I will be online tonight on the Congregational Fellowship stream. I'll be speaking on pride and one of the miracles of Pentecost. Please join at 8pm central https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4153660682 This is not our normal zoom link.

Shabbat Shalom To Entire Creature.
#shabbatshalom #creatorgod #creation #genisis2

My parents accepted Jesus as their savior when I was a baby, and I grew up in church. Sunday School, Sunday morning worship, church services again on Sunday night and Wednesday night, and sometimes a mid-week Bible study in someone’s living room. Starting in third grade, I attended Christian schools and graduated from a Christian high school. It’s fair to say that I was thoroughly steeped in Christianity and the Bible.

After high school, I enlisted in the United States Air Force and proceeded to make the same foolish decisions concerning money and relationships as most others make, and although I never went completely off the rails, my spiritual life faded away. It’s not that I stopped believing in God. Rather, my beliefs stopped having a huge impact in who I was or how I chose to spend my time. Religion (God, faith, theology, whatever word you want to use) was entertainment for me, something to argue with people about, not something to build my life around.

I remember one of those debate sessions more than any of the others. A good friend asked me why God changed the rules. I had been taught (by constant implication if not explicitly) that the Jews were “saved” by offering animal sacrifices, then Jesus came and changed all the rules so that now we’re saved by faith. Why would God make the Jews follow all of those complicated rules when faith without any rules–except no drinking, smoking, or dancing–could have been good enough all along? I had answers, of course, but the truth is that those answers weren’t even satisfactory to me. How were they supposed to address the doubts of an unbeliever?

That conversation stuck in the back of my mind for years and when another friend–this time a fellow believer–pointed out a law in the Old Testament that was clearly moral in character and was never abrogated in the New Testament and asked “Why don’t we do that anymore?” I was determined not to regurgitate my youthful indoctrination in response to a serious and important question. I said, “I don’t know. Let’s find out what the Bible really says about this.”

And here I am, 25 years later, helping others answer those same questions and still striving for a better understanding myself. The Scriptures are like all the rest of God's creation: the more you know, the more you realize how much more there is to learn.