Things related to faith

A Question What does it mean to be “faithful”? I wrestle with this question in various contexts pretty regularly - mostly because God has been so ridiculously stupid good to me that I feel compelled to ask daily “am I being faithful with the gifts God has given me?” There’s a lot of places to go from this starting point, but there’s some events happening in my life that are giving me perspective on Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father’s will and what it implies for my own life of faithfulness and steadfastness to the Lord. Faithfulness # How do I be more like Jesus (as a human), and how do I more or less copy his faithfulness to God in the wake of trial. I’ve certainly given some amount of thought to my own ability to be faithful in the worst potential circumstance of straight up physical execution: martyrdom… In Fox’s Book of Martyrs there’s accounts of Christians through the ages singing hymns while being burned alive for their faith… What leads to that kind of faithfulness? What gave t…

This post is meant to serve as a reminder that God’s provision is about more than the chronology of things happening… For example he brought me a job when I lost my main one - he just brought that to me before I lost it… the timing of that event make it no less significant or caused by God… He answered the prayer I hadn’t uttered yet when it comes to providing for my family I believe one way God provides in the midst of taking things away is through living a life of daily submission to him. The idea that it goes: something bad happens pray for protection maybe something happens and the reality of what happens affects my view of God is silly, selfish, and misguided. God sometimes provides by gifting you in a way that ends up protecting you later - but to make the claim the gift was honed solely by you, or worse - a product of yourself, is to make a grave theological error… God’s provision is a daily journey with him, not a hail mary prayer for a last second safety net…

Intro I came across an article on the Bible Project on what it means to “store up treasures in Heaven” and it brought some clarity to the meaning of this teaching for me… I’ve been walking with Jesus for around 2 decades now, and he’s taught me a lot about life, love, and grace. I still feel the battle inside myself when faced with a decision where I can act more or less in line with Jesus’ desire and will or I can make a choice that’s about me… Anytime I’m able to choose the path I know is his, then praise the Lord and he’s been faithful to change me more and more into his image and likeness. TLDR - The Treasures # The article goes on to argue that the rewards we are promised in Heaven, the ones we are supposed to “store up”, are the rewards of living like Jesus today. Note The reward becomes greater as our will is forged to align with the Lord. As we grow in holiness, making holy decisions and living a holy life becomes the reward we store up for heaven Reflection The idea that the p…

Intro This started as one of [[my-thoughts]] and got long enough to warrant putting right in the blog Faith and works is a common point of conversation for Christians who like debating things, and I’m at the point in my life where I’m kind of over the debates and the simplistic thinking…. but this morning I saw this article and wanted to give it a read Article # Article Link - 11 minute read One of the best pieces from the article is: Info James illuminates and clarifies our understanding of faith by bypassing questions about whether one has (or does not have) faith and focusing instead on whether a person’s faith is living or dead. Reflection # This snippet isn’t incredibly profound on its own, but in my experience it hits hard I’ve been in many conversations about faith and works - and as I’ve written about before in A New Perspective on Being God's Child Christians today have a deep desire to put things into neat and simple boxes but this is often a mistake. And in the case of faith…

Intro # I was in men’s group the other day, and one of the things that came up almost inevitably is a debate between God’s sovereignty and predestination, and then an idea of free will. I have been a part of these conversations for years - I’ve been in hundreds of them certainly, and they all go in a very similar direction. Almost irrespective of the theological prowess or training of the group of people I’m in the unspoken goal always is the same… to find a hard and fast line between the 2 things or to find some comfortable verbiage for the tension My Anecdotal Experience With Other Believers # People with no real theological background have very simple ideas and understandings of free will and God’s sovereignty. They typically equate God’s sovereignty with “He willed everything to be, and so you don’t actually have any real choices.” Then they think that because God has ultimate sovereignty, but they have free will, they can somehow contradict God’s will, but then they don’t understa…