become Christians because they reject it while others cannot bring themselves to believe the message.

The most dangerous type of unbelief, though, is intellectual acceptance. In this situation, we know about something and we agree with it intellectually. But the fact is that we do not have faith. We have an intellectual appreciation combined with wishful thinking. It is a soul-generated faith. This type of unbelief is so dangerous because we can deceive ourselves into thinking we actually believe and because it is so prevalent in the Church today.

We must leave behind this false faith and enter into the faith of Jesus. This is a faith of which He alone is the Author. He deposits this faith in our hearts and we truly believe. It is not a faith we have to muster up.

Many of our problems in the Church today are because we lack real faith. We masquerade around in intellectual acceptance and do not really believe the truths we hear. If we did believe them, things would not look the way they do.