#1 We Believe In God Series

Start the message off with the short 1 minute video "We Believe" found at SermonCentral.com

This 4th of July weekend I’ve been asked about if I’m preaching a patriotic message, or like I’ve done in the past, a message about our country’s Christian roots. Yes, this country was founded on Christian beliefs and principles, and as is common know, we, as a nation and as people, have long set aside those beliefs and principles. Why?

As I considered what message to preach today, I keep coming back to the theme that God’s instrument and tool to affect culture and to change the lives and souls of men, the church, has been lacking. As the country left those principles, I reflected on the role of the church as a whole. The church has not been changing the culture, rather the culture has been changing the church.

When asked, what do we, as Christians, who claim to be saved, who claims to have a home in heaven, when asked, “What do we believe?” we stumble, we heeemm and haaaw, and many of us cannot even give a good, concise testimony of how our belief in Jesus has changed us (assuming we are changed at all). We are hard press to define what our relationship looks like with the Almighty God, the Creator of the universe.

There are many misconceptions among so-called Christians out there that are completely non-Biblical. For example:

There are many roads to heaven. Not so, there is only one way and his name is Jesus.

We all worship the same God. Not so, our God bears little resemblance to the gods of Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, and we will not even consider the god and gods of Hindus, Buddhists, Shinto.

Being religious and going to church saves us. The fact is, by itself, being religious and going to church does not “save” anyone. It helps and it points the way and I believe you cannot be a growing Christian without being an active member of a church. But I also believe you can be an active member of a church and still be without Christ and still be dead in your sins.

The fact is, there will be many church members in Hell one day. Only those with a personal relationship with a personal knowledge in Jesus will be saved.

So many people have approached me and said they have read the Bible, yet they are hard pressed to give me any significant details about what they claimed to have read. But I also believe that the Bible cannot be properly understood without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but more on that in a following message.

Another example of a “Christian misconception” is that many claim they are fully justified in all they do in the name of “love” because the Bible says God is love (1 John 4:8). But here is a problem: The Bible’s definition, hence God’s definition, of love is not the same as the world’s definition of love. The fact is, what the Bible calls “the lust of the flesh,” the world calls “love.” And I’m talking about those who call themselves Christians. Unfortunately, the examples are endless.

Because these and what I see as a failing of the church in America today, I have been led to preach a series of messages on just what it is that we, as professing Christians, should be believing. We need to go back to the basics. We need to examine just what it is that we profess to be believe. It all starts and finishes in the Word, the holy Scriptures, the Bible. We, as the church in America, need to go back to the basics.

The sermon title today is "We believe in God. Today I will start with our belief in God. The one true and only God. Then in the weeks to come I will first move on to the Scripture upon which we base all our beliefs and then talk about Jesus, the Holy Spirit, our need for salvation, and many other subject near and dear to our hearts. Our focal scriptures today deal in the basics about God.

Genesis 1:1

Romans 1:20–22

The studies are in and the results have been published. According the latest Gallup polls, belief in God by Americans have dipped to there lowest levels (81%) since the question was first asked in 1944.

This may seem high compared to Europe where only 26% say they believed in the God of the Bible, and an additional 36% believe in a "higher power," according to a 2018 Pew poll.[1]

The statistics are broken down by age groups: for example, not surprising is that the stats say only 68% of adults 18-29 say they believe in God compared with 87% of Americans age 65 and older.