Who Defines Your Faith?

As our culture continues to rapidly change around us there are a number of questions people are asking. Some are asking, “how did we get here?” While many are asking “where are we?” For Christians living in the Western world, Christianity is ignored, reviled, attacked, celebrated, and taken advantage of all at the same time. Simultaneously loved and hated depending on the moment.

“And this is the mark of our time in the West: Christianity is still so much here with us that it is utterly familiar and has receded from us SO far that we do not know what it is. This is not a step-wise process—here, then not here—but a simultaneous reality. Christianity is at one and the same time here and gone, familiar and forgotten. This is the world in which we live.” (C. Kevin Rowe, Christianity’s Surprise, 2).

Christianity has left an undeniable mark upon Western Civilization creating, shaping, or informing its most vital institutions and language. Unfortunately, those institutions have drifted far from their original purposes. There are many words regularly used even today that originated from Biblical language and yet they have been decoupled from the Christian faith.

“We are at home and comfortable in Christian language and use it for whatever we care about, but all the while we remain strangers to the vital biblical and ecclesial patterns that originally surprised the world. We go about our work speaking Christian, as it were, but remain captive to the cultural terms that have been dictated to us.” (2).

The letter of Jude is written to encourage and challenge struggling Christians to “contend for the faith.” The letter of Jude begins with a reminder of what it means to be a Christian. Before a believer can “contend for the faith” they first need to know who they are.

In this message, be focusing on some words that have massively important and powerful meanings and yet today they are thrown around flippantly with little understanding of their true weight. Words like called, beloved, kept, mercy, peace, and love (Jude 1-2). Read, study, and meditate on these verses as you listen.