Week 2 Questions of the Faith

How do I know that God is involved with the world today (outside of the Bible)?

Sometimes I wonder about this question myself in all honesty, and it is because I am comparing the modern times with the times of the OT and the events of Acts.

Something we need to remember is that just because God is not leading us with a pillar of fire like in the times of Exodus that does not mean that the Lord does not work in the world.

This may sound harsh but I think there are some things the Lord does that we take for granted. An example is when someone is saved, they are given the Holy Spirit! That is proof alone that the Lord is still working today.

Something else we take for granted is the fact that we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We are the ones who should be showing the love of Christ and sharing the gospel.

Something I also want to point out is the fact that the Lord is still performing miracles around the world, it’s just you may not be hearing about them. I recently heard of a surgeon who witnessed a miracle in his operating room and it led him to Christ.

Another application for this question is the fact that Christ reigns over all of creation. He was given all authority under heaven when He beat death and rose from the grave, and this means that God is in control of the election and all of the countries of the world. Nothing happens unless He allows it to.

So the answer is “of course God is involved with the world today.”

Is it ok to read or watch something bad if I know it’s wrong?

This can kind of be lumped into our next question

1 Corinthians 10:23 and 1 Corinthians 10:31

We can do all of these things, but the question is should really. You probably should not watch bad things especially if it is going to cause you to stumble. Be mindful of the content of the kind of movies you watch, and don’t give the devil opportunity

Some people say that some of this stuff will cause you to do bad stuff, which I do not agree with, but I do think can influence you.

In another way this question can be interpretted is that if you are wanting to learn apologetics which is defending the faith, it could be good to learn about other faiths and why they are wrong. So in the instance of reading something you know to be wrong, you are reading it not for your own searching, but because you want to argue against it and find its flaws.

Is it okay to watch rated R movies and play rated M games?

Don’t go through life wondering how much you can get away with

If grief is bad, what should I do to get free from it? This one is more of a follow-up/clarification from last week.

Grief over sin 2 Corinthians 7:10

2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

Grief is something we naturally feel after losing someone or something

I don’t know that grief in and of itself is a bad thing, but it is not something we need to sit and sulk in. When we are not in situations of grief it becomes easy to know that their is paradise with Christ waiting for us, but when we hit grief it becomes harder than ever to remember that, yet it is exactly what we need to cling to.

Cling to Christ and His love as you traverse grief. He is baring it with you. I have a Psalm I will talk about that is very comforting to me in a couple questions

What do you do when your friend thinks Jesus can’t love her because she has sinned so much (she says she was so bad that he couldn’t love her)?

Take her to scripture!

Romans 3:23–24 ESV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

All have failed, not just her.

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Let your friend know that when someone becomes a believer, they are considered a new creation altogether. Of course they have to start trying to follow Jesus, but Christ has given us a new life unattached to our old.

There is a story in Luke 7 where Jesus forgives the sins of a woman who is known for being sinful. She finds Jesus and she starts washing His feet with her tears and her hair, and the men that Jesus is having dinner with are saying Jesus should not touch her because they knew she was a sinner. Then Jesus shares a parable:

Luke 7:41–43 ESV

“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.”

Then the Lord says,

Luke 7:47 ESV

Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

This is a beautiful story directly from Christ’s minsitry where He forgives a woman who has sinned greatly to the point where everyone knows it, but Jesus does not care because He knows that she will honor Him more than someone who has sinned little.

How do Christians deal with anxiety and depression?

Anxiety and depression is a really tough subject to handle, and it is not a path you should walk alone.

I want to take you to a Psalm real quick: Psalm 23

Psalm 23 ESV

A Psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

This Psalm shows us that the Lord walks us through seasons of life. Sometimes we go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death which is just a poetic way of saying you are going through a really rough and dark season, but they are just that. They are seasons and depression and anxiety will leave at some point, but you need to continue to cling to the Lord.

I love this imagery because as we, His sheep, follow Him as He leads us, He is going before us with a protective staff as He guides us through a dark valley, so take solace in keeping your eyes on Christ who is protecting you and walking you through this.

Like Peter who was walking on water with Jesus, when he took his eyes off the Lord and noticed the storm going on around him he began to sink. Keep your eyes on Jesus because He will walk with you through this.

Another thought is that you should walk through this with other believers. Maybe you need to go to counseling which is incredible I am telling you. It is so helpful. Don’t wait on that!

Anxiety and depression have this ability to force you to think about yourself and constantly think about how YOU feel and what YOU are thinking, so it can help to start serving in a ministry at church, surround yourself with fellow believers, and don’t sit in a dark room listening to depressing music because that will only shove you further down a hole. That’s what these feelings are, they are a hole that feels impossible to dig yourself out of, but you can do it.

Why are there so many versions of the Bible?

I think this requires a quick explanation of how we have the Bible that we have now. There are some documentaries on YouTube I have watched and they are fantastic if you guys want more of an explanation

But when the OT was written, it was written in Hebrew and some Arimaic (Daniel), and just before Christ came, the common language was Greek, so ancient scholars translated the Bible from Hebrew and Arimaic to Greek and this is what is called the Septuagint.

I tell you that story to show you that scholars for centuries have been translating the Bible to the common language at that time.

In the early days of the Church, the churches were collecting letters and writings from the apostles who walked and talked with Jesus and put them together to make the New Testament and there are details I could go into with that, but eventually we got what is known as the canon of scripture we have today, but it was translated to many different kinds of English and Latin for a while. There were editions of the Bible called the Latin Vulgate, The Great Bible, The King James Bible, Which you guys might be familiar with.

But we have all of these versions because languages change, and we want to make sure that the Bible is translated to best fit with our definitions of words. For example, this is why I am not a huge fan of the King James Bible because there are some words that have slightly different connotations for us today than it did when it was translated in the 1600’s, so we want to make sure that we are on the same page as scripture.

Something else is because the original scripture was written in koine Greek which is not modern Greek in case you are wondering, there are certain connotations and understanding of words, not meanings of words, but understanding of words that are different from how we understand them. For instance, there are multiple ways to say that you love something in Greek depending on what kind of love whereas in English we just use the word love. So scholars want to best show things like this in their translations, so the spectrum of word for word versus thought for thought was born.

They are not all that different. Like if you opened up a NIV which is a little more thought for thought and I jump into ESV or CSB which is much more word for word translation we are probably still going to get the same answer on what a text means. Some of this is all kind of based on preference, but for Justin and I, we will use multiple versions of scripture when studying for a sermon just to get multiple angles on the passage.