Today has been interesting. Well, I take that back…the entire week has been interesting. For those of you who don't know, Cyndi has been out of town since last Monday (6 June). She has been visiting family, etc… in West Virginia and Ohio. That has left me TONS of left over time to read. In addition to having more time to read, I have started a new job with the International Mission Board.
Prior to our move to Richmond, I had felt a desire to do something more with my life. A desire to use my skills for God. At the time, I didn't have any desire to be a pastor or missionary. Partially through my experience with new staff orientation at the IMB and partially through my job in general, I have come to see a different definition of a "missionary." In reality, a missionary is one who tells others of their faith. Think of it like this…we all are called to be missionaries and tell others of the Good News. How do we do this? Well, God tells us:
Go ye therefore
Esentially, we are called to go and tell others. As we live our lives, we can (and should) tell others. Ok, but as we are telling, people will have questions. How do we deal with those questions? The only way is to know what we believe and why we believe it. For example, I believe Jesus is God. Ok, but how do I back that up? That doesn't mean we all have to have doctorate degrees from a Bible school, but we should understand it. Here is an example:
If you ask me can airplanes fly, my answer will be yes. If you ask me why, I can give a brief overview of Bernoulli's Principle. Can I work out all the math on the spot? No, but I can explain it.
Why should our Christian life be any different. Do we believe things because the pastor tells us? How about our parents? How about society? How about a denominational structure? We need to personalize our beliefs and understand why we believe certain things.
So, my chalenge now is solidifying those beliefs. Where do I start? I don't know for sure. I'll take any ideas you have. I'll probably start by going through The Baptist Faith and Message looking up those scriptures. I'll probably memorize some of them. While I'm at it, I'll have some sort of method figured out for studying the rest of the Bible too.