Category: Devotional

Devotional thoughts for my benefit and yours from here, there, and everywhere

We Believe (#2): The Trinity

~ fundyreformed

Part 2 in a series of Sunday posts celebrating the glorious Truth we believe as Christians. The readings are quoted from the Elder Affirmation of Faith, of my church, Bethlehem Baptist (Pastor John Piper). I’m doing this because every few weeks our congregational reading is an excerpt from this document, and every time we all read aloud the truths we confess, my soul rejoices. I pray these posts will aid you in worshiping our Lord on His day.

The Trinity, One God as Three Persons

We believe in one living, sovereign, and all-glorious God, eternally existing in three infinitely excellent and admirable Persons: God the Father, fountain of all being; God the Son, eternally begotten, not made, without beginning, being of one essence with the Father; and God the Holy Spirit, proceeding in the full, divine essence, as a Person, eternally from the Father and the Son. Thus each Person in the Godhead is fully and completely God.

We believe that God is supremely joyful in the fellowship of the Trinity, each Person beholding and expressing His eternal and unsurpassed delight in the all-satisfying perfections of the triune God.

*Taken from the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith, paragraphs 2.1 – 2.2. You are free to download the entire affirmation [pdf] complete with Scriptural proofs for the above statements.

The Importance of Being Church

~ fundyreformed ~ 6 Comments

With all the talk of baptism and church membership around here of late, I think some are getting the wrong impression. I am for MORE “membership”. Involvement and fellowship with Christians, accountability and edification—all of these things are vitally important in the Christian life.

My posts on church membership have been focusing solely on the formal definition of “membership”. In no way do I want to disparage living as a member of Christ’s body in a local church.

With this in mind, I thought now would be a good time to talk about being church. It’s not enough to just attend church or even to be a member of a church. We are called to be the church. We are to church. Church should be understood as a verb.

I know this sounds a little odd but in the Bible we are called to a radical togetherness which I’ve previously called “one another ministry“. What follows are excerpts from an old post of mine which highlights the importance of the “one another” commands in Scripture.

Clergy over the laity mindset, excessive pastoral authority, a cultural lack of community, an emphasis on individualism, market-driven church ministry philosophies, a modern consumer mindset to Christianity–all of these and more contribute to what I believe is the greatest need in churches today: the “one another” ministry.

What is the “one another” ministry? It is the mutual encouraging and exhorting, indeed even admonishing, which is to be woven throughout the life of a church. It is the pattern we see over and over in the NT (Acts 2:44-47; 4:32; 18:27; Jn. 13:34-35; Rom. 1:12; 12:10, 16; 13:8; 15:1-7, 14; 1 Cor. 12:25; 14:26, 31; 2 Cor. 13:11; Gal. 5:13; 6:1-2, 6; Eph. 4:2-3, 32; 5:19; Phil. 1:27; 2:2; Col. 3:13, 16; 2 Thess. 1:3; Heb. 3:12-14; 10:24-25; James 5:16; 1 Pet. 1:22; 4:8-11; 1 Jn. 1:7; 3:11). The above list is not exhaustive, either!

The post goes on to cover 7 points:

1) This “one another” ministry is a way God’s Word is intended to Work in us.

2) This “one another” ministry is needed lest our faith die.

3) We must depend upon God to energize this “one another” ministry in our personal lives.

4) We need to always abound in this regard and grow, doing “one another” ministry “more and more” .

5) This “one another” ministry has many facets.

6) This “one another” ministry is clearly a duty of every believer, not merely the church leaders, elders, deacons, or pastors.

7) This “one another” ministry is indispensable.

Read the whole post: “1 Thessalonians and Churches’ Greatest Need“.

The Place of Theology in Ministerial Education

~ fundyreformed ~ 3 Comments

Excellent thoughts on the vital role of theology in ministry preparation, from Dr. Kevin Bauder (Central Baptist Seminary, Minneapolis, MN).

First, the problems that Christian churches and Christian people are facing today are fundamentally theological. The answers cannot be found in social sciences, philosophies, or methodologies. The problems will continue to grow until we address the false theologies””the wrong ways of thinking about God and His world””that lie at their root.

Second, if the foregoing is true, then the best preparation for ministry is theological preparation. Seminaries in particular must be careful to prepare Christian leaders who have the tools to evaluate bad theologies and to correct the bad ways of living that arise from bad ways of perceiving God. Schools that overload the curriculum with “methods” courses and that fail to prepare their graduates to think through new issues are dooming the next generation to shallow leadership.

Third, within the seminaries, even the most academic subjects must be taught with an eye to real-world ministry. Ideally, every professor of Greek, Hebrew, hermeneutics, history, or theology will bring substantial pastoral or missionary experience to his task. He will be able to show his students how their studies will matter when they reach their first full-time ministry. In other words, pastoral theology should not be something that is added on. It ought to be taught in every course in the curriculum.

Let me be clear. The best preparation for ministry is rigorously theological. Greek, Hebrew, hermeneutics, and theology are right at the heart of how a Christian leader does his work. I say this, not as an ivory-tower intellectual, but as somebody who’s got his nose bloody in the real world of pastoring and church planting. There is no substitute for the training that you get in a good theological seminary.

These thoughts apply across the board, from strict fundamentalists to the evangelical left. All can tend toward an emphasis on methodology to a diminishing of theology. Be sure to read the entire post!

We Believe (#1): Scripture

~ fundyreformed ~ 5 Comments

We believe glorious Truth as Christians. The next several Sundays I plan to post sections from my church’s Elder Affirmation of Faith. I’m doing this because every few weeks our congregational reading is an excerpt from this document. Every time we all read aloud the truths we confess, my soul rejoices. I pray these posts will aid you in worshiping our Lord on His day.

Scripture, the Word of God Written

We believe that the Bible, consisting of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible Word of God, verbally inspired by God, and without error in the original manuscripts.

We believe that God’s intentions, revealed in the Bible, are the supreme and final authority in testing all claims about what is true and what is right. In matters not addressed by the Bible, what is true and right is assessed by criteria consistent with the teachings of Scripture.

We believe God’s intentions are revealed through the intentions of inspired human authors, even when the authors’ intention was to express divine meaning of which they were not fully aware, as, for example, in the case of some Old Testament prophecies. Thus the meaning of Biblical texts is a fixed historical reality, rooted in the historical, unchangeable intentions of its divine and human authors. However, while meaning does not change, the application of that meaning may change in various situations. Nevertheless it is not legitimate to infer a meaning from a Biblical text that is not demonstrably carried by the words which God inspired.

Therefore, the process of discovering the intention of God in the Bible (which is its fullest meaning) is a humble and careful effort to find in the language of Scripture what the human authors intended to communicate. Limited abilities, traditional biases, personal sin, and cultural assumptions often obscure Biblical texts. Therefore the work of the Holy Spirit is essential for right understanding of the Bible, and prayer for His assistance belongs to a proper effort to understand and apply God’s Word.

*Taken from the Bethlehem Baptist Church Elder Affirmation of Faith, paragraphs 1.1 – 1.4. You are free to download the entire affirmation [pdf] complete with Scriptural proofs for the above statements.

Attending Church For Ourselves

~ fundyreformed ~ 3 Comments

I was struck by the opening lines of this news item from Baptist Press: “Kingdom passion drives 71-member church“.

Prior to 2004, Macedonia Baptist Church’s heart beat almost solely for its members.

“We were a bunch of older folks who pretty much attended church for ourselves,” said Gerald Williams, a member of the Fayetteville, N.C., congregation. “We were self-centered in a lot of our church work.” [emphasis added]

The post goes on to detail how this small church transformed its emphasis into kingdom work. Giving, growing, serving, the church is gloriously different today. But I wonder, how many of us are just attending church for ourselves?

I’ve seen plenty of churches that seem more like a club. People attend because its what they are supposed to do. They do their thing, do the rituals, pray, sing, preach, etc. But its all about the social connection and their need to be obedient and go to church. At church, the conversation revolves around the weather and what they did last weekend; then, they leave, hardly thinking twice about the things of the Lord or serving the lost, caring for others, missions, anything until the next time they darken the door.

Often these churches prize sound doctrine. They are all about being Biblical. Yet each member lives for his family, his job, and his financial well being.

Come to think of it, I too often go to church for myself. While I might think of the things of the Lord at times during the week, I’m often simply storing up doctrinal facts and thinking about this and that doctrinal controversy. And I’m thinking about my family and my job, too.

Why is it so easy to live in the world, as if this world is all that matters? Why is it so hard to pull away from our own often very large and weighty concerns and look to the fields which are white and ready to harvest?

Lord, give us eyes to see the need, give us a heart to live for Your Glory and to spread Your fame. Lord help us to serve to love and to live for others. May we go to church for others, to serve them, love them, and be prepared to live for them.AddThis Social Bookmark Button