Breaking News

Well, OK, not breaking news but news none the less.  Last week was rather hectic and this one is shaping us the same.  Then the week after I’m out of town on some much needed rest with the family.  So….I’m taking a break from any blogging.  We’ll see how restful the week is and go from there.

Relationships

From the IMB:

CANAGUÁ, Venezuela (BP)–For the past 27 years, Reinaldo Meza has driven the same yellow Land Cruiser over the dirt roads of the Venezuelan Andes.

Before heading to his farm, Meza stops at a roadside market in Canaguá to buy a few loaves of bread for himself and International Mission Board missionaries Forrest and Becky Bohlen.

After a 45-minute drive from the market into the surrounding mountains, Meza pulls the truck off the road. He and the Bohlens will hike 30 minutes on narrow trails before they reach Meza’s farm, but he’s used to the hike.

After six years of working in rural areas of the Venezuelan Andes, the Bohlens also have grown accustomed to the landscape. Although the Bohlens live in Mérida, they spend about two weeks each month in Canaguá, a mountain town in the region of Pueblos del Sur (Towns of the South). They travel mountain roads and hike beaten paths to build relationships with Andean agriculturists like Meza.

“The Gospel is not being preached up here. It’s not even being heard,” Forrest says. The Iowa native previously was a pastor in Texas. “Our goal is to take that Gospel to wherever it’s not being preached.”

Many of the people there have heard the name of Jesus but few of them know who He is or have a personal relationship with Him, says Becky, whose home state is Arizona.

While the agriculturists around them plant seeds in the mountainside, the Bohlens are planting seeds of the Gospel.

“Here in this country, there’s a phrase they use — ‘Palanca.’ It’s who you know,” Becky says. “If you know them, you’re in, but if you don’t know them in a relationship, you’re out.

“Relationships are the bottom line,” she says. “It’s the bridge to be able to share Christ with them.”

From me:

Things in Venezuela are not that much different from Mooresville.  Relationships are the key to winning people to Christ.  Let them know you care about them, love them as people and they will listen to the gospel.

Blue Collar Theology – The Triune God

While most people would admit that God exists their concept of God varies.  Some would believe in multiple gods who have varying degrees of power and attributes.  The Greek and Roman pantheon of gods would fall into this category and while there aren’t many who still follow these two religious systems the principles are found in many of the world’s religions.  Hinduism and animalistic religions are all proponents of polytheism.  Western culture, while professing otherwise, is a polytheistic culture.  People worship many gods even if they do not acknowledge them as such (gods like nature, spiritualism, angelic beings, ect). 

 

Monotheism stands in contrast to this idea of many gods.  The worlds three great monotheistic religions are Judaism, Islam and Christianity.  The former two clearly hold to the concept of one god without any explanation or reservation.  The shema of Judaism is found in Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one.”  Islam confesses this same truth as one of their five pillars of Islam.

 

Christianity stands in union with these two faiths in affirming the unity of God as one.  However, we believe in the triune nature of God; that God is three-persons in one.  The confessions of the church from the earliest times has been that God is one but is also three distinct and separate persons who are equally God.  They exist in perfect union.  Article 8 of the Belgic Confession as adopted by the Synod of Dort (1618/19) clearly states this truth.

 

“According to this truth and this Word of God, we believe in one only God, who is one single essence, in which are three persons, really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties; namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the cause, origin, and beginning of all things visible and invisible. The Son is the Word, the wisdom, and the image of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the eternal power and might who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, God is not by this distinction divided into three, since the Holy Scriptures teach us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each has His personal existence, distinguished by Their properties; but in such a way that these three persons are but one only God.

It is therefore evident that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, and likewise the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. Nevertheless, these persons thus distinguished are not divided, nor intermixed; for the Father has not assumed our flesh and blood, neither has the Holy Spirit, but the Son only. The Father has never been without His Son, or without His Holy Spirit. For They are all three co-eternal and co-essential. There is neither first nor last; for They are all three one, in truth, in power, in goodness, and in mercy.”