The reason I don’t always write can be found here. It is a question I wrestled over a bit last year. In truth, I seek to be wholly present first and foremost to my family and then my friends, and as a result, I don’t always have the luxury of penning my thoughts as often as I’d like. Suffice it to say, I don't blog for you. I don't blog for the numbers, the shares, or the likes. I blog out of obedience to the Lord and I trust in His grace to keep it that way.
But, even in the paucity of blog posts, God is constantly teaching and speaking and I am trying to learn, listen, and keep up! God is currently taking me on a surprising path and I have been incessantly reading, reflecting, praying, listening, and talking with friends and family alike. Like I often have to tell myself when I drive to someplace new at night, I am trying not to panic, reassuring myself that I am safe, that I need only to see the road right in front of me, and the Mighty Lord is with me! God is bigger than my questions and His truth is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and it is sure and secure. Ahhh. And so I continue to bushwack a path through some heavy-duty Scriptures and personal questioning about my core beliefs and theology.
Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to unpack this all right here for you one in one concise blog post, dear friend! But I do hope to explore this in blog posts to come, if not for your edification, than for mine, as I try to make sense of all the swirling questions that threaten to pull down my theological framework and suck it down and out through a sieve.
Awesome.
First, let me back up and give you a bit of context.
For many, many months now, I have been dissatisfied with the inter workings of our home church. I praise God that it a gospel-centered, Bible-preaching church, and the sermons are nothing short of amazing. However, the functioning of the church body at large has MUCH to be desired. While I feel a lot of that has to do with lack of leadership (we are down a pastor and 4 elders), it saddens me to see how many ministries in the church are floundering for lay leadership and even committed and consistent participation from members at large. I feel like my husband and I have done much to serve our church, but the situation there has not markedly improved. Understandably, this has resulted in many of our friends and family showing concern for us, and in some cases, encouraging us to seriously consider switching church fellowships. At this point in time, neither he nor I feel at liberty to do so--we think the Lord has us right where we are for a reason. However, this dissatisfaction with my church (whose Reformed theology I have fiercely defended, mind you) has led me to investigate my neat-and-tidy theological beliefs in a fresh way.
In a different vain, I have been reading a fascinating book about ancient through pre-Reformation world history in preparation for our homeschooling history curriculum for the fall. A common theme has lept off the history pages for me of late--almost every ancient civilization was ultimately taken over due to infighting. Take for example, ancient Greece. Athens and Sparta were so busy fighting each other that they ultimately got swallowed up by Alexander the Great and his march to unify much of the known world at the time. This general observation has prompted me to reflect upon our precious Savior's last penned prayer in the Scriptures, found in John chapter 17. What does Christ pray for as He is sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane? The unity and sanctification of present and future believers. The parallels are impossible to ignore. We as Christians ought to come together and unify, or the enemy will take us down, and continue to splinter the Church and weaken our faith at a time when it is most critical to unite and spread the Gospel!
Questions I am currently wrestling with (please allow me to use bullet points for ease):
- Are my personal battle cries of “Sola Scriptura” and “Sola Fide” ("Scripture alone" and "faith alone") merely a byproduct of the Protestant Reformation (which occurred less than 500 years ago!) or are they truths that, while not found verbatim in the Scriptures, reflect the heart and soul of the Bible's message?
- Is my church fellowship the problem, or do I feel as though I am not experiencing the fullness of my faith at church because I am not in the true unified Church as Christ commissioned it to be?
- How much of my church and its doctrine and creed reflect the first century church as seen in the NT Scriptures?
- What exactly IS the Bible (more specifically, why do certain Bibles contain 7 additional books than my Protestant Bible. Why are the 10 Commandments numbered differently for Catholics and Protestants)? Who decided what books would and would not be canonized as Scripture, and why?
- How much of this reformation was simply the making of a religion of convenience (case in point: Henry the VIII wishing to divorce and breaking away from Catholicism to establish the Anglican church) and how much of this was sheer reaction to the abuses from papal leaders in Rome (which both Protestants and Catholics agree on).
- In short, did we as Protestants throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, or did we simply streamline the tenants of the faith so they would be in better keeping with the first century church?
Oh and then there are my personal times in the Scriptures. The Lord has me camping out on some portions of the gospels that I have previously glossed over as I always felt they were “non-essential to the Gospel message and salvation.” Specifically, portions of the gospels that deal with eucharistic theology. Of late, John 6 has been kicking me in the butt (or punching me in the gut), and I must confess I feel very much embittered at how slanted and non-informative my study bible commentary has been as it relates to this passage (oh, ESV Study Bible, the "Cadillac" of study bibles!!). More on that passage in my next post...I digress.
So, dear one, where does this leave us? Well, just where we begin, at the start of life and at the start of each new day and at the start of each new moment of each new day...in need of God's grace. In need of His direction, love, wisdom, forgiveness, hope and healing. That is the beauty of it all. Whether you, like me, are wrestling with your core beliefs, testing them and proving (or disproving) them...or whether you are in a season of assurance of your salvation and faith, we are all in the same place with the Lord. Needing Him, leaning on Him, being in communion with Him, being open to His leading and His empowerment in our lives.
I had the pleasure, a few weeks ago, of revisiting the Nativity story in Luke, a story that I seldom (if ever) read apart from the season of Christmas (if you have not read it apart from that season, I would strongly encourage you to do so!). I was struck in a fresh way concerning the two parties that were confronted with the truth of the Christ child--the shepherds and the Magi. The Gospel announcement was simply given to the Shepherds and they accepted it fully on faith. Meanwhile, the Magi came from a far off place--they left behind their homelands and came searching, loaded with precious and costly gifts. One group was given the Gospel. The other group came searching and sacrificing for it. Both were a precious part of the Christmas story.
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| Photo courtesy of stellarhousepublishing.com |
Will you come with me?
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