What We Believe AND WHY?

Over the past few months the conversation within my discipleship group has centered around this phrase: “What we believe and why?” We have taken some of the important questions of our faith and discussed them, studied them, and hashed-out hard questions in order to get to the point where we know what we believe and why.

First, we took several weeks to look at the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. These are important summaries of the basic Christian faith that span most Christian denominations, including Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. In addition, being some of the oldest confessions, these declarations are important building blocks for other doctrines we were to study afterwards.

Next, we spent weeks moving from topic to topic. We began with the hard-to-grasp doctrine of the Trinity. Then, we discussed the polemic doctrine of Election/Predestination. The last study we did was about Spiritual Gifts – what they are, their use and controversy surrounding them.

Each person took personal responsibility to find sources, Bible passages, commentaries and articles and bring his own findings to the group. We met together to discuss what each person had come up with. The idea has not been to determine a final stance to sit upon, but to have good Biblical reasons for what we may say we believe, but not always understand why or the history of it.

We will continue on this pace until the end of the year. If you have any suggestions, send them on so we can live in light of Psalm 119:105 – “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.”