Browsing Tag:

Gospel

In Blog, Book Reviews, Womanhood on
August 29, 2022

Cultural Counterfeits

We’ve been lied to.

For decades, women have been told that it’s up to them to create their identities, that they can be whomever they want to be. It doesn’t matter what your body tells you. It’s your mind that is the real you, and you ought to change your body to match your mind if you really want to live a happy and fulfilled life on this earth.

But this is completely untrue. Our bodies and our minds should not be at war with each other. They are both equal parts of who we are as women, and they both are equally valuable in informing who we are and what we are like. We can’t just be whoever we want to be and do whatever we want to do, even if this means going against the identity that we’ve constructed in our heads. Our culture has made so many of these kinds of promises to women, but they have all fallen short and come up empty.

We are made for more. We need the truth. And as Jen Oshman writes in her new book, we ought to cast aside these cultural counterfeits and lies the world has offered us.

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In Acts, Bible Study, Blog on
August 8, 2022

Full of Faith

Twenty-three years ago, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered Columbine High School armed with guns and explosives, killing thirteen people and injuring over twenty others. The Columbine massacre was a tragedy that affected the entire nation, and people today still grieve the lives that were lost that fateful April day. The first victim to be shot and killed was a seventeen-year-old Christian girl named Rachel Joy Scott. A fellow student who survived the attack claimed that Rachel was asked a question moments before her death— “Do you still believe in your God?”

In 2016, I went to the movie theater with some other girls in my youth group and watched I’m Not Ashamed, a movie based on Rachel’s life and death. When the movie ended, I came to the realization that we live in a world where one day someone could put a gun to my head and tell me to deny God or die. I resolved that day that if I ever were threatened harm or death because of my faith, I would never deny my Savior.

It’s hard for us to imagine that this could ever happen to us, but Rachel Joy Scott is neither the first nor the last Christian to die because of her belief in Jesus. As followers of Christ, it should be expected that we face hardship and persecution (John 16:33). The world hates us because it hated Jesus first, but we shouldn’t let that stop us from proclaiming the truth of the gospel (Matthew 10:32-33). There’s no better example of this than Stephen in the book of Acts.

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In Blog, Progressive Christianity, Theology on
July 10, 2022

Five Lies of the Progressive Gospel

Can Christianity progress? Apparently, a lot of people think so.

Over the past several years, there has been a movement of professing believers reexamining and deconstructing the Christian doctrines they have always believed in. They call themselves “progressive Christians,” though the term “Christian” is being used loosely here, as this group now holds beliefs that completely disagree with and go against nearly everything the Church has affirmed for the past 2,000 years.

There are different reasons for why someone has become a progressive Christian. Some of these folks have had bad experiences with the local church and hypocritical, abusive leaders. Some could never make sense of what the Bible teaches and were quickly dismissed whenever they tried asking questions. Others just feel like what they were taught in Sunday School growing up doesn’t match up with the loving, affirming God they believe in. These situations caused them to rethink their faith and ultimately reject the biblical gospel in favor of a progressive one.

What’s so wrong with the progressive gospel? A lot. Far more than can be covered in one little blog post. But there are five progressive Christian beliefs in particular that are absolutely untrue and antithetical to the good news of God’s Word. These five lies ought to be exposed and avoided at all costs by true, Bible-believing Christians.

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In Blog, Heresies, Theology on
April 3, 2022

Test the Spirits

Everyone is trying to sell us something, whether it be on YouTube ads, interstate billboards, or commercials during the nightly news. Forbes reported in 2017 that the average American is exposed to four thousand to ten thousand ads every single day.[1] Everybody wants to convince us that their product or message will make our lives easier, better, or more enjoyable.

And this isn’t limited to secular media outlets. Even our pastors and churches feed us different messages every week. Many of these messages are rooted in the Word of God and are edifying and uplifting. However, there are also messages being delivered by “pastors” every week that are not rooted in Scripture, that are not truly edifying, and that actually lead people away from the truth of the gospel. Because of this, we must be like the Bereans, examining the Bible to see if what we are hearing lines up with God’s Word (Acts 17:11), and test the spirits (1 John 4:1).

To help you test the messages you’re hearing and discern whether what you’re being taught is biblical truth, I’ve compiled a brief list of nine heresies that originated in the early church and are still popular today and how the Bible disproves them.

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In Blog, Salvation, Theology on
February 7, 2022

Real Repentance

“Say you’re sorry!”

We’ve all seen it. A child hits a classmate, says something mean to a friend, or steals a toy from a sibling, and the offended child runs to tell an adult. Then, the parent or teacher goes over to the offending child with, “Say you’re sorry!”

But how many children who mutter a begrudging “I’m sorry” are actually sorry? How many of these children will turn around and do the exact same thing again? These children may say that they’re “sorry,” but they’re often just sorry that they got caught, not that they did a bad thing. Because they are not truly sorry, they will go right back to hitting classmates, saying mean things, and stealing toys.

Adults do this, too. We confess to God and say we’re sorry for doing things like gossiping about a co-worker, putting ourselves first, and being envious of what others have. But then we turn around and do these exact same things the very next day. Why do we do this? Why do we continue to commit the same sins we just apologized for? Because we have not really repented.

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