Be. Ready. Women's Conference w/ Alisa Childers - Session 1

good evening everyone let's all stand together and worship our god [Music] greatest [Music] is your grace [Music] ending i again of sorrows your faithfulness refugees [Music] oh lord my rock and my routine [Music] gracious my guilt and cross laid on your shoulders in my place [Applause] [Music] my [Music] my bonds [Music] may all my days [Music] [Music] oh lord my god when [Music] i see the stars the universe [Music] how great thou art my thou savior [Music] that on the cross he bled and died me [Music] then christ shall come with shouts of acclamation and take me home what joy shall fill my heart then i shall bow in humble adoration my god [Music] [Applause] [Music] how great thou art [Music] how is thou art [Music] thee [Music] lord we thank you that you are great and amazing and we just stand in awe of you lord lord i pray that as we go into this night that you will be glorified lord i pray that your word will not return void and i pray lord that whatever we came in here with whatever's going on in our life we would just put it at your feet and that you would prepare us to hear your word and that you would prepare lisa lord to be faithful to your word and share the truth lord we praise you that we all get to be here together and worship you and hear from your word thank you god in jesus name amen you may be seated [Music] all right so how great is this it's great that's right amen well my name is curtis field and i'm one of the pastors here at redeemer bible church i'm the family pastor and women's ministries is um under the umbrella of family ministries and so it is my blessing i am so excited to be able to welcome you to the first annual women's conference and we are so blessed to have elisa childers here really we're so excited yeah you go ahead is a huge blessing um for us that she's here and we're so thankful um my prayer every day for weeks has been that god would use this time that we have together this weekend to help us to know love and serve jesus more because we've spent this time together and so i'm going to continue to pray that through the weekend and that that includes those of you who are watching on our live stream which includes calvary chapel in redding california but we want to welcome you guys as well all of you that are out there um and we're so excited i pray that this weekend is just a blast i pray you guys have so much fun that there's fellowship and worship and learning and that you love jesus more because we've been together so i am going to turn the mic over to shauna thakra who is on the women's team she's also coordinated this conference and she's rmc for the weekend so how's that for a trifecta so that means i'm tired so alrighty so it is just oh i'm not going to cry stop it gum it this is just amazing and like curtis said we've been praying for this we've been praying for each one of you as we scroll through the names we prayed for you that god would bring um you here safely and that he would do a work in this place and in each of your hearts and so it just is sorry i told you i'm tired and it's a girl meeting so we're allowed to cry all right i gotta get going so all right the first thing that we always have to do with these is some housekeeping so if you don't mind let me just get to some of these bathrooms or in the lobby we did kind of sort of make the men's bathroom kind of a women's bathroom but there's only there's only one stall sorry so um either get creative or use use the bathroom that's also in the building behind us if you go through the glass doors on the church office building there is a women's restroom at the very end of the hall and there are several stalls so anyway that's bathrooms if you didn't already get to enjoy one there are cookies out on the patio and some water for you feel free to get some if you didn't get any hopefully you also had a notebook on your seat for you as you walked in and those were put together by an awesome team this week for you and hopefully you've had a chance to look through them but in case you haven't there are pages in the back for notes if you'd like to utilize that there's also supposed to be a three by five card in the little uh you know part of the front of the notebook if there isn't we do have more in the back but those are for um at the during the last session we're um planning to have a q a time with alisa and so if you have any questions that pop up um this weekend while you're listening we will take those there's a pretty flowered box in the back there where you can slide your 3x5 card in there we have no idea how many questions we'll be able to get through but if something does come up feel free to um slide your 3x5 card in there and there are extras over there in case your 3x5 card fell out and um oh i didn't bring my book up here but i do have elise's book and i did read it and we do have them on outback for you or out on the patio for you at the welcome desk and they are 15 now this could get ugly ladies because we only had 44 books so don't throw any elbows please but we can help you find it somewhere else but um there are books out there and um we plan on hopefully at least having time to try and sign some of those for you lastly um there are some people here some are incognito but there are there is security here and i just wanted to let you know that there's security walking the building and there's also security in the room um so that if there are any emergencies we can direct you to someone who can help and then lastly if you see anyone with a there's only a few of us but any lanyards we can help you also if you have any issues or any questions that we can help you with okay so now that's all of the housekeeping um so i have the blessing of being a mom to two kiddos they are both nine years old and they're really cute and um as most of the kids in this country at the end of last year my kids had to go on zoom and do home school so i was committed ladies i was committed i was going to rock this homeschool thing and i was gonna make it happen so the very first day um got my kids up i uh taught them how to make me coffee yes i did yes i did and i figured it was about time and then after that we're sitting there sitting in class and my son's teacher says okay it's time for math get your ruler out gets his ruler out and she says i have an assignment for you now that you're learning about measurement i need you to walk around your house and i need to start measuring some things so on facebook i post what happened to me after that moment so this is literally from my facebook online schooling day one my son is learning about using a ruler and measurement he was told to walk around the house and measure different items the first item he chose to measure i happen to be standing right next to him go ahead [Music] my rear end [Laughter] so how's your day going it happened it's true and it was a moment ladies it was a moment and i had some friends ask me you know are you kidding did you really let your son do that what in the world and i said i did because hashtag mom life okay this is what moms do we lay down our pride sometimes and we allow really awkward and weird things to happen on behalf of our children because we love them any of you that are aunties or grandmas or love kids in your life you know that right so it's what we do and i wanted him to know the truth i wanted him to know not the truth about me that i didn't want to know but i wanted him to know how to measure and how to use you know and i wanted him to know how to how to do this schooling thing and that's what we all do that's what we all want we all want the truth so if you will grant me the grace to lead this into our conference if you haven't noticed or you haven't seen the the um title of this conference is be ready discerning truth in a progressive culture and why was that title chosen so be ready comes from verses like ii timothy 4 2 and titus 3 1. um and then the discerning truth part comes from verses like the following so colossians two one b through four that in their hearts may be encouraged that their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of god's mercy which is christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge i say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments so as a quick summary in christ we have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and we can trust in him and trust in that truth when we're deluded quote unquote by people challenging us in our faith or by us being confronted by things online or whatever it is we know that in christ we have the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and the reason why we asked alisa to come here was not because there's some kind of you know celebrity thing attached to her not because we were looking for the latest influencer who has the perfect filters and you know teaches us things like you're enough and you know you just need to find your truth you know we oh we're all inundated with that all the time and instead the reason why we asked alisa was because of her incredible story of what god has done in her life how he took a situation that happened to her in church by from someone that she trusted who challenged her and challenged the faith that she had for almost her whole life this strong foundation that she had she thought she knew what she believed and why and through these questions she realized she didn't have the answers and then that led to do i really know my faith do i really know what's true and by god's grace instead of that taking elisa to go and walk away from the faith or to deconstruct as the new thing is by god's grace she fought and she said if i'm going to know i want to know the truth i'm going to know the truth whether this i find out that the truth is that all of this that i've believed is a lie or i'm going to find out the truth and know that we can know that there is a faith that we stand strong on that's based on not just faith it's also based on history and truth and logic and you know we can mentally grasp it there's more to it than just that and so we're so thankful to have her here because we know that through what this is called which at the time when it happened to her she didn't know it's called progressive christianity and it is infiltrating our churches ladies it is infiltrating all of our social media and it is pushing against the truth and so through our pastors and elders and through our leadership team that's why we asked elisa to come and that's our hope is that through what she has to teach us because she's gone before us through this that we will be ready we will be ready to stand and discern the truth in this crazy crazy progressive culture so let's welcome elisa [Applause] hi thank you so much it's so great to be here i'm you know it's really great to be anywhere though isn't it if we're all just honest about it so how many of you non-homeschool moms had to end up doing some homeschooling either last year or part of this year okay thank you for your sacrifice i also had to do a little bit of homeschooling as she mentioned and i learned about myself i'm not a good homeschool mom at all it is not my jam i wish it was i wish i was good at it but you know where first day my son he's in he was in first grade last year you know we're supposed to do our math sheets and we're supposed to do our language sheets and then we're supposed to do this other things and within 10 minutes we had an eyeballs drawn on his chin hanging him upside down the bed and making a video of a song he wrote about an egg so we just called that you know creative arts and called it a day but i also think you know you taught them to make coffee i think teaching them to unload the dishwasher is valid homeschool as well so we got through it we got through it but it's so great to be with you i was that kid now i know you all know a kid like me when i was in youth group when i was in christian school i was the kid that you would never have worried about i was the kid that you would never think would doubt her faith i have loved jesus as far back as i can remember i actually don't remember a time in my life when i wasn't aware of god and of jesus i fell in love with the bible at a very young age by the age of 12 i had read through the entire bible except for if i'm honest a few chapters of numbers because numbers and you know remember the homeschool thing and try to do math end up making a movie so you know but i loved the bible i knew deep in my bones that the bible was god's word i knew that i could live my life by that book and to the best of my ability that's what i did my whole life i had parents who modeled a very genuine very real faith for me my parents were christians who regularly studied the bible with us we prayed together as a family we weren't just sunday christians and to add to that my parents it was very important to them to expose us to people who didn't have all the things that we had and so my mom was on staff at the fred jordan mission in los angeles where i grew up and we would regularly go down with her on the weekends and work the soup lines and watch her walk down skid row loving on prostitutes making sure they were okay seeing if they needed anything so the reason i say that is because the christianity that was given to me was not um negative i had a pretty good experience with christianity i know that's not the story we hear a lot but i did and i think that because of that i never doubted my faith i never had a reason to doubt it i didn't have a reason to want it to not be true and so the intellectual side of my faith other than studying the bible was untested i didn't know that at the time and i wouldn't find that out until i was an adult but i i want to take a minute and tell you about the family that raised me so this is um a picture of my dad now my dad is second to from the right there the the cute little hippie guy there with the brown hair and the long beard so my dad went through eastern uh mysticism buddhism lsd timothy leary trips hippie this and that to search for god he wanted to find god and he didn't find god in any of those places and i love that we've got some calvary chapel people watching because it wasn't until he stepped foot in a little country church in southern california and heard the gospel for the first time and he said it was the simplicity of the gospel he he looked at all these other things that he had been trying and he realized it's all works i'll never be good enough only the gurus reached nirvana where does that leave me and he heard the gospel and the holy spirit convicted him of his sins and he repented and believed in jesus and gave us his kids this really genuine christianity now he was also in one of the first christian rock bands anybody remembered the band love song from the jesus movement back in the 60s so they traveled all over uh the country singing their jesus songs they even sang it a billy graham crusade now this is is this still advancing this is not advancing anymore uh-oh i don't want you to have to stare at jay's shorts the whole time so do we have a is it oh did we do it oh there's one okay so and where should i point this maybe that's there we go so they played all over the country really even all over the world and so that's me i'm like there on that airplane as a little girl i grew up on planes trains and automobiles and this is me somewhere in sweden oh boy we may have to figure this out here here okay so that's me in the little red jumpsuit i was that kid i loved jesus with all my heart and i never doubted my faith now i kind of followed in my dad's footsteps when i was a part of the christian music group zoe girl anybody remember zoey girl okay so i spent the better part of a decade doing very much the same thing my dad did traveling around the country trying to encourage young girls in their faith to stand strong especially on their public school campuses and i just had a great experience just like my dad did now i'm a little bit of a walking cliche sorry i can't get these to move uh in that okay so this is a picture of me so right behind me you see our drummer i'm a walking cliche i married our drummer and together we had this little thing this is my daughter dylan oh i know isn't she cute and i always wanted to be a mom so when she came into my life it was just absolutely wonderful i just that was my biggest dream come true was to become a mom she's sweet and uh so then her life kind of took a turn when this little guy came along so this is aiden he kind of messed up her perfect world i'm sorry i cannot get these to move is there another clicker maybe we could try switching out there it is so that's my buddy that's my aiden he's uh he's just a big walking mess we love him but my little girl takes really good care of him but what a lot of people probably wouldn't have known if they knew me at that time was that right about the time that this photograph was taken i was in the middle of a really serious faith crisis uh a deconstruction really i know have you all heard that word deconstruction that's we're seeing it in our social media news feeds it's a big fancy word for basically falling away from the faith only it's given a positive spin and it becomes a virtue and something to seek after and something to actually become a part of your spiritual journey of course i didn't know what was happening to me at the time i had never heard that word but i after zoe girl had come off the road and around this time my husband and i were attending a local church in middle tennessee where we live i'm sure i'm gonna aim right there and the pastor invited me to be a part of a small study and discussion type group and he said this is this group will be kind of like going to seminary so if you stay in this class for four years you'll come out on the other side knowing what people know when they go to seminary now for me that sounded really exciting i was in a phase of my life where i wanted to dig deeper into my faith i had spent all this time on the road i was kind of burned out i was like man i got my bible and my notebook and i showed up at that first class so excited to dig into the intellectual side of my faith but what i didn't know when i went to the class was that the pastor was also in his own process of deconstruction and questioning and so virtually everything i'd ever believed about god and jesus and the bible it was questioned the bible the reliability of the bible do we have an accurate copy of what they originally wrote do the people who wrote the gospels are they the ones we actually think wrote them or did somebody else write them much later can we trust the manuscripts did they tell the truth did they make it all up these were questions that were being asked in the class although the information being given was from a skeptical nature so all this evidence was brought against the bible it's not reliable you can't trust it we don't have an accurate copy it's got hundreds of thousands of mistakes in it and this really threw me for a loop because i based my whole life on the bible questions about science can science and faith work together has science disproved god is the bible archaic because we know more from science history what can we even know about history all of these things were brought into question which really brought my entire christian faith into question and this threw me into a dark night of doubt that i did not see coming see when i was in the class i would try to argue with the pastor i would try to kind of debate with him of course i didn't know very much and i'd go home and i'd study the question we asked that week and i'd i'd study all week and i'd come back the next week but it already moved on to the next question nobody was really interested in the answer from the class and that's when i realized it didn't seem like people were asking questions in order to find answers they were asking questions to avoid landing on answers so that they could find the next question i remember one class they were talking about people like us the the 80 percent they called them and they said why do you think that they all believe all these old ideas still and somebody said well it's fear and somebody else said well they're just so afraid of asking questions and i remember in that moment thinking why are you so afraid of answers because that seemed to be what was going on in the class and so everything i'd ever believed about god and jesus in the bible was sort of put on this intellectual chopping block and picked apart and deconstructed and like i said i would try to argue with him i would try to debate but i just wasn't very good at it and so it really wasn't until my husband and i left the church and we left the class that all of those doubts that the pastor planted began to take root in my own heart and they began to grow and fester and i found myself isolated you know when you have really young kids and a new baby you find yourself in this kind of phase of life where you're not really around a lot of other people and now we were away from any kind of church community and my own deconstruction process began to occur i didn't want it to happen i wanted christianity to be true i thought the gospel was beautiful but i had become intellectually persuaded that it wasn't true and so i was living in this sort of cognitive dissonance where my my heart knew that it was true but my intellect had been persuaded that it wasn't and i remember just rocking i had many nights in my little girl's room rocking her in the rocking chair and just singing hymns into this dark void it's like the lights were off in the room so it was dark but there was this sort of spiritual darkness as well it was thick it was like almost tangible the darkness this this void of wondering if this god that i've believed in and loved my whole life isn't actually there that was the most terrifying thought and i would sing hymns into the darkness sort of by faith i remember one night just rocking her and just singing before the throng of god above i have a strong and perfect plea [Music] a great high priest whose name is love whoever lives and pleads for me my name is graven on his hands my name is written on his heart i know that a while in heaven he stands no tongue can bid me thinks the part and i would just sing that by faith because i knew that if that wasn't true i was doomed because i knew that i was a sinner and i knew that if jesus hadn't died on the cross for my sins if he hadn't been raised from the dead then i was doomed this was much deeper for me than just sort of discarding some of the beliefs that i grew up with and i remember one night i cried out to god and i said god if you exist if you're out there i feel like i've been plunged into a stormy ocean of doubt where these huge waves are just crashing over my head and if you're real if you exist then you have got to send me a lifeboat because at the time i didn't know one christian who could answer some of the claims and questions that this pastor had brought up in class not even my parents i didn't know any pastors who could answer these specific questions i thought this pastor had thought of all these questions i honestly did i thought wow this guy's like really brilliant that he's come up with all this stuff i didn't realize of course these questions have been debated for 2 000 years and i remember even my mom many years later coming to me and saying i'm so sorry i feel like we didn't equip you in that arena and and i said mom who could have foreseen the internet and this map who would have thought that you would have to train young christian kids to know philosophically even why they believe at least some kind of a god would have to exist and if he did how would he communicate his message to the world and how would we know that and to build a case from there who would have who would have known that when you're a bunch of hippies searching for god and you hear the gospel and it answers your questions we live in such a different culture now don't we people aren't searching for god they're searching for ways to get away from god now it's a much different culture but that's where i found myself and so one day i remember i was in my car and i was flipping the radio and this voice came on and it was a man answering questions on a college campus and these were skeptical questions from college students and what really surprised me is that all of the questions the college students were asking were almost exactly the same questions the pastor had brought up in class like in order like even in the right order and i had never heard someone engage with these questions so calmly uh like it was the fifty thousand thousandth time they'd heard the questions and so i discovered apologetics and that's what this this uh guy was was talking about he was giving apologetics which by the way doesn't mean you're apologizing for your faith or you're saying you're sorry for anything for being a christian apologetics is really simple and i know sometimes we bristle at that word because it's gotten a bad rap sometimes even rightfully so but we get these images of these kind of stuffy debaters or these really high-level intellects kind of staring down their noses at the common man all the things they don't know and sometimes there are people who do that but really apologetics is just giving an answer for for what you believe it's giving a reason for what you believe and so if you've ever given a reason for what you believe as a christian you've already done apologetics so you're already an apologist how about that so why don't we just like try to be the best one we can be right and so i discovered this wide world of apologetics i did not know there were so many people out there that were answering these questions and so i went on a journey because here is one thing that i noticed in my class in my small class that i was in as far as i know today i'm the only person that went through that class that came out on the other side with their faith intact and so all of my friends that i was in class with deconstructed either into progressive christianity which is essentially if you take the theological liberalism of the late 1800s early 1900s and you marry that with postmodern relativism which we're going to talk a little bit about tomorrow and that's just a fancy word that can be summed up with the phrase what's true for you is true for you and what's true for me is true for me right we've all heard some kind of sentiment like that that's essentially what post-modernism is and we're going to get more into what relativism is tomorrow but if you take those two things you marry them together and you just drop them into the middle of the evangelical church kind of like this sleeping giant for years and years progressive christians have been deconstructing finding each other online sort of growing as a movement continuing to influence their evangelical churches and that's why i get emails today where people are saying it's it's hard to find a church that's not influenced by progressive christianity at least a little bit you all are so blessed and i have been blessed by the way to get to travel around and and encounter churches i want to say just like this one i mean it's so similar god is doing something in the church isn't he and it's very exciting i get to see it as i travel and yeah i just want you all to know as a side note you're not alone there i've been to churches in tucson in northern california in dallas that have a kindred spirit going on right now god is doing something so be encouraged with that but when i watched my friends deconstruct into progressive christianity or even agnosticism or atheism there was one thing that really stood out to me i didn't know one who rejected the kind of christianity i grew up with they all had some kind of a really bad experience with the churches that they grew up in there was a guy in my class who his wife was chronically ill and i guess they they went to a kind of church that just really emphasized healing they had prayer chains going on throughout the church to pray for her healing and and uh just prayer chain after prayer chain all this prayer and people saying she's gonna be healed god's gonna heal her and they prayed and they prayed and they prayed and god never healed her in fact he said the straw that broke the camel's back is they were on their way to a doctor's appointment and she fell out of her wheelchair and broke her leg on top of all of it and he said that's when i knew god doesn't answer prayers he's not he's not listening there was someone else who had visited a buddhist buddhist temple in thailand and he said i can't believe in a god who wouldn't accept the sincere worship of these monks that i watched out of utter devotion and honor i can't believe in a god that wouldn't receive that worship others grew up in hyper fundamentalist legalistic environments uh things where i know people who were told that if they wore shorts they were going to go to hell i know someone who was told that if they were in a movie theater when the rapture happened they weren't going to go you know i mean and i i this is a new one to me but i learned this just recently that that somebody was told they couldn't eat lucky charm cereal because it's demonic or something so i mean people grew up in these really hyper legalistic situations then they go out and they meet some other christians and they're like well i met a presbyterian who was loved jesus and you know i think those people didn't really know what was going on so so the key theme here is that i was watching people walk away from christianity not because they were rejecting the real thing but because they were rejecting some sort of caricature they grew up with and so i had a choice to make i thought okay so i had a pretty good experience but maybe the christianity i grew up with even though it was a good positive experience maybe that wasn't the real thing and so i went on a quest i went on a journey that if i'm going to walk away from christianity if i'm going to come to the conclusion that it's not true i want to know what the real thing is and i have to be ready to face the idea that maybe what i grew up with wasn't the real thing and i have to search for the truth and so i went back to the earliest sources that i could find i went back to the church fathers the apostles the people who walked with jesus the people who knew him and jesus himself and i started to trace their beliefs through church history and i wanted to make sure that if i came to conclusion christianity wasn't true that i was rejecting the real thing and not some kind of caricature that maybe i was given and so it i was nervous i remember going back to read some church fathers thinking what am i going to find like is this because i was told in my progressive christian setting this church by the way that i was at the class went on to identify itself as a progressive christian community i was told that jesus didn't die on the cross for my sins that the idea that the father would require the blood sacrifice of his only son well that's child sacrifice that's cosmic child abuse and i was told that that that would make god into this moral monster who could worship that god and i thought wow if i go back to the beginning am i going to find that jesus died on the cross for my sins what am i going to find and i was delighted to discover basically that there are and what we're going to talk through tonight is eight truths that christians must believe now i want to be really careful how i word this so there are a lot of beliefs that people would consider to be essential right for christianity and within the category of essential there's this category of what we have to believe to in order to be christians right what what are these beliefs so i follow a scholar named norm geisler who studied all the creeds he studied all the scripture and church history to discover what is it that you must believe to meaningfully call yourself a christian so when i first started researching this i googled what are the essential beliefs of christianity and the first like five articles that came up all had different lists they had different numbers of beliefs in their list they all had different beliefs in their lists and i thought wow this is going to be tough but i went through and i i discovered what i hope to share with you tonight now this might seem kind of rudimentary but it's really not because in the realm of progressive christianity every single one of these beliefs in one way or another is really under attack and we're going to get into that in just a moment but i want to go back and tell you a little bit more about my kids so my daughter dylan she's actually here with me i let her stay in the back because she's heard this talk so many times she's just like big eye roll but she is my creative right so she's she's definitely gonna be the one if i have a kid that ends up with like full-sleeved hats it's gonna be her because she's so creative and so uh she's very nurturing she loves to take care of her little brother she loves to scuba dive that's her uncle chris taking her scuba diving and she loves roller coasters sorry guys she she loves disneyland at least she thought she loved disneyland until she actually went on a roller coaster and then she discovered she doesn't like the roller coaster so much and then there's my son aiden now i mentioned that when he came along he sort of threw a in her whole world he loves to get dirty right he loves it now before you call child services that's lipstick but he had fun with it and in case i haven't mentioned it he really loves to get dirty and i mean really likes to get dirty he loves to grow his curly hair out super big like his hero bob ross and ever since he was very little he always falls asleep in the weirdest places this is my favorite right there totally asleep love that guy so those are kind of some of the things they like individually but there are some things they like collectively as well so they love to do jiu-jitsu they both take jiu-jitsu lessons there they are at their jujitsu and they love legos how many people love to do legos oh my gosh i love doing legos with my kids i love building the you know just putting that first block down on the pad i love building cool structures and spaceships whatever it is the kids want to build i love getting the manual out and going through it one by one and okay so how many of you know when you build you take all the time and energy to build a beautiful lego set and it breaks what do you do you have you have a choice to make right do you get out the manual and go back as many steps as it takes and start building it again which is the hard way to go or do you just break it apart and throw all the pieces into what i like to call the lego bin of doom right so this is our actual lego bin of doom you can see that there's like some pieces of bb-8 and there's a broken police station and so one time dylan and i put together a lego set of this dragon she wanted this dragon set so bad so we finally got it to for her for her birthday now i couldn't find an exact picture of the one we put together but this one's pretty close but the one we built was a lot more complicated and complex it had a lot more moving pieces and so we built this set together it took like three days and she put it up on her dresser and went to school and when she came home it was sort of on the floor broken into a lot of pieces it kind of looked like it had been run over by a car or something to this day we're not sure what happened we don't know if it was the dog or some magical elves or maybe the little brother we don't know we won't blame but we had a choice to make right so we got out the box top and i said dylan do you want to just break this up and use it for spare parts or do we want to go back and build this now because we had worked on this together and it really meant something to her she decided that we want to go back get the manual out and start building this thing from scratch and so we went all the way back and did you know what we found out the reason it broke so easily is that although it looked right on the outside as we went back to the beginning we realized that there were some really key fundamental blocks that we had in wrong so the internal structure was weakened so even though the outside looked the same on the inside it was weak and so it just took just one little fall off of the dresser and it broke apart and i started to think well that's kind of like christianity right we have to have those fundamental core blocks in the right place and then you know if we get a few pieces wrong on the outside i'm sure all of us have some wrong pieces on the outside or maybe you might decorate it differently on the outside of the structure if we have those core fundamental pieces in place correctly then our christianity the structure of our christianity will stand when we encounter a bout of suffering or something that really rocks our world or throws us for a loop or shakes our tree so to speak so those core fundamental pieces what are those so that this is brings us to this discussion of what are the essentials of christianity now this is so important for us right now i know if you've been a christian your whole life you might be thinking this is like basic stuff it's really not because every one of these things is what's under fire people say they say oh progressive christianity it's just a group of christians who are changing their mind on some social issues or maybe they're just embracing a little more messiness in their authentic lives you know no progressive christianity denies the core essentials of of the gospel on every level and that's why we need to know what those things are because these are the key foundational blocks that will keep our faith strong and so of course to talk about the essentials of christianity we have to talk about my grandma's peach cobbler right so when i was in eighth grade i went to my grandma's house to spend the night with her and when you have three other sisters that's kind of a big deal when you get to go spend the night with grandma and so she said what do you want to do and i said well nana we called her nana i said i want to learn how to make your peach cobbler recipe and so i expected her to turn to her little drawer with the crocheted pot holders and the little recipe cards remember recipe cards like before the world got complicated but she didn't do that she just said oh it's easy it's my cup a cup of cuppa recipe she said i don't even have to write it down it's she said like this she said it's a cup of flour and a cup of sugar and a cup of canned peaches with the juice and of course she would also put like an entire stick of butter patted on the top too to make this peach cobbler now the reason that it was so easy for her to recite the the uh the recipe is because it was simple and it was really easy to remember and so that is kind of how christian creeds work so if we go back to the earliest christians what did they think christianity was what did paul think christianity was what did jesus think christianity was did they think it's just you living your truth and embracing the love of the divine in your daily life or were there key essential beliefs that they all shared so in the first century jewish believers jewish rabbis would pass on creeds to their students and they'd give little hints in the text in fact how many of you know that your new testament actually contains dozens of creeds that pre-date the new testament material itself and so to explain how that works i'm going to talk to you about what is arguably the earliest creed in christianity and that's first corinthians 15. and this creed that paul recites for us is in first corinthians 15 verses 3 through 5. now scholars have ways of identifying some of the creeds not all creeds are set up this way but when a jewish teacher says something like i am passing on to you what was handed down to me that's sort of a clue there that you're about to read a creed now here's the cool thing i discovered as i was researching these early and core beliefs of christianity this creed was circulating among christians within about three years of jesus death and resurrection and do you know who actually was the first scholars to come up with that date are all the liberal atheists and agnostic scholars so this isn't ju i didn't just go find you know some you know answers in genesis to find you know my my my creed date this is like the most skeptical atheist scholars date this creed some even within several months of jesus death and resurrection and so we know that this is what summed up christianity in fact famously skeptical atheist scholar bart airman says this creed was christianity in a nutshell bart airman himself this skeptical atheist scholar says paul didn't invent the gospel like some people say he said he was reciting a creed this this is what paul was giving us in first corinthians so first corinthians is written somewhere in the mid 50s but this creed comes from within about three years of jesus death and resurrection it's kind of like that peach cobbler recipe think of it this way if i go spend the night at my grandma's house in 1988 and she recites this recipe to me and i remember it cup a cup of cuppa i bet you all remember it too cup of sugar cup of flour cup of canned peaches with the juice and then you can put butter on top of it and it's really good especially with ice cream best be vanilla ice cream because that's like the best so if i remembered that and recited that my whole life but say you know 20 30 years later i decided to make a cookbook and let's say i make the cookbook in 2021 and i include the recipe that my grandma recited to me in 1988 the recipe is dated to 1988 although it will be first written down in the cookbook in 2021 does that make sense that's kind of how these creeds work so i want us to take a look at this creed because i cannot believe how robust this creed is for just within three years of jesus death let's take a look at this together so paul says for i delivered to you as of first importance everybody say first importance okay that's a clue right there that some beliefs are more important than others paul says these beliefs are of utmost importance and he says i deliver to you what i also received remember that's kind of that jewish slang for i'm about to give you a creed all right all that's set up are you ready for the creed here it is that christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to cephas then to the 12 and then of course paul goes on and adds 500 eyewitnesses who would have all most at least been alive when he wrote this so if it weren't true you would think there would be some people especially when you name 500 people that would say hey wait a second that's not true but no that that didn't happen so he lists 500 eyewitnesses and then he ends with himself as an eyewitness now let's look at what's in this creed remember i told you the progressive christian view of the cross which is that the idea that jesus died for your sins well first of all that makes you a sinner which is not acceptable in progressive christianity they don't believe that your sin separates you from god or that you have a sin nature they don't believe largely speaking in the doctrine of original sin that we have this sin nature that was passed down to us we're going to talk more about that tomorrow but it says here christ died not just died but for our sins there's a divine purpose for his death he wasn't just crucified for speaking power you know truth to power he wasn't just crucified by an angry mob who was threatened by him he died for our sins this is laying the seed bed for a doctrine called substitutionary atonement that would even later be refined into penal substitutionary atonement which essentially just lets us know that christ died in our place he paid the price for our sin he took the punishment that we deserved upon himself so that we wouldn't have to right here the earliest christians this is what they believed that christ died for our sins now notice the next part in accordance with the scriptures so the next time somebody says to you hey didn't you know the earliest christians didn't have a bible you can direct them to this creed oh they had a bible they didn't have the new testament yet but they had the old testament scriptures and their beliefs were based on the prophecies about jesus in the old testament scriptures so what does the old testament ask yourself this what does the old testament scriptures teach about the reason the messiah would die well if you haven't already i suggest you go home tonight and read isaiah 53. it says it was the will of the lord to crush him the lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all go read it it's it's incredible it talks about what the messiah would accomplish on the cross jesus himself in the upper room the night before he was betrayed you know we all remember the part about him passing the bread and the wine this is my blood and my body but we forget that in that same chapter later on he says he quotes isaiah 53 and he says this scripture must be fulfilled in me for it's about me so it's cleared me that that's what jesus thought he was doing when he died it was for our sins in some kind of meaningful sense of course you have the old testament sacrificial system through which this was understood so already just these first two lines is so robust when it comes to the cross and the atonement and how they relied on a high view of the old testament scriptures but let's go on that he was buried well why is that in there what does that matter that's evidence that's the proof that he was really dead jesus died according to the scriptures and then the evidence he was buried you don't bury alive people right and that he was raised on the third day so we have the physical resurrection of jesus as a part of the most important beliefs of the early christians again so the next time someone says oh do you know jesus resurrection doesn't have to be physical to be meaningful it didn't have to actually happen in order for us to you know find some kind of moral meaning in the story of it we can learn from the story but it doesn't have to have actually happened well that's not what the early christians believed and then notice again in accordance with the scripture you have like this scripture sandwich here the earliest christians got all of their beliefs from the bible this was something that was so important then you have more evidence so you see this pattern happen with this creed you have a belief you have the scripture backing and the evidence then another belief the scripture backing and then evidence isn't that exciting i love this creed and so this was christianity in a nutshell according even to that skeptical scholar bart airman so when it comes to the essential beliefs of christianity i would say it can't be any it's more than this but it can't be any less than this it can't be any less than this this is bare bones okay but we're going to get into some more let's look at a couple other creeds from our new testament this is so fun i love looking at this stuff so that had to do with the atonement the resurrection jesus death and and what that meant but there are creeds in that new testament scripture that have to do with the deity of jesus you know have you ever heard the the skeptical claim that christians really didn't believe jesus was god in the beginning like that developed much later like that was more of a legendary belief that that came later well we have creeds within our new testament to tell us that's not true romans 1 34 says this okay maybe a sound effect will work there we go okay so romans 1 34 and actually i think i might have fixed this it's i think it's romans 1 3 through 4. i was at a a big bible believing church and i had like five people come up to me like your scripture was wrong and i was like i love that i love when somebody finds wrong story i gotta fix that um but it says concerning his son who is descended from david according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of god in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead jesus christ our lord so when he's declared to be the son of god in power this is a claim to deity this is a claim to deity let's go on and look at a couple others here again about the deity of jesus we have john 5 18. this is why the jews were seeking all the more to kill him because not only was he breaking the sabbath but he was even calling god his own father making himself equal with god did you know jesus claimed to be god now us with our modern american understanding we might not realize what he was doing but there was a scene where the pharisees were kind of trying to trap him and they said who who are you and he said before abraham was i am that was a reference to the i am of the old testament to yahweh jesus is saying yeah that god that was in that bush that's me i'm god in fact they understood that and picked up stones to stone him because that's blasphemy according to their rules right so jesus did claim to be god and we know this from early scriptures we also know this from history outside of the new testament so within about 150 years of jesus life we have about 10 non-christian historical sources that mention jesus as a historical person and there's actually lots of facts we can learn about jesus even if we never opened our bibles but here's what uh one of them said row okay they meaning the christians were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to christ as to a god now this was plenty of the younger who was a lawyer in the roman empire he was writing to i believe it was trajan the emperor and he was reporting he was kind of tattletailing on all the christians and what they were doing he says they're worshiping this guy like like he's a god so this idea that this was a much later legendary development just doesn't hold water when we really look at the facts and so let's get into what these uh eight sort of beliefs are so essential beliefs are going to be sort of categorized into two different categories now i've been told that this is too complicated but i believe in you guys i think you can handle this i went round and round with somebody who was helping me with this talk and they're like no you got to just do the eight things but i'm like but you can't because there's these other essential beliefs you have to talk about but i know that we can understand this so i told you i follow a scholar named norm geisler on this and i really like the way he sets this up and he sets it up like this there are eight things that christians must believe but there are other beliefs that are essential to salvation right and that's really what a belief an essential belief is is whether it's going to affect your salvation because if it's something we can argue about in heaven then it's not a essential belief doesn't mean it's not important it just means it's not essential for salvation so within the category of what's essential for salvation there are beliefs you must believe and then there are doctrines that must be true in order for your salvation to be possible so we're going to call these logically necessary beliefs so what that means is there are things you have to believe there are things you might be unaware of when you get saved but you wouldn't deny those things as you grow in your faith does that make sense like the thief on the cross probably had no concept of the trinity but had he survived he would have studied he would have grown in the grace and knowledge of jesus he would have affirmed the trinity right he probably may not even been aware of the virgin birth but he would have not denied that and still been a christian but there would be things that are all implicit even the thief on the cross with these eight beliefs we're going to talk about so what we must believe these are things we must believe either explicitly or implicitly i'm not saying you have to have a doctoral degree in these particular beliefs but you'd have to sort of have a grasp of these things it's more simple than you think number one that i am a sinner right if you don't know you're a sinner then you don't know you need a savior and the whole thing doesn't even get off the ground this is a doctrine that theologians refer to as the depravity of man and people have different views of what the depravity of man means the best way i understand it is it doesn't mean that you're worthless because you're created in the image and likeness of god which gives you and everyone else inherent dignity and worth but because of sin we've marred that image right and so it means that we have a propensity to do wrong and we're going to talk more about this tomorrow too every mom knows this is true you don't have to teach a kid to lie they just do it naturally but you have to teach them to tell the truth that's the hard one right so that's the sin nature right we have this the depravity of man means that i there's nothing i can do to gain knowledge of god in myself i'm a sinner and i have a propensity and a proclivity to do evil and i think if we're all honest with ourselves we would say yeah that's true of me it's true of me i promise number two there is one god so this would be the doctrine of monotheism right now again you don't have to have a doctoral degree in this but you would have to know that if you're a sinner and you're crying out to god to save you you're not crying out to a pantheon of gods like in the first century roman empire you don't you're not it's not polytheism there's not many gods there's one god right you'd have to implicitly at least understand that you'd have to at least implicitly understand that christ is god he's not just a glorified human or a super evolved human who grabbed hold of some kind of christ consciousness to set an example of something that you can do as well which by the way is a big teaching in the progressive christian church that christ was or jesus was a model or exemplar of a highly evolved man who grabbed hold of this christ consciousness but you can too you just have to follow in the footsteps of jesus right so you'd have to at least understand that christ is god so the deity of jesus the fourth one would be that christ is man right so this is the humanity of jesus jesus wasn't 50 god and 50 human he's fully god and fully human he has a dual nature this is hard for us to understand because we are we have one nature but jesus had two natures and and those are unified in jesus so he's fully god and fully man again don't have to have a doctorate but you'd have to have some sort of an idea of this the fifth one that christ died for my sins this is so important and this is the one that i think is under attack more than anything else in my engagement with progressive christians they will every one of them to i haven't found one progressive christian who will say no i totally believe that jesus died on the cross as my substitute he took the punishment for my sin upon himself he made the payment for my sin they deny that outright they say that turns god into a moral monster but this is a core essential belief of christianity you take this one away and it's all for nothing the sixth belief is that i'm saved by grace this is such a big one isn't it because so many false gospels that crop up throughout history are works-based gospels including progressive christianity by the way because if you think about it if you deny the atonement if you deny the resurrection if you deny that we're sinners in need of a savior well what becomes your unifying factor right it becomes works you advocate for the right causes you dismantle the right systems of power right you you do acts of uh works and social justice and all of these things but it becomes a works-based gospel and that doesn't mean christians shouldn't do good things in the world i was raised by parents who did that but that's not what saves you you can't earn it so it's grace it's unmerited favor it's undeserved salvation there's nothing you can do to earn it and for those of us who know we're sinners this is actually like the best news ever right because it's like thank you god i know there's nothing i can do to earn it the necessity of grace number seven that christ rose from the dead this is a core essential belief and we're going to get more into this tomorrow about the importance of this one number eight i must put my trust in this so this is this is probably one of the most misunderstood ones i think the necessity of faith now think about this you can believe one through seven and still not be a christian you can believe that jesus died on the cross for your sins you could believe you're a sinner you can believe he was raised physically from the dead the demons believe all of that the bible says so what is this eighth thing what does this mean it's not just believing that these things are true it's not checking intellectual boxes this is putting active trust in the word faith in scripture has to do with trust it's an active trust and so i like to think of it this way i i flew on an airplane to get here today and i can believe that the airplane will get me to phoenix arizona from nashville tennessee but i haven't put active trust in that belief until i put my booty on the plane right until i actually get in that plane i haven't really put active trust in that belief and so the necessity of faith is so important because we are trusting in jesus for our salvation as our savior it's not just an intellectual assent it's not just saying okay i believe all these things are true it's that i'm trusting in jesus to save me so this leaves us with this other category what must logically be true we haven't even talked about the trinity or the virgin birth so let's let's talk about the virgin birth for example you could actually become saved and not be aware maybe that jesus was born of a virgin oh come on now okay double handed there you go so the virgin birth is is an example of this this is why it's logically necessary so remember those two beliefs that god is both human uh that jesus is both god and human fully god fully human well the mechanism by which god made that happen was the virgin birth so if jesus had a human father then he would be fully human but the bible says the holy spirit conceived in mary's womb so you have this this sort of coming together and so this is why these beliefs are so important because they're key it has to be necessary for god to be fully i mean jesus to be fully god and fully man does that kind of make sense so there are beliefs in that category but i wanted to focus on the ones we have to believe because these are all the ones that are under attack especially from people who call themselves christians well i haven't even talked about the bible yet too so what about the bible do you have to believe the bible is inerrant in order to be a christian now christians disagree on this i'll be honest about that like some will say you absolutely do have to believe that some will say no i follow the chicago statement of inerrancy on this i think there were some great godly men that put that together and what they will tell you is that believing that the bible is inerrant that means without error is not necessary for salvation but it's incredibly dangerous to not believe that because that's where we get all of this other stuff if the bible has errors in it well then how can we trust that any of this other stuff is even true but can you lead someone to salvation without getting to inerrancy i believe you can so that kind of makes sense and we're going to talk a little bit more about the bible tomorrow but i want to come back to my daughter here because i kind of started with her and ended with her now how many of you just from the talk that we've had recognize that's not my daughter a couple a couple you saw okay couple people so this isn't my daughter now the reason i bring this up see this is my daughter oh man okay this is my daughter and so this is the point i want to drive home with all of these false gospels floating around we have progressive christianity we have the new apostolic reformation we have so many different sort of false gospels that that can it's just like a buffet a smorgasbord of ideas you can still call yourself a christian and have x y or z and i think christians can sometimes feel overwhelmed by this they can think well gosh there's so many different false gospels how do i know and i do i need to study progressive christianity do i need to do all this i want to encourage you they just need to know the real thing see i know that that other little girl that picture was not my daughter because i know the real thing if i would have put that other picture up there isn't one member of my family that would have been fooled for a second in fact they'd be confused why do you have that little girl up there that's not dylan even though they have the same you know dark curly hair and peaches and cream complexion and little rosy lips they look very similar but they're not the same person but you don't have to study the counterfeit to know that this is my daughter you just have to know my daughter and that's like it is with the gospel just know the real thing because christianity is based on truth right it's not like ice cream you don't just pick a flavor and say this is what i'm going to believe because i prefer this flavor of christianity or i prefer this flavor of christianity there is real christianity and there is false christianity now we all have some error in our beliefs we all do we all get some things wrong but those core fundamental pieces those are not up for grabs and the people who get to tell us what christianity is is jesus and the people that were closest with him the people that walked with him and so tomorrow we're going to be talking about some cultural lies and she mentioned them you know live your truth authenticity is what it's all about you're the boss of you you know you should put yourself first you're perfect just as you are we see these on twitter we see them all over the place but they're rooted in philosophies and anti-biblical ideas that go against the gospel even though they sound really really good so we're going to dig into some of those tomorrow and i hope to have a great q and a with you all because that's my favorite i love doing q a and if i don't know the answers to something i can probably point you to a resource where you can find the answers but thank you so much and i will i see you guys tomorrow all [Applause] right wow wow wow amazing okay we are going to let you go home but i just have a couple things um tomorrow check-in is from 8 to 8 30. we are going to do the same thing that we did tonight which is just have the name tags out which i heard were weren't always really easy to peel off but we'll learn that for next time but that's what we'll do again tomorrow again we want to do that because first of all you probably won't keep the one from tonight and it's just helpful for security so that they know who's here and who's who's supposed to be here um and then we are pleading without trying to be tacky for you to please carpool tomorrow i believe we had five extra open spaces tonight so if there's any way if you can meet at the shopping center down the street with a couple ladies and hop in one car whatever we'd we it would be very helpful but um that's our our tacky plea to you um light refreshments will be offered during the break tomorrow and we'll have beverages throughout the day available for you and then again book table outside if you'd like to try and have a moment with alisa and get those books for 15 and that is it so thank you so much let me pray for us um and then we'll go on our way god you are so great you are um just so kind to us to give us your word to give us you to allow us to know you and to allow us to um to hear from an incredible speaker like elisa who's gone through the trenches who's done the work and to whom you have just revealed so much about your word and so thank you that she has come here to um to teach us and to help us to grow also i pray for each woman here that you would please take them get them home safely and allow us all to come back tomorrow and just continue to learn and continue to grow thank you god so much for all that you give us in all your grace and mercy and your name amen

Channel: Redeemer Bible Church

Views: 2,664

Rating: 4.9636364 out of 5

Keywords: be ready women's conference alisa childers, be ready women's conference, be ready womens conference, Alisa Childers, Redeemer Bible Church, RedeemerAZ, women's ministry conference, Gilbert arizona, Women's ministry, arizona, chandler, Jesus, Progressive Christianity, relativism, post modern, Christianity, Christians, christian women, Fellowship, alisa childers, another gospel, pretty little lies, false teachings, the Gospel, Sound doctrine

Id: Sh5uSfViD50

Length: 81min 32sec (4892 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021