Hello. My name is David and I am in my late 50’s. This blog is somewhere I will be sharing thoughts, ideas, stories, poems, and studies relating to my spiritual journey.
I am a Christian. I have always, from my earliest memories, believed in God and had a personal encounter with Him in my mid-teens. Since then I have been involved in a wide variety of churches and gone through an awful lot of different experiences, good and bad. As a result, I find that what I believe, while firmly based in the Bible, is hard to fit into the standard categories (“fundamentalist”, “evangelical”, “protestant”, etc.). Instead, I am willing to listen to anyone who believes and to evaluate each on the merits of what they say.
Does this make me wishy-washy or vague? No. I have very firm and definite beliefs. However, I am very open to being proven wrong and am willing to change my beliefs in such cases. My blog posts will expound on my beliefs and the reasons behind them. I will also share more of my personal journey that has led me here, because that obviously informs these beliefs.
So, to start with, here is a very short summary of my basic beliefs:
- I believe in the trinitarian God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
- I believe God created the world, but not in 7 literal days.
- I believe people are not in the correct relationship to God when they are born and need something new to get right (usually refered to as sin and salvation).
- I believe Jesus, being the son of God, supplied this “something more” for us, freely and at great cost to Himself.
- I believe the Bible is the word of God, inspired (but not “dictated”) by God, and was written by people who had been touched and changed by the working of the Spirit. I believe it is true, but that truth is not a simple concept.
- I believe the New Testament contains all that we need to know, but that it is not a “rule book” or “manual”. Instead, it sets out the new principles of the kingdom and shows us how the early Christians tried to work these out. Thus it is a guide and not a blueprint.
- I believe in the indwelling Spirit whose job is to lead us into both truth and life.
- I believe a changed people must live changed lives.
- I believe we have an eternal destiny with the Father.
thoughtfulspirituality 
I think I understand how you feel, and I appreciate your perspective. The only truth is knowing God. If it was possible to know the truth from Bible study, without knowing God, the Jewish religious leaders would never have handed Jesus over to the Romans for crucifixion.
Thank you for your comment. I agree totally. Not that the Bible is not vital for us, but it is only a book until one’s understanding is illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and He comes when we have a relationship with God. The Bible is a touchstone–something that will verify what we know of God–and also a goad to spur us into considering aspects of our life with God that we may not have thought about.
God is transcendent, the idea that even He could reduce Himself to something that can be caught in a relatively few words is, patently, ridiculous. And human life, while infinitely less than God, is also far too great to be captured in that way. It is time we grew up and stopped looking for easy, canned answers!
Easy, canned answers – there are certainly none of those, but how boring life would be if it were all that! Searching out truth is part of the privilege of being sentient beings. Thank you for your candor.
Thank you too. One of the things I strive for in my life now is transparency. It is a dangerous and vulnerable thing, but also, I think, very powerful. Too much of my life was lived trying to be what I thought other people expected me to be, but God took me through a really difficult yet wonderful time and has freed me from that (well, mostly–it is too easy to fall back into our old ways!). May He lead you in your journey into the joys of discovering Truth.
Hi, I chanced upon yr blog and found it to have much substance as one who have learnt much from Scriptures. Thank for your sharing your statement of faith so lucidly. God’s blessings froma a fellow traveller.
Thank you. I have glanced at your blog and will return when I have more time to look at what you have written. God’s blessings on you too.