Episode #101 What do you know? – Reconstructing Faith

Hi friends, we're continuing in our series on reconstructing faith, and if you're jumping in here and haven't heard the first episode in the series, I encourage you jump back there and catch up as I'm laying the context and the foundation for these conversations that we're having with God.

And the reality is God welcomes our questions and He wants to build us up in Him. We can trust God to follow him into questioning places and we can be honest and real with him. And that is his invitation and his desire for us. We don't have to pretend that we don't have the questions that we actually have, but we get to come before God honestly and be built up in truth in him.

As I mentioned in the last episode, I believe the concept of deconstruction is actually just missing the mark. It's a counterfeit of the true invitation that God extends to us. Instead of deconstructing for the point of demolition, we can be reconstructed in God, to have our firm foundation in him and to be renewed and transformed by the Holy Spirit.

One of the ways that this can be difficult for many of us is that it requires that we inspect what we're truly being built upon. Depending on your relationship with God or even the different church environments that you've been in, some of us have been taught that it's not okay to inspect our beliefs.

We might not have been told that in exactly those same words, but it will come across in feeling like it's not okay to have doubts, in wanting to understand something in a way that's different than how it's presented. Another way that this can be difficult, is, seeking to understand why we believe what we believe. Now, I grew up in the church. I've been in church communities my entire life, and so a lot of my early beliefs were built on a rocky foundation of really just, I believe this because this is what I've always believed. Or this is what my parents believe. Or this is what my pastor said.

Seeds that are planted that way can be easily uprooted. When we're confronted with opposing perspectives, or life circumstances that feel contrary to those beliefs, the belief system, the root system of that belief, never had a chance to go down very deep. And so it can be easily uprooted.

Where instead by inspecting our beliefs, by partnering with God to gain his understanding, by growing in spiritual maturity and taking good investigative looks at what we believe and why we believe it, we're actually fortifying our faith. That's not a contrary action to faith, that's a contributing action to faith.

And so we're going to look at a few passages that teach us how to do that, so that we can then take this practice into conversation with God. So, 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. It says,

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

So the weapons of our warfare are of the Spirit, which reminds me of Ephesians 6:17, where it talks about the armor of God, which includes the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

I can't take anyone else's thoughts captive but my own. And so the warfare that we're talking about here Is using the weapons of our warfare, which include God's word to destroy arguments and lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God and to take every thought captive to Christ.

Which if we play this out, to take my thoughts captive as they are marching by in my head requires that I inspect them, requires that I examine them, and I recognize which ones need to be subdued, which thoughts are contrary to the knowledge of God.

We also see this in Romans 12:2. It says,

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

That by testing, which means by scrutinizing, proving, by recognizing after examination, I will know if it is good and acceptable and perfect and if it aligns with the will of God.
Partnering with the Holy Spirit as we are built in Him, as He reconstructs our faith, requires that we examine our faith. That we examine our arguments and our opinions and our thoughts. And these include the thoughts we think about God, they include the thoughts we have about our faith. We get to partner with God in identifying if these are coming in conflict with what he says in his word, with who he truly is and with who he has made us to be.

And when they are, we are empowered by his spirit to demolish them . I hadn't noticed before, but it says to take every thought captive to obey Christ. It's not just the thoughts that we see as problematic that we then take captive, but we take every thought captive, every thought submitted to Christ.

We get to be those who genuinely know what we believe and why we believe it. Built up in our faith in ways that are fortified. And can stand when we face difficulties. When we come into conversations with those who question what we believe, we will know why we believe it.

And so I asked God what question we should ask him as we closed out this episode today. And here's the question I believe he's offering us:

God, where are you inviting me to inspect my beliefs?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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