Faith Leading to Action-Trust Leading to Obedience

Luke 5:4-6 And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.

What an amazing passage of scripture! We see one of Jesus’ apostles put his faith and trust in his Master even though all the odds were against him. R.J. Rushdoony stated in one of his many lectures on American History that faith provokes action and told his class that if they believed there were a thousand silver dollars on the lawn he would not be able to keep them inside. Why is this? Because faith, belief, leads to action. We see this fact vividly portrayed in Luke 5. peter had faith and put his trust in Christ, therfore he acted upon that faith and trust, resulting in an amazing miracle.

This also shows the providence, sovereignty and power of our Lord. Though we may have tried, like Peter, when our God intervenes, His purposes are fulfilled and He is glorified. There is a lesson in these Scriptures for all believers, that if we put our faith and trust in Christ, we must act on that faith and obey our Master and He will be glorified.

An important fact that I must point out though is this, He alone gets the glory. Not us. We don’t get glory for acting, but we are rewarded. We do not get glory for having faith, but we are rewarded with eternal life where we will eternally glorify Him. This takes humility, and God breaking our pride, because we naturally will not want to glorify Him. But by His grace, we will decrease in pride and He will increase in glory.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Scotty

Apologetics or Christ? Feeling Convicted.

Over the past few months, my dad, a close friend and I, have been on a major Apologetics kick. We’ve listened to hours upon hours of Dr. Greg Bahnsen on worldviews,  apologetics and logic. We’ve read books by Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark, Greg Bahnsen, Gary DeMar and Rousas J. Rushdoony. We’ve read articles by Van Til, Clark, Bahnsen, Vincent Cheung  and many more. So we have been devoted to the study of Presuppositional Apologetics for months now and we have gained vast amounts of knowledge, all the while, trying to keep it Christ-centered. Yet lately, I feel as if Christ has been lost from my study of apologetics (I can’t speak for my dad or friend) and now I use my new found knowldge against unbelivers (and sometimes belivers) just to prove a point. As I’ve been reading What Jesus Demands from the World, by John Piper, I feel that I should be concentrating more on strengthening my relationship with Jesus Christ and less on learning how to argue better. 

Please don’t here what I’mm not saying, that apologetics isn’t important, but for me, I believe that my time should be better spent in prayer and meditation. Being able to defend our faith is of extreme importance, but even Musilms have apologists, yet we as Christians have what all other faiths lack, a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe, and I do not want to take that for granted. So I’ll still study and learn but with God’s grace, I hope I can balance it with more prayer, reading and meditation. And with God’s grace, I hope others can also find that balance. 

In Christ,

Scotty