Guidance and the Voice of God (Guidebooks for Life) by Phillip Jensen & Tony Payne

Author:Phillip Jensen & Tony Payne
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: God, Guidance, Religion and Spirituality, Christianity, Guidebooks for Life, Jesus
ISBN: 9781921896729
Publisher: Matthias Media
Published: 2012-09-15T17:00:00+00:00

Part III

Case studies

Church

WE’VE LOOKED AT THE THEORY; now it’s time to put it into practice. In the next three chapters, we will apply our principles of guidance to three areas: church, work and marriage.

In doing so, we must recognise that in some ways we are falling into one of the errors we’ve warned about: asking the wrong questions. We have lots of questions about church, work and marriage, and we think that they are very important. But as we have seen, God is more interested in Christ, salvation and obedience. The things that we think are important are not necessarily what God thinks are important.

All the same, it is important to illustrate how the principles we have looked at so far apply to real life issues, and how we can approach the Bible to find God’s answers. We need to proceed with caution. We need to be prepared to have our cherished views and priorities turned upside-down. With this in mind, let us proceed.

Safe but confusing

Church is perhaps the least controversial of our three topics, but it is by no means the least confusing. The variety of churches and denominations is bewildering. There are Catholics and Reformed and Charismatic and Pentecostal and Anglican and Orthodox and Presbyterian and Baptist and who knows how many others? Even within the denominations, there is considerable variety between different congregations. Who are the good guys? Should we identify our denominations as ‘churches’? What should church be? What should happen in church? The range of opinion is vast.

In the midst of it all, we have our own decisions to make. Which church should I attend? How should I choose? What should I do at church? What should be my priorities? Where should our church be heading? Where is God leading us?

At some point, we have to make decisions about some of these things, and the choices can be difficult. When we move to a new area, it is sometimes hard to find a good church. Should we choose the one with the same brand name as the church we have just left? Which is better: a dull, boring church with solid teaching, or a lively, go-ahead church with shaky teaching?

So far, we’ve seen that God promises to guide us by his authoritative and powerful word. Let’s look at how his word guides us with regard to church.

What does ‘church’ mean?

The word ‘church’ is used in a number of different senses in modern English. It can refer to:

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