Episode 01: A Whole Faith – Why Christians Must Care About Theology & Doctrine

Written by Marcus Myer

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Most Christians are familiar with this verse, both because it was commanded of Israel in the Old Testament, but also because it was reiterated by Jesus in Matthew 22:37 when being asked what the “greatest commandment” is. But what does it really look like to truly love God to this extent? To love Him with all of your heart, soul, and might? In the Greek, that word “all” is holos, which can be translated to also be “complete, entire, or whole.” In other words, we are to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, soul, and might. That doesn’t give us some new meaning of the verse, but it does show us a side to our relationship with God and that capacity to which we are commanded to love Him in a new light. There is supposed to be a wholeness to our faith and relationship with Him that envelops every facet of our daily lives. So many of us have desired that, and we’ve prayed to God asking for as much, in terms of His closeness to us, how we can truly know Him in a deeper way, what He wants us to do, and where He wants us to go. And yet, what the reality of our life so often ends up being is something more like, “loving the Lord your God with some of your heart, part of your soul, and a bit of your might.” 

The sad problem in the lives of many Christians is that besides an occasional prayer at the dinner table and maybe making it to church a few times a month, they go weeks without reading their Bibles or having any sort of spiritually beneficial conversation with their families. Why does this happen? Sin. Even though believers have been made new in Christ, they often never mature to the point of becoming disciplined in the faith and knowledgeable of God through His Word. They still struggle with making the necessary changes in their relationships to the world and culture that are necessary for spiritual growth and maturity. Hebrews 5:12-14 defines for us what spiritually mature believers are – “those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Conversely, it then defines for us those that are spiritually immature – those who have undeveloped powers of discernment due to the lack of training, resulting in not being able to distinguish between good and evil. Although these believers have an affection for Christ, the desires of this world compete for their attention, and often win, which keeps the depth of their relationship shallow with the Lord.

The distractions, temptations, pleasures and the comforts of this world all play a part in subdividing our life from faith. Most of the time, our faith seems partial. We pick it up on Sunday’s and put it down for the rest of the week, right? Well, it’s because we’ve got sports practices and games constantly filling up the calendar, school activities and requirements, demanding jobs, little kids to care for, and everywhere in between all of that, a phone with endless access to all sorts of entertainment that numbs your mind and helps you escape whatever it is that you want to escape from. We may try to start out on the right foot following God faithfully, but often get sucked into these lifestyles and cultural expectations that, before we know it, leave Him completely out of it. 

And because of that, the decisions we make, who we’re friends with, what we allow our kids to do and watch, how we spend our free time, how we spend our money, typically, if we’re honest with ourselves, ends up being something self-serving and sinful rather than fulfilling of that command – to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. 

God is left out, not even considered, in most of the aspects of our days. And it leads to a terrible pattern and cycle of how we deal with our problems, how we lead our lives, how involved we are in truly raising our kids up in admonition of the Lord, and before you know it,  you’re in your sixties or seventies and just as spiritually immature, biblically illiterate, and stagnant in your faith as you were when you were a teenager or a young adult. All the while thinking that this is what it is to be a Christian. This couldn’t be further from the truth!

Amidst how serious of a problem that is – there is good news! Matthew 13:33 says, “He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” Again, that “all” can be taken to mean that the flour was fully, or wholly, leavened. The idea is that being welcomed into the kingdom of heaven as a believer in Jesus Christ is something that wholly changes you. He moves us from spiritual death to spiritual life in an instant by a move of His amazing grace. After this we move into this period or process called sanctification in which God is transforming us into the likeness of Christ, leading all the way until we meet Him face-to-face and we are given glorified bodies in the new heaven and new earth. That is the moment when that wholeness will be perfect! While we wait for and look forward to that, we are here in the process of sanctification – which has it’s uncomfortable and challenging steps and moments as we deal with the continual struggle with sin and maturing spiritually. But God is the best at working out a plan. So we can trust His process!

1 Thessalonians 5:23 says, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is God’s heart for us! That we be sanctified – hagaizo in the Greek, which means, to set you apart or, I love this – make you the opposite of what is common. And in this, we know we’ve got trouble, because when the lives of Christian across America are looked at, they look common. They blend in largely with the lives and values of those who are not believers and do not call upon the name of Jesus. This cannot be so!

But back to God’s heart and will for His church – to be set apart and be made holy. Take encouragement in this promise first from Philippians 1:6 – “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” If you are reading this and you know you’ve been neglecting time with the Lord, that you’ve not known how to make more of your day and your life about God, that the things you have to do seem to pull you away from closeness to Him – please know that He is the one who pursues and loves so graciously, even when we so often turn away from Him. And this ministry, blog, and podcast is really just trying to be a part of God’s work in His pursuit of you to know Him more fully and love Him more deeply. 

Which gets us to our mission. Our mission is to initiate biblical conversations and produce scriptural content aimed at promoting, developing, and sustaining a holistic obedience and faith to Jesus Christ. 

What this means is that we want to talk about all aspects of what enhances and grows our faith in Christ – so it’s not just the preaching of the Word and doctrine (which are incredibly important!), but it’s also parenting, raising your kids up in the Lord, managing your household well, being good stewards of your body in health and fitness, ministry initiatives and missions, bible study methods, how you represent yourself at work, what you do with your time. The point is to look at your life as a whole and ask, “Is my faith in Christ evident and involved throughout it all? Have I subdivided my pursuit and relationship to Christ into small blocks and left Him out of huge areas of my life?” And if you’d consider for a moment, what would it look like in my life, in my family, if I were to pursue Christ wholeheartedly as the commandment requires? Because I’ll tell you right now, I feel like we’re just beginning to have our eyes opened to the incredible blessings of this, by God’s grace, and it is amazing!

And just so it’s abundantly clear, we’re not selling some 10 steps to Whole Faith in God stuff. This is not a “how to” podcast and ministry. In fact, soon we will be discussing the detriment that much preaching in the American church has done to enhance this problem of not having a whole faith and being biblically illiterate by constantly preaching “how to’s” and Christian living without bolstering it with sound doctrine and theology. Our aim is to get you more of God! God is the solution to all of these issues, and we just want everyone to know Him more fully because we believe wholeheartedly that it will produce a greater affection for Him, a transformation of what matters most to you, and a love for Him that is unquenchable. 

If I can leave you with a testimony, I’d like to share with you how gracious God has been to us as we’ve been on this very same journey of maturing in Him and our relationship with Him being more whole than it was before. One of the main ways that I have seen God bless our lives in seeking Him this way is the propensity for us to have spiritual, biblical, and Christ-centered conversations often as a family. While we certainly try to have intentional times of study with our boys and devotionals as a family, most of these conversations happen naturally on account of the Spirit’s leading, and I believe it’s a direct result and  fruit of seeking the Lord through Bible study and prayer, through theology and doctrine. And this inclusion of God in the everyday activities of our lives, that’s what we’re after, right? Because at the end of the day, if there can be a catch or pause before we choose to spend our time doing something, if there can be a moment to comment on an event taking place in the world with a biblical response, it leads us into keeping the eternal things as the highest prospective. It helps us keep Christ as the center of all things, through which what we end up choosing to do will hopefully be tailored to what brings Him the most glory – and consequently, by His grace, is the most for our good as well.

As we look to what is to come next, we are going to unpack over the next several weeks some issues in the lives of Christians that keep them from walking out this whole faith to Christ, while also highlighting what it looks like to get involved in and pursue theology and doctrine, how to read your Bible in a way that really helps you grow in your knowledge of God. These will be filled with some practical and foundational things for our journey ahead. Then, after that, I’m very eager to get into some series that teach and breakdown very important truths and doctrines in the Bible, answer some tough questions that we all wrestle with, and continue to show how we interact with the Scriptures to the end goal of bringing God glory through living holy lives steeped in His truth. It’s going to be good!