Month: January 2018

Should We Obey Everything the Bible Says? …Even that One Thing?

~ brianholda ~ Leave a comment

Hi all.  Here’s a hot topic:  Do we obey everything the Bible says?  Everything?  Even ________ ?

I don’t have something in mind for the “fill-in-the-blank,” but we probably could think of a few things that are difficult to obey when everyone around us seems to say the opposite.  Along these lines, I created this brief teaching series.  I hope and pray it helps add light (not more smoke) to these conversations:

Should We Obey Everything the Bible Says? – Teaching Series

  1. Part 1: How Would Jesus Answer? (23:25)
  2. Part 2: Interpreting & Applying God’s Word (22:14)
  3. Part 3: Example One: Head Coverings (19:58)
  4. Part 4: Example Two: Women Ministers (33:19)
  5. Part 4 (Bonus): Women Ministers Continued (3:24)

Should we follow our passions?

~ brianholda ~ 1 Comment

Colossians 3:5 says: “put to death…passion” (ESV).

Amidst so many today telling us to pursue passion (even in the church), God tells us to “put to death passion” (Col. 3:5)

So I got curious…
In the New Testament, in the ESV, there are 27 occurrences of the English word “passion”. Guess how many use it in a positive sense? Zero.

It seems this should challenge us to be careful of a theology that teaches us to “pursue our passions”…or at the least, be careful of re-defining a term (“passion”) that is used in a negative sense biblically.

It seems a better theology would be:

“live…the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.” (1 Pet. 4:2).

To be sure…

I think “passion” / “desire” is not inherently negative. I think the uses in the New Testament are of sinful passions. But I do think it is more of a neutral term that can be swayed by sin/Satan/the world. Thus, we shouldn’t trust our “passions”. We follow God’s will (whether we are passionate about it or not), and as we do so, I believe our desires will start matching His desires more and more. – Psalm 37:4