A Jumping Off Point.

Listen along here:  https://www.pastorwoman.net/podcast/episode/2bb61d55/a-jumping-off-...

A 'wrap' on having a reasonable answer.

This simple body of writing from the last few weeks is cited below.

This weekend I was leading a discussion on a terrific book called Faithfully Different: Regaining Biblical Clarity in a Secular Culture,1 when a woman looked up and said, 'Honestly, I had to stop reading it because to know how few Christians really hold a biblical worldview, to realize just how secular our culture has become is really disturbing!' [She ain't lying.]

A little later in the meeting she shared that her 23-year-old daughter, who used to be a sold-out follower of Jesus Christ, had gotten caught up in anime and Dungeons and Dragons, and it had pulled her away from her Christian faith. Wow.

The homeschooling Christian mother's heartache was etched on her face, evident in her expressive brown eyes. You see, Lisa's world had been rocked by the very thing we were discussing--the aggressive secular agenda where anything goes except of course the one true God, and the ease with which the insidious nature of technology lures us away from Truth, down a slippery slope to destructive thinking and behaviors of various sorts. [Some awareness on these trending behaviors is important]

Several talked about how they themselves had chased the shallow promises of a 'happy' life through the pursuit of pleasure and wealth--an age-old element of the human existence. But as the writer of Ecclesiastes said, "...vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes...What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done,  and there is nothing new under the sun.2 Sooner or later, the grasping comes up empty, and the search for meaning begins. And that is when opportunity knocks for you and me.

Questions are asked which we must

be able to answer

about the hope of Jesus Christ we have within us...

and why we believe that Christianity is true.

In the last weeks we have looked at what TRUTH is - that which conforms to reality, to a set of facts, recognizing that Jesus said of himself, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."3 Jesus did not just simply speak the truth, but He was and Is the Truth we seek.

As we have seen, a biblical worldview orders our priorities as we seek to live our lives for the purpose we were created.4 And appreciating that we 'were born for such a time as this' - privileged to live at a time we can hold the printed Word of God in our hands, know the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We can look at 2000 years of the spread of the Gospel, the impact of the church and Christianity worldwide, see with our own eyes so much archaeological evidence to support the people, places and events in the Bible, shoring up the truths of Scripture, and so much more, oh yes, we are blessed indeed!5

Christianity is true because Jesus Christ rose from the dead. This historical fact lends powerful credibility to any discussion we have with a young person on an airplane, a peer at the gym, or with Lisa's daughter when she eventually comes home and asks her mother, 'Remind me why you still believe Christianity is true', thus the Morning Briefing "Everything hinges on this" from August 22, and why we can believe that Jesus did what he had said he would do--defeat death.6

And lest we should be talked into the notion that all religions are the same, all holy books equally valid, God just some higher power that is out there, we looked at His personal nature. All because God wanted to reveal himself to us through Nature, Jesus Christ in the flesh and the written inspired Word of God,7 and just how Incomparable is the Word of God. Written by 40 different authors over a 1500-year span, in three different languages, with hundreds of prophecies fulfilled, the Bible holds together and continues to change and transform the lives of those who read it and apply its truths for living.

Acknowledging just how deleterious slogans have been in our lives, we do well to examine and then debunk them--sayings such as 'science has disproved Christianity.' When willing to dig a little to tap the evidence that is available to us at our fingertips, we briefly tackled the notion that science does not disprove Christianity or the Bible.8

Slogans such as 'Do what makes you happy', 'If you wanna know the truth, look within' do nothing but promote self as 'god'... lies that lead to emptiness. Where Jesus clearly stated, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free!9 Freedom and truth are found in Christ alone.

I pray that I have whetted your appetite for what can be known and stated as truth - the very truth people are dying to know.

Christianity is true; it is reasonable and intellectually defensible.

please watch/listen to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkz4AbL5D0Q

Christine

PastorWoman.net

1 - Faithfully Different - Natasha Crain. If you read one book this year, make it this one.

This book discussion was at the monthly cohort of The Colson Fellows program. https://www.colsonfellows.org/, an invaluable 10-month deep dive on biblical worldview.

2 - from Ecclesiastes chapter 1

3 - John 14.6

4 - Put Your Glasses on - https://conta.cc/4dL56cQ

5 - These are the Good Ol' Days - https://conta.cc/3SQCaIg

6 - Everything Hinges on This - https://conta.cc/470cGhj,

and Without truth, we are rudderless. https://conta.cc/3Xjhtrg

7 - What God Wants - https://conta.cc/3X0mN1f

8 - Beware of Slogans - https://conta.cc/3ZeQpul

9 - John 8.32