In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  – Genesis 1:1

I had to take a day off from teaching yesterday to stay home and work on the foundation of my house.  My dad and I (mostly my dad) had to take care of some water damage in two places caused by a water heater and a leaky drain.  I was hunched over walking around in my crawl space and I’m feeling it pretty good this morning.  

For the past two weeks, I have been studying a Biblical worldview.  As I was praying this morning in the crisp, cool air, I realized that I’ve been fixing some things that were foundationally wrong with my faith.  For weeks before that, I was studying and researching on why so many Christians were leaving the faith in this “exvangelical” movement.  People who had at one time followed Jesus, and I mean lots of people, are doing just like they did in John 6:66 and following Jesus no more.

The big question is why?  The first two paragraphs I’ve written this morning are very connected.  According to a Gallop Poll from July of last year, only 40 % of people who called themselves Christians believe the Bible is the word of God.  51% basically said “parts of the Bible are true.”  The worst part, at least to me, was that 8% said it was simply a book of fables, history, and moral precepts written by men.  

We are in trouble!  We have been in trouble and didn’t realize it.  Somehow, we have entered this time period where pastors and evangelicals have preached that “accepting Jesus” is enough.  It doesn’t matter what you believe about the Bible, just “receive Jesus” and you’ll be okay.  Often, John 3:16 is used to defend this position.  But John 3:16 begins, “For God so loved the world that He gave . . .”  We believe and place our trust in Jesus within the bigger context that it is the God of the Holy Bible who sent Him.  If you take Jesus out of the context of the Bible as God’s holy word, then you end up with a Jesus who happens to look, act, and believe exactly as you do.

I’ve always believed the Bible was the word of God.  However, I have allowed parts of the secular worldview to damage my foundation.  The slow drip began for me in college.  I remember my science professor being crazy smart and interesting.  I didn’t know it at the time, but instead of simply rejecting a lot of the teaching, I began to fit a lot of that teaching into my beliefs.  I began to say things like, “well, God could have created it all by the Big Bang.”  I began to think that maybe each day of creation was a thousand-year period of time instead of simply taking God at His word.  I have identified and corrected quite a bit these past couple of weeks.

Hopefully my physical house and my spiritual house will be foundationally solid again very soon.

Lord, I want to fully believe in You and Your word.  I don’t want to waver and allow secular humanism to creep into what I know to be true.  Help us, Your people who are called by Your name to humble ourselves, pray, seek Your face, and turn from our wicked ways.  Oh how we need You to hear from heaven, forgive our sin, and heal our land.  Evil has damaged so many Christian foundations by doing the same thing to us it did to Eve in the garden, “Did God really say . . .?”  Help us, Lord, we have so many Christians who have no handle on Your word and therefore don’t believe 2 Timothy 3:16.  Send a true revival, Lord.  Send it soon!  Amen!