Can you defend your faith?

How well do you know your Bible, your doctrine?  Do you regularly spend quality time in your devotion, reading God's word?  And how about Trinitarian doctrine?  

We cannot simply confess I am a disciple of Jesus, I love Jesus, I love God, I obey His commandments, and other spiritual statements.  Almost everybody claims those words, experienced a changed life and claimed that they fully know God’s word.  We can never tell in this world which group tells the truth unless we are able to distinguish which are biblical and which are not.

When I was still in my former church (I miss Living Epistle!!!), I first heard about this topic and I admit that my understanding was very shallow.  That was my first hand information on doctrines.  My acceptance was not that big deal, just like saying, “Okay fine, I need to know that.” Not until I had my first serious relationship with an opposite sex whose doctrine was ONENESS – God the Father, Holy Spirit and Jesus are just ONE, ALL JESUS.

He was a part-time musician in our church.  I was one of the worship leaders.  He started inviting me to their church and sharing to me their faith.  My christian foundation was weak then.  I was hurting, he was hurting because almost all disagreed with our relationship.  I had several counseling sessions with close friends, pastors and family members regarding my relationship.  Most of my counselors advised me to give him up to the Lord.  The bottom line is we both have different faith and his is not biblical.  In the end, we both decided to stop the relationship despite what we feel.  I think he is happily married to a woman with the same faith he has and blessed by children.  

Guess what? Through that situation of my life, I began to search more of God's word. I even bought a book on CULTS and I learned so much from it.  Praise God because He gave me the wisdom, courage to do and choose to obey all advises I heard and I am married to the partner the Lord gave me. 

Since then, I realized it is very essential to have a firm foundation of one’s doctrine.  I am refreshed to hear again these basic foundations of faith.  Last May and June, I was privileged to attend ROOTS: Five Weeks To Deeper Spiritual Growth in the church every Friday evening. Below are the topics discussed and each topic was discussed for three hours.  

Week one – CHRIST in the Old Testament (Who is Jesus Christ? Who do you say I AM? Did Jesus appear in the Old Testament?)

Week two – The Humanity and Divinity of Christ

Week three – Heresies: Old and New (What is a Heresy? What are the modern day heresies?)

Week four – Atonement and Justification (The meaning of Atonement & Justification; Is Christ the only way?

Week five – Resurrection, Ascension and the Second Coming

To note, some religious organizations do not fully acknowledge the full Humanity and Full Lordship of Christ.  Some are still doing good works to earn salvation wherein we believe that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ.  A lot or heresies are roaming around us, deceiving a lot of people about the true nature of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  I truly thank God for this seminar because the more I appreciate HIS love, goodness and faithfulness.  I just pray that my faith will be stronger and will truly depend on HIS word. However, I now feel sorry for young people today who are caught in the same scenario.  What if one of your loved ones or close friends had the same situation?