Faith and Work on False Religion

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Grace & Guilt

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Genesis 3:1-24, Isaiah 6:1-8, Genesis 50:15-21, John 8:1-11, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 51:1-17

In Guilt and Grace , Swiss physician and Christian, Paul Tournier, writes… I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that rel...

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“Respecting” Religion by Making it Private

Author

Nancy Pearcey

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Exodus 5:1–2, 1 Kings 18:21–39, Daniel 3:16–18, Matthew 5:14–16, Acts 4:19–20, Psalm 2:1–2, 10–12

Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or to debunk it as false. So what do they do? They consign religion to the value sphere—which takes it out of the realm of true a...

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A Mischief to Religion

Author

Joseph Glanvill

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Anti-Intellectualism has been a problem in the church for some time now. Consider the words of the 17th century English clergyman Joseph Glanvill, who had this to say about the role of reason in faith...

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Author

Cotton Mather

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Religion begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother.

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Are People in the West Abandoning Faith or Just the Church?

Author

David Zahl

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Scripture

Exodus 32:1-4 , 1 Kings 18:21, Jeremiah 2:13, Romans 1:25, Psalm 115:4-8, Acts 17:22-23

In this excerpt, author David Zahl challenges the common belief that religion is “in decline.” He argues that while Westerners, particularly younger generations, may be distancing themselves from the ...

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What is Faith? Is it a Way of Knowing?

Author

Travis Dickinson

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Scripture

Genesis 15:1-6, Exodus 14:10-14, Joshua 1:9, Psalm 23:, James 2:14-26

There’s no shortage of the religiously faithless who seem eager to tell us what faith is. Many of these characterizations of faith are reminiscent of Mark Twain’s precocious schoolboy who quipped, “Fa...

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Religious Faith in the Workplace? The Resistance May Not Be What You Think

Author

John C. Knapp

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More often than not, park-it-at-the-door thinking [about religious faith] has less to do with hostility to faith than with the avoidance of risk, for many employer’s fear that any hint of religion is ...

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Author

Karl Barth

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Scripture

Genesis 15:6, Habakkuk 2:4, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 5:1-2, Matthew 17:20, Psalm 62:5-6

Only faith survives; faith which is not a work, not even a negative work; not an achievement, not even the achievement of humility. . . . Faith is the ground, the new order, the light. . . . Faith is ...

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Author

A. W. Tozer

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Scripture

Colossians 3:2, Isaiah 26:3, Hebrews 12:1-3, Psalm 16:8, Hebrews 11:1, 2 Corinthians 5:7

Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

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Author

Andrew Sullivan

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Modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increa...

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Author

Karl Barth

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Scripture

Philippians 3:12, Romans 4:13-25, John 6:44, Acts 9:6-3, Ephesians 2:8-9

Faith means to be apprehended by that which is not ourselves, to be seized by God.

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Is Christian Faith Antithetical to Reason?

Author

Richard Robinson

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In his book The Allure of Gentleness , Dallas Willard includes a thought-provoking excerpt from Richard Robinson, a prominent atheist thinker from the mid-20th century. In his work An Atheist’...

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Author

Matthew Henry

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Sabbath

The streams of religion run deep or shallow, according as the banks of the Sabbath are kept up or neglected.

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Author

David Peterson

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Scripture

Luke 16:10, Matthew 25:21, Colossians 3:23-24, Luke 19:17, Galatians 6:9

Faithfulness in small things is a big thing to God.

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The Analogy of Faith

Author

R. C. Sproul

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Scripture

Genesis 1:26–27, Exodus 3:1–14, Isaiah 53:3–6, Luke 24:25–27 , Romans 3:21–26, Psalm 110:1

When the Reformers broke with Rome and claimed the view that the Bible was to be the supreme authority of the church (sola Scriptura), they were very careful to define basic principles of interpretati...

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The Frustrating Unpredictability of Faith

Author

Don Everts and Doug Schaupp

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Scripture

Galatians 6:9, John 3:8, Ecclesiastes 11:5, Isaiah 55:10-11, John 6:44

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

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Excluding Sinners is Excluding God

Author

Brennan Manning

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Scripture

Luke 19:7, Matthew 21:31, John 1:11, Luke 7:34, Mark 2:17

There is a story of a public sinner who was excommunicated and forbidden from entering the church, He took his woes to God. "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner." "W...

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Innovation or Heresy

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Ecclesiastes 7:10, Colossians 2:8, Matthew 9:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Romans 12:2, Mark 7:8-9, Isaiah 43:19

It’s funny how sometimes members of the church can associate anything new with “heresy.” We often make the mistake of confusing technological innovations or scientific discoveries for changes to the g...

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Heart & Head?

Author

Nancy Pearcey

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Scripture

Proverbs 2:2–6, Romans 12:1–2, Isaiah 1:18, Daniel 1:17–20, Matthew 22:37, Psalm 119:97–100

At a Christian high school, a theology teacher strode to the front of the classroom, where he drew a heart on one side of the blackboard and a brain on the other. The two are as divided as the two sid...

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It is Just so Good it Must be True

Author

Phillip Yancey

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Scripture

Isaiah 25:6-9, Daniel 7:13-14, Zechariah 8:4-5, Luke 24:36-43, Revelation 21:1-5, Psalm 16:11

One day when George MacDonald, the great Scottish preacher and writer, was talking with his son, the conversation turned to heaven and the prophets’ version of the end of all things. “It seems too goo...

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Author

Paul Tillich

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Scripture

Exodus 3:11-12, Matthew 14:28-31, Mark 9:24 , James 1:5-8 , Psalm 13:1-2, Psalm 42:5

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

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Reducing God to Manageable Terms

Author

A. W. Tozer

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Scripture

Exodus 32:1-6 , 1 Samuel 4:3-10, Isaiah 40:18-25, Matthew 16:13-20, Acts 5:1-11 , Psalm 115:4-8

A. W. Tozer once wrote, Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...

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Ideas Have Consequences & Doomsday Prepping

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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Let’s talk about how our beliefs shape our actions, especially when fear is involved. You've probably heard the phrase, "ideas have consequences," right? It's easy to see this in act...

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Sabbath-Keeping and Legalism

Author

Walter Brueggemann

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Scripture

Genesis 2:1-3, Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Mark 2:27-28, Matthew 12:8, Luke 6:5

For the most part, contemporary Christians pay little attention to the Sabbath. We more or less know that the day came to reflect, in U.S. culture, the most stringent disciplinary faith of the Puritan...

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Myths About Faith and Work

Author

Kara Martin

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Scripture

1 Peter 2:12, Genesis 2:15-20, Colossians 3:22-24, John 5:17, 1 Corinthians 7:17

Myths about Faith and Work Faith is to be lived out 24-7-52. For many Christians this involves living out our faith at work. But several myths about faith and work can prevent us from being effecti...

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Author

Marc Maron

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Scripture

Job 3:11-13, Isaiah 45:7, Habakkuk 1:2-3 , Matthew 27:45-46 , Luke 22:42-44, Psalm 73:16-17

I’m a paranoid agnostic. I don’t think God exists, but I’m sure there is some sort of force out there working against me.

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Author

Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer

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Scripture

Numbers 12:1-2, 1 Kings 12:16-20, Matthew 18:15-17, 1 Corinthians 1:10-13 , James 4:1-3, Psalm 133:1

We may have more disagreements with nonbelievers, but our disagreements with fellow believers are more problematic and more emotionally charged.

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Why It can be So Hard to Express Christian Convictions Civilly

Author

Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer

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Scripture

Daniel 3:16-18, 1 Kings 18:21, Isaiah 55:8-9 , Romans 14:5-8, Psalm 119:105, Matthew 7:15-16

First, most Christians attach their convictions to Christ personally. In other words, we form our convictions in order to please Jesus, not ourselves. Convictions do not express what we think or feel ...

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Not All Who Wander are Lost

Author

Travis Dickinson

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:1-15, Genesis 12:1-9, Job 1:42, Psalm 139:, Acts 9:1-19

In the novel The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien, there is a poem called the “Riddle of Strider.” One stanza goes like this: All that is gold does not glitter; Not all who wan...

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Author

John Calvin

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Scripture

Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 5:17, Galatians 5:14, James 2:17-22, Romans 3:31

We do not therefore by faith make void the law, but rather establish it.

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