We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

This Week’s Sermon: Sledge Hammer Faith
Greg is feverishly working on a new book on faith and doubt and he decided to preach on this topic for a couple of weeks. He’s also been dealing with this topic on the blog as a part of fleshing out the ReKnew Manifesto. This week he asks the question: Is certainty-seeking, doubt-shunning faith idolatrous? Many Christians assume faith means you must have perfect certainty in matters of belief. This makes doubt the enemy, and our job as Christians becomes the mantra of the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz, “I DO believe. I DO believe. I DO, I DO, I DO believe!” But biblical faith is not anything like a “strength-tester” from a carnival where you try to hit the faith-puck hard enough to ring the certainty bell at the top. Rather, biblical faith is entering a loving relationship with the One who created us and came to redeem us.
You can download audio and video files of this sermon from the Woodland Hills Church website.
After you’ve listened to the sermon, we invite you to share your thoughts with the rest of the ReKnew community on our Facebook page, or send us your questions here!
Category: General
Tags: Faith, Religious Idolatry
Related Reading

Doubt as a Companion to Faith
A true and living faith is never a destination; it’s a journey. And to move forward on this journey we need doubt. Faith is not based on certainty. Think of it this way. We often cling to certainty-seeking faith like one might a map as if the map itself is actually the territory. But our…

Practicing Faith
Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for and the conviction of things not yet seen, based on Hebrews 11:1 as I explained in this post. Practically speaking, this means that you become aware of what you are representing in your imagination as you pray, and that you take care to align it with what…

Court-of-Law Theology: How It Falls Short
Courtney “Coco” Mault via Compfight Last week, we introduced a way of talking about theology with concentric circles. This approach is distinct from the common Western model of theology that depends upon a court-of-law framework. The following is an excerpt from Greg’s book Benefit of the Doubt regarding this: ____________________________ Within the legal strand of…

Drum Roll Please: Greg’s Final Critique of Bart Ehrman’s Article
This is the ninth and final of several videos Greg put together to refute Bart Ehrman’s claims published in the article What Do We Really Know About Jesus? Thanks for hanging in there for this last one. I know it was a long wait, but the holidays got inordinately busy for Greg. In this segment, Greg talks…

False Gods in the Church
We often think of an idol as a statue, but an idol can be anything we use to meet the needs that only God can meet. In other words, a false god. There is no end to the false gods we create. In Western cultures we often strive to feel worth and significance by acquiring…

Is Suffering Part of God’s Secret Plan?
In the Christian tradition since Augustine, the most common explanation for the apparent arbitrariness of life and God’s interaction with humanity has been God’s mysterious will—his “secret plan,” as Calvin says. Whether or not a child is born healthy or a wife is killed by an intruder is ultimately decided by God. If we ask…