Your Worldview Minute with Jonathan Morrow

How to Explain the Trinity to a Child<br />
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How do you explain the Trinity to a child? For that matter, how do you explain the Trinity to anyone?<br />
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The first thing you need to know is that the Bible never uses the word “Trinity.” The word Trinity captures the various ways the Bible talks about the nature of God.<br />
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Also, the Trinity is one of the essential and foundational doctrines of the Christian faith. You can’t have Christianity without it.<br />
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I want to share a clear and memorable way to understand what the Bible teaches about the Trinity. I first came across this illustration from Norm Geisler.<br />
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There is one what and three who’s. There is one God and three persons. The what refers to nature of God that all three persons share. <br />
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The belief that there is only one God is clearly taught in Scripture. For example,<br />
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“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! – Deuteronomy 6:4<br />
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That there are three persons is also clearly taught in Scripture. We see all three persons described and at work in various passages, including 2 Cor. 13:14:<br />
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“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”<br />
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The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Each is a distinct person. Three who’s.<br />
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These are just two of many verses we could share. If the Bible claimed there was one God and three Gods, that would be a logical contradiction (and obviously false)....<br />

Will Your Kids Faith Survive YouTube?<br />
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Worldview training is not optional for today’s teenagers.<br />
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As a parent, pastor, educator or youth pastor you need to know that training in worldview, apologetics, and theology is good for the heart and soul of the next generation.<br />
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[shareable]We don’t have to choose between reason and relationships.[/shareable]<br />
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I believe in the next generation. I love getting to spend time with them talking about the big questions of life and the everyday stuff of life.<br />
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Gen Z has amazing potential and I think God will use them greatly. (Here's my interview with David Kinnaman of the Barna Group and Catalyst podcast on Gen Z)<br />
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But they must be trained.<br />
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Worldview training is not optional for today’s teenagers<br />
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Here’s the bottom line—it’s exhausting to live a compartmentalized faith.<br />
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Yet, many Christian teenagers are trying to do this impossible task every day. And it’s taking a toll on their soul and faith.<br />
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The cultural messages are strong, and the challenges are unrelenting. Students are being shaped more by YouTube and Netflix than by what they are hearing on a typical Sunday morning.<br />
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There’s a disconnect.<br />
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Faith and feeling goes in one category of life on Sunday; reason and thinking goes in another category the rest of the week. That kind of faith will not survive....

Why Read the Bible? The short answer is the Bible brings life to our souls....

Knowledge of God Matters.<br />
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Which do you think shows up more in the Bible—faith or knowledge? If you do a concordance search, you will find something surprising. Knowledge (including knowing, know, etc.) shows up far more than faith does.<br />
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Of course, without faith, it is impossible to please God, but knowledge is far more important to God than people realize. Listen to<br />
the words of the Lord as recorded by the prophet Jeremiah — words reminding us that knowledge of God is to be prized above all else...

Devotion and Sincerity are admirable. But when it comes to questions of reality, we know this is not enough.<br />
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In our “follow your heart,” “You do you” and personalize everything to my own preferences world--this can be confusing.<br />
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Every day through Spotify, Netflix, and YouTube--People are discipled by our culture to think that right and wrong, gender, sexuality, and spirituality are determined by what I—as an individual--choose to believe. That’s the height of freedom right? Wrong.<br />
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Why? Because we all know that we’ve been sincerely wrong. Remember all those tests you took that your teacher had the audacity to count certain answers incorrect? Remember how sincere you were on the SAT and ACT? They didn’t care.<br />
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Or think of it this way. I am not...

Why Ideas Are So Powerful <br />
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Ideas have always been and continue to be our Enemy’s favorite method of undermining the work of God. <br />
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Dallas Willard comments on what happened in the garden of Eden:<br />
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“Ideas and images are ... the primary focus of Satan’s efforts to defeat God’s purposes with and for humankind. When we are subject to his chosen ideas and images, he can take a nap or a holiday. Thus when he undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with the idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being.”<br />
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Two observations. First, both Adam and Eve fell for the bad idea that God really can’t be trusted. Second, once ideas take root, they have a mind of their own and

Does the Bible really teach that Jesus is the only way to God?<br />
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That’s a good question. Our culture is definitely headed in the direction of pluralism and relativism.<br />
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For example, 6 out of 10 teenagers today agree with the statement “many religions can lead to eternal life; there is no one true religion.” Prominent religious leaders like the Dali Lama agree when he says, “The essential message of all religions is very much the same.”<br />
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There are different parts of this question worth looking at and responding to, but I want to focus on what the Bible says. Because if the Bible teaches that Jesus is the only way to God, then it doesn’t matter what our increasingly secular thinks.<br />
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It turns out that Jesus—the founder of Christianity—couldn’t be clearer:<br />
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“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”—John 14:6<br />
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Luke...

What Are Spiritual Disciplines?Right off the bat, we need to acknowledge that Paul commands us to discipline ourselves “for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:7 – 8 NASB; cf. 2 Peter 1:5 – 10).They are essential for our growth and not optional when it comes to the Christian life.A discipline is “any activity I can do by direct effort that will help me do what I cannot now do by direct effort.”For example, we practice scales on a piano to learn to play music — not to get really good at playing scales.I don’t practice grammar to get really good at grammar. I study vocabulary and grammar so that I can learn to speak a new language and experience the whole new world that language opens up....

Is Science our only Source of knowledge?With the rise and success of modern science (and these advances have been beneficial in many ways), some people have unfortunately come to believe that science, and science alone offers true knowledge of reality.Famous atheist Bertrand Russell put it this way: “Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.”Initially, this sounds sophisticated and intelligent. The only problem is that if it’s true, we couldn’t know it to be true. Why?....

Why listening matters when sharing your faith.If you want to have more effective spiritual conversations, then learn to listen.Francis Schaefer once said:"'If I have only an hour with someone, I will spend the first fifty-five minutes asking questions and finding out what is troubling their heart and mind, and then in the last five minutes I will share something of the truth."Our temptation is to unload all the facts we’ve ever learned in one conversation.....

What is the Role of the Holy Spirit in Interpreting the Bible? Can a non-Christian grasp the content of the Bible? Yes and no. Yes, if we mean the text can be understood by employing a sound approach to literature—to the basic grammar, context, and content of a passage. But an unbeliever cannot fully appreciate and take to heart the truth of the Bible. God’s Spirit helps Christians discern the spiritual realities of the text and then apply them to their lives (see 1 Cor. 2:14). Scott Duvall and Daniel Hays offer helpful insight here: When it comes to biblical interpretation, having the Holy Spirit does not mean that the Spirit is all we need, since he will not make biblical interpretation automatic. He expects us to use our minds, valid...

Why Knowledge Matters for Christians. Unfortunately, many people today think that you can’t know religious or moral truths. Why? Because if physics, chemistry, biology, or genetics doesn’t deal with a topic, then they assume you can’t know it. In other words, it’s fine for you to say you believe that Jesus is God but not […]

What is the purpose of spiritual gifts?Talking about spiritual gifts can be confusing and at times controversial. But what does the Bible teach?1 Peter 4:10-12 says:“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ…”Here are three things we learn about spiritual gifts from this passage:First, each believer is given a spiritual gift. We are to receive the gift that the Holy Spirit has given us with gratitude and without comparison because not everyone gets the same gift.Second, spiritual gifts do not exist for us. They are given so that we can serve one another. Spiritual gifts are given to build up the body of Christ.Lastly, spiritual gifts are ultimately to glorify God as we serve one another.If spiritual gifts are being used in a way that magnifies

What’s the difference between knowing and showing Christianity is true? I was first introduced to this helpful distinction by Christian philosopher William Lane Craig. The Bible teaches that a believer knows Christianity is true on the basis of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit. Passages like Rom. 8:16 and Gal. 4:6 make this clear. When we become a follower of Jesus, God’s Spirit then testifies to our spirit that we are His children. In other words, God lets us know directly—without spoken or written words—that we belong to Him, that Jesus Christ has forgiven our sins, and that we have been reconciled to God. This is a kind of rational testimony because the Holy Spirit is a person. And this is how you know that Christianity is true. Showing Christianity to be true involves giving reasons or evidences that are publicly available to everyone. For example, a friend can take you at your word about your assurance that Christianity is true, but he can’t get inside of you to experience it for himself. The task of showing Christianity to be true is ...

What is true tolerance? True tolerance is where we extend to each other the right to be wrong. False tolerance, on the other hand, naïvely asserts that all ideas are created equal and this must be rejected. Not only is this obviously false, it’s unlivable. Unfortunately, as Stephen Prothero has put it, “The ideal of religious tolerance has morphed into the straitjacket of religious agreement.” Contrary to what is commonly believed, the height of intolerance is not disagreement, but rather removing the public space and opportunity for people to disagree. You can still love someone and think they are wrong about important moral and spiritual questions. However, true tolerance is usually not what people have in mind when they say people should be free to believe in whatever God (or no god at all) they want to. Here is the simple, but profound point to grasp—merely believing something doesn’t make it true. Put differently, people are entitled to their own beliefs, but not their own truth. Belief is...

Christians can ask the hard questions. Questioning the Bible isn’t always comfortable. In fact, it can be downright scary. If we dig underneath “because the Bible says so” what will we find? Have we based our lives on a bunch of fairytales? How we view the Bible is no small matter. A lot is at stake...

What is Substitutionary Atonement? When it comes to understanding the Christian faith, there aren’t many ideas more central to grasp than this one. Those words can sound intimidating, so let’s break them down. To “substitute” is to stand in the place of or take the place of. To “atone for” is a multifaceted biblical term which means to “cover”, “forgive”, and “reconcile.”This is the heart of the Gospel. Jesus died in my place, as my substitute, for my sins. Peter, who saw Jesus raised from the dead, described...

How were people saved in the Old Testament? That’s a good question and one that many of us wonder about. Was it by good works or was it by faith? Here’s the big picture. When we look at the Scriptures, this is the pattern that emerges. Salvation is always…Offered by the grace of GodBased on the atoning death of Jesus ChristReceived by the exercise of faith applied by the work of the Holy Spirit until the time of Christ...

The Christian life is active not passive. It’s so easy to start letting life happen to us. There’s so much to do. Information to process. schedules to manage. Emails to check. Laundry to fold, Practices to get to and homework to be done. The pace is crazy. If we’re not careful, we can become passive observers in our own lives. Here’s the problem: If we’re passive, then we’ll not be able to do all that God has called us to do...