Strategic Faith

What are your spiritual disciplines? When you plan out your schedule for the week, how much time do you mark out for those disciplines (i.e., things like Bible study, Scripture memorization, meditation, prayer, and sabbath)? These are common questions I ask other Christians to gain insight as I continue to grow and develop my own Christian walk. Unfortunately, the answers I get are often disheartening.

Most of us can quote Mark 12:30, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” We wear the title of ‘Christian’ proudly, and yet there seems to be a disconnect from our claimed title and our practice.

Verses in the Bible like Philippians 2:12 where it says to, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” or James 2:17 which says, “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” cause many of us to stir in our seats and prepare to take up arms in the argument of salvation by faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone. In our protestant upbringing, we have firmly rejected a works-based salvation, but the question I have for us today is have we gone too far?