Skip to main content

I Believe

As we begin a new year, we are reviewing our belief statement. Here's a draft of mine....
___________________________

I believe first and foremost that God is, that He created everything that is, and that He sustains the creation by His power.

I believe that God loves all people, that He seeks to commune with them, and that the separation of people from Him causes Him sorrow and grief.

I believe that God sent Jesus to reveal the character of God, to heal Man, and to make a way for Man to return to his original relationship with God which He did by living a faithful life and dying on the cross in submission to God. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven where He mediates between God and Man.

I believe that God remains active in the world through His Spirit who is given to all believers and who transforms Man by working in them and interceding between God and Man.

I believe that Scripture is the divine physical record of God’s revelation of Himself and as such, is the primary guide for Man’s character and way of life.

I believe that salvation is a result of God’s grace, extended to Man through God’s patience and the sending of Jesus.

I believe that salvation is based on faith in Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of the world; that true faith results in repentance, submission to God, and dying to self; that faith, repentance, and baptism combine to effect the restoration of our relationship with God through our belief in His Son.

I believe that all believers are united to one another through a spiritual bond that is real rather than conceptual, and that we are united with all believers, those who have gone before as well as those yet to come, wherever they may be found.

I believe that God wills the healing of creation, and the salvation of Man; that He wills that we develop a love for others, mutually submit to other believers, and that each Christian is to build up the body.

I believe that God’s reconciliation and transformation of Man and of each believer is an on-going work of the Spirit to which we yield, allowing the development of the character of God within us. That same Spirit, given to each believer, serves as a real seal, and empowers us to live as, and be transformed into, likenesses of God.

I believe that the body of believers, the church locally and universally, exists to bless the world by revealing God to others, by healing the brokenness in the world, and ministering to all peoples; by maturing one another in the Faith, and transmitting the Faith through the generations.

I believe our corporate worship is a natural response of grateful, believing hearts to the graciousness and greatness of God. Our gathering together is itself a proclamation of the Gospel and a foretaste of Heaven in the coming together of various peoples united in and by one God. In our communion we reaffirm to one another, and we proclaim to the world, our faith in the love and saving sacrifice of the Son, and we renew our commitment to die to ourselves and submit ourselves to God.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Wineskins II

       In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.      In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh re...

Freewheeling

Merton never disappoints. Here's an excerpt from "Love and Living," a collection of individual writings collected after his death in 1968: "Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling; to do this one must recognize what is one's own—be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid." This short passage is pregnant with meaning and spiritual insight (would we expect anything less?). Let's start with the last few words: "…make that offering valid." The offering of ourselves, of our lives is our calling. We offer ourselves to assist the re-creation of Creation; the reconciling of Man to God. The validity of our offering is measured in how closely we mirror the work of God; to what extent our motivations are based on knowing who we are rather than a slavish obedience to p...

Wineskins

  Jesus comes from the Wilderness where the Spirit has driven him for testing, announcing the imminent coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. His message to the crowds calls them to repent because the “Kingdom is at hand.” The kingdom or the effective rule of God has come upon Israel and Israel’s expected response is to return to her God. A number of passages tell us the sorts of things God has against Israel or at least her leaders. They have the form of the People of God, but not the substance. He will call those opposed to him “white-washed tombs” to describe their religious and moral corruption. They look good but are dead. He calls these people to repentance, to return to “their first love,” to actually live as though they are the People of God. In another place, he will tell them that while they do well to tithe mint and cumin, they have missed the larger point of caring for people. In the judgment scene, he describes sending into a place of gnashing of teeth those who failed to gi...