Theology, Not Just Preacher Talk

I was once talking to another pastor about the inerrancy of Scripture (which is the belief that Scripture is completely and totally without error in its original manuscripts) with a group of other Christians present. One of the other Christians said that we were engaging in "preacher talk," and insinuated that this issue was not important to anyone who was not in the ministry.

The belief that theology is not important to the average Christian is blatantly false. Theology is knowledge of God and His Word.  How can we worship what we do not know?  We all have ideas about God.  The real question becomes where did these ideas come from. We can hold to "folk" theology which is just tradition and people's best guesses at what God is like, we can make up what we think God is like or we can study his inerrant Word and determine what God is like from that.

As Joshua Harris says in the first chapter of Dug Down Deep:
"I've come to learn that theology matters. And it matters not because we want a good grade on a test but because what we know about God shapes the way we think and live.  What you believe about God's nature--what He is like, what he wants from you, and whether or not you will answer to him--affects every part of your life. Theology matters, because if we get it wrong, then our whole life will be wrong.

What we believe will eventually be revealed by how we act. To worship God and to live as we are called we must understand who He is as revealed by His Word.

Coming up soon: a resource list for knowing God, and a post about the Jenga Analogy (how mysterious!)

New Year, New Ideas, New Problems, Same God

So much changes year to year doesn't it?

This past year I left the church where I was a youth minister thinking I was going to be a part of a church planting residency at another church. The church planting residency did not work out, so for the time being I am not ministering in any official capacity at any church, though that does not stop me from serving God. This huge change was, of course, hard on me and my family and has left me scrambling to find work.

I have also had a child in the past year. Jude is my third child (and first son!), so I now I have three under three. This comes with its joys, blessings, and its difficulties.

Life changes. We grow and we move. We have different jobs, different attitudes, and different struggles. But one thing does not change and never will: God.

Hebrews 3:18 says "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."


This verse was equating the idea of Jesus being God, and is parallel to Malachi 3:6 where God claims: "For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed."  The unchanging nature of God, in all three persons of the trinitarian Godhead, assures us of His promises. All else may change, but our God does not.

Spurgeon had this to say:  "The mountains with their snow-white crowns, doff their old diadems in summer, in rivers trickling down their sides, while the storm cloud gives them another coronation; the ocean, with its mighty floods, loses its water when the sunbeams kiss the waves, and snatch them in mists to heaven; even the sun himself requires fresh fuel from the hand of the Infinite Almighty, to replenish his ever burning furnace. All creatures change. Man, especially as to his body, is always undergoing revolution. Very probably there is not a single particle in my body which was in it a few years ago. This frame has been worn away by activity, its atoms have been removed by friction, fresh particles of matter have in the mean time constantly accrued to my body, and so it has been replenished; but its substance is altered. The fabric of which this world is made is ever passing away; like a stream of water, drops are running away and others are following after, keeping the river still full, but always changing in its elements. But God is perpetually the same."

In a world of constant and continual change we have one single constant. We have one great promise keeper. No matter what, God stays the same. We can find comfort in His offer of grace at the cross of Jesus.