The truth that God created the universe is of utmost importance to the faith. And it’s no wonder that it continues to be so hotly debated. The logic follows perfectly easily: If God is not the creator, then the world is not his and neither are we, which releases us from responsibility of knowing him. Conversely, if God is the creator, then world is his and so are we, which means we’re accountable for serving him. And so this one fact is of truly great importance. Is God the source of existence, life, and human purpose; or is he not?

We are writing these articles because we believe that he is the creator. One of the reasons for this is the apparent design in the world—the fact that everything from the vastness of space to the precise perfection of the subatomic world bears the marks of purpose, design, and seamless fit. There is function and beauty in this reality that cannot have come to be by the atrophy that characterizes natural processes.

This is the principle of teleology. It’s the principle that says, “If a thing appears to have been designed with a purpose, then there must have been a mind behind that purpose.” This principle stands in direct opposition to naturalistic philosophy, which believes that all reality can and should be explained by unintelligent happenstance in the natural processes.

Evidence of a telos is abundant in the natural world. It is wonderfully ironic that many efforts to discredit divine creation lead us again and again to clearer evidence for its truth.
It’s no wonder that Paul said there are truths about God that can be known by observation of the natural world (Rm. 1:19-21). It’s no wonder that Job was left speechless as God enumerated the unknowable but clearly intentional workings of the natural world (Jb. 38-39). It’s no wonder that Jeremiah felt right in comparing God’s unwavering love to the predictable orderliness of the sun and the moon and the ocean’s rolling waves (Jr. 31:35-36). All of these, and many more besides, show that the function and beauty of reality are the work of an intelligent mind. Do they teach us his will for our lives? No. But they do stand as testaments to his existence and creative work.

- Dan Lankford

Every effect has a cause. That’s just common sense, isn’t it? We intuitively understand that whenever something happens (e.g. an apple falls from a tree), the event was caused by some force that acted upon it (e.g. the apple falls due to gravity). Every effect has a cause. In scientific circles, this is known as the Law of Causality.

Those who believe in God lean heavily on the Law of Causality. Just like apples don’t fall from trees without a cause, neither do universes explode into existence without a cause. So, we argue, the Law of Causality points to God. In response, some nonbelievers have raised an interesting objection,

“If God created all of these things, then who or what created God?”

It’s an intriguing question to be sure, but it has a simple answer – nothing created God. He is eternal, uncreated, and uncaused. Perhaps that answer seems like a cop-out to you, but I’d urge you to recognize that it makes a lot of sense. You see, while the Law of Causality holds true in the natural world, philosophers and thinkers have pointed out for millennia that in a world of cause and effect something or someone must be the first cause. There must be some force whose existence isn’t dependent on some other cause. Think about it this way…

Imagine that our world is like a long trail of dominos being knocked over. Every domino falls because it is struck by the previous piece (every effect has a cause), but if you trace your way back through the fallen dominos, you’ll see that something had to knock over that first domino. In that trail, something must have knocked over that first domino without having been knocked over by a domino itself. Something must have been ABLE to knock over that first domino without NEEDING to be knocked over by a previous domino.

Logic demands that there must have been an eternal, uncreated, uncaused first cause that set our world in motion. Christians call Him, “God.” God is not just another domino. He is the force that was ABLE to create this world without NEEDING to be created Himself. And that’s exactly how the Bible presents Him, “He is the Alpha and the Omega… who is and who was and who is to come” (Revelation 1:8).

- Jonathan Banning

Many Christians have a pessimistic outlook on raising kids. We believe it’s a risk, saying things like, “We shouldn’t want to bring kids into a world that’s gotten this bad. It’s worse than it’s ever been. It would just eat them alive, destroying their faith.” But the world has always been evil. I doubt that “the world is worse for our kids than it’s ever been.” Perhaps, though, the world’s wickedness comes closer to them, thanks, at least in part, to the presence of smart devices.

One of the unique challenges of Christian parenting in our day is handling screens wisely in our families. So, here’s some advice to Christian parents for helping our kids serve Christ when surrounded by screens.

• Regulate their time on screens. Encourage intentional, tangible activities like conversation, engagement, reading, work, and generosity. Set a whole-family ‘fast’ from your tech once in awhile.
• Set parental blocks. Gateways on your wifi routers, blocked-out apps, time limits, etc.
• Unapologetically invade their privacy for the sake of spiritual accountability. There isn’t anything unbiblical about doing that, so long as it’s truly for their good and not justification for us to be on a power trip. Check their browsing histories, texts sent and received, downloads, and apps. Let them know from the outset that this kind of accountability will be standard procedures with your family.
• Finally, talk openly about what you’re doing as a parent and why. Caveat: be wise enough with in those conversations not to accidentally tell them how to find ungodliness (a mistake that I’ve heard preachers and parents make more than once), but for older kids, do let them know the purpose behind your decisions. Remind them that you’re trying to foster a true, abiding love for God in their hearts.

Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” (Mt. 6:22-23) Parents, let’s be wise and diligent to keep our families’ hearts full of God’s light.

- Dan Lankford, minister

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[images sourced from Storyset.com]

One thing that Christians sometimes neglect to include in their efforts toward spiritual growth is the reading of faithful books. Obviously, the works of uninspired men are not of the same caliber as the inspired word of God when it comes to guiding our spiritual growth. But, just as we listen weekly to godly teachers & preachers who offer their insights into the word of God, there have been many authors down through the centuries who have faithfully expounded the Scriptures’ meaning in some really helpful ways. So, on Sundays in January, these articles will recommend spiritual books that can help us more clearly see God’s plan and our place within it.

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Love & Respect, by Emerson Eggerichs, is about godly marriage. Specifically, it’s about following God’s plan for marriage as laid out in one short passage from the book of Ephesians. The Holy Spirit’s point runs from Ephesians 5:22 thru verse 33, but verse 33 is the summary of the whole thought: “However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Eggerichs notes how the Beatles sang, “All you need is love,” and so many books on marriage agree with them. And yet, there is more than love in God’s plan for healthy marriages: there is love and respect in Ephesians 5.

The author, speaking out of years’ worth of experience as a professional marriage counselor, helpfully describes what he calls …The Crazy Cycle. Simply: “Without love, she reacts with out respect. And without respect, he reacts without love.” And going thru this cycle makes both spouses frustrated. This simple articulation probably rings bells in many of our minds—that we have each sometimes felt the lack of these important things from our spouses, and we know that we have often denied our spouses what they truly need from us.

The book is like a long sermon based on a single Bible phrase, and it’s filled with elaboration on this simple concept. Some helpful pieces of advice from the book are as follows:

• “You can be right but still wrong, when you say it at the top of your voice.”
• “The Greek word Paul uses for love in this verse is agape, meaning unconditional love. And the wording of the rest of the passage strongly suggests that the husband should receive unconditional respect.”
• “Often, we focus on our own needs and simply overlook the needs of the other person.”
• “The more I meditated on these two passages of Scripture, the more I realized that if a husband is commanded to agape-love his wife, then she truly needs love. In fact, she needs it just as she needs air to breathe.”
• “[As a marriage counselor,] Sarah asked this wife a question that she asks many women who arrive at our conferences full of contempt for their husbands: ‘What if your son grew up and married someone like you?’ The woman’s mouth fell open.”
• “A husband is to obey the command to love even if his wife does not obey the command to respect, and a wife is to obey the command to respect even if the husband does not obey the command to love.”

If you and your spouse are struggling to find peace and enjoyment in your relationship, and if you’re ready to work together to change that and make your relationship into the kind that God intended, this book is a really good place to start.

-Dan Lankford, minister

When making a case for the existence of God and his creating everything, we tend to default to evidence outside the Bible. So we begin—as we’ve done in this series—with premises like “design is evidence of a designer” and “morality is evidence of a moral originator.” Maybe this is because we feel that defending religious things from the Bible is circular reasoning, and so we shy away from it. But if there is sufficient evidence to the Bible’s legitimacy (which we intend to discuss in articles later this year), then its claims about God himself ought to be taken seriously. Neither its antiquity nor its obvious religious bias give us reason to disregard its claims wholesale.

And so, for this Faith-Building Friday, consider some of the many places where the Bible’s writers stated that the world was created by God. These statements, while not the whole case, are valid evidence to the truth of his existence and creative work.

• “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gn. 1.1)
• “in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” (Ex. 20.11)
• “You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them.” (Nh. 9:6)
• “For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.” (Ps. 95.3-5)
• “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.” (Jr. 32.17)
• “long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.” (2 Pt. 3.5)

To be sure, there is an abundance of extra-biblical evidence to the facts of his existence and creative work. But let’s not skip the spoken truth of these things inside the Bible. The claims made there are sincere, powerful, and faith-building in their own divinely-spoken right.

- Dan Lankford

Screen devices are amoral things. They aren’t good or bad of themselves; they are tools that can be wielded in good ways or bad. And that means that responsibility falls on us. How can we be smart and spiritual about what we see and hear with them?

First, let’s just occasionally look away from screens and engage with the people most immediately in front of us. Sometimes, we simply use them too much, and we need to learn to ignore them in favor of a meaningful personal connection. With family and friends, at work or in worship, and especially when doing personal devotions, refusing to let a screen interfere will help us focus on the moment’s purpose.

Second, let’s learn to control what we see. Last week’s post talked about ‘the algorithms’ populating our screens with things we don’t want there. But there are settings that can be changed and blocking services that can be employed to stop a lot of that. So let’s be aware of the options that we have and use them. Filtering software and parental controls are widely available if we look.

More than that, let’s make ourselves accountable to regular check-ins with a more mature Christian—a place to confess a sin, talk about a temptation and the way of escape from it, or thank God together for a milestone amount of time that we’ve endured temptation.

Third, let’s just set ourselves some time limits so that we know when enough is enough. Maybe we shouldn’t put screens beside us when we go to bed. Maybe we should keep them out of arm’s reach during meal times. Maybe we should make a house rule for no ‘small screens’ after a certain time in the evening. In general, let’s build in some responsible time barriers where we’re training our minds not to need the screens.

Overall, this comes down to self-control. It’s about making sure that while the screens are lawful for us, we aren’t mastered by them (1 Cr. 6:12). So let’s pray for wisdom and strength to be self-controlled. Let’s put in the effort to protect ourselves from the foolishness and sin that threaten to creep into our lives. Whatever effort and new learning it requires of us, it will be worth it for the sake of our souls.

- Dan Lankford, minister

(images sourced from Storyset.com)

One thing that Christians sometimes neglect to include in their efforts toward spiritual growth is the reading of faithful books. Obviously, the works of uninspired men are not of the same caliber as the inspired word of God when it comes to guiding our spiritual growth. But, just as we listen weekly to godly teachers & preachers who offer their insights into the word of God, there have been many authors down through the centuries who have faithfully expounded the Scriptures’ meaning in some really helpful ways. So, on Sundays in January, these articles will recommend spiritual books that can help us more clearly see God’s plan and our place within it.

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The Conviction to Lead, by Albert Mohler, gives 25 principles for leading a group of people with Biblical principles, starting with a simple and powerful truth: those who lead must have some strong convictions about Christ, the Bible, and God’s purposes in the world. As the author says, much leadership talk is about plans, but convicted leadership is about a purpose—a belief in an ideal—that is the guiding light for one’s life and influence on others. As the author says, “The leader is rightly concerned with everything from strategy and vision to team-building, motivation, and delegation, but at the center of the true leader’s heart and mind you will find convictions that drive and determine everything else.” The apostle Paul encouraged the Christians in Thessalonica to know the Gospel in the same way that he himself did: “not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Ths. 1:5).

From that starting point, the author expounds many key principles of leadership, both practical and conceptual. Leadership is all about character; a principle seen in the two main passages about elders’ qualifications. Leaders are managers; a principle seen in the Bible’s repeated admonitions to care for one’s flocks and household. Leadership is stewardship; a principle seen in Jesus’ passing of his kingdom into the hands of men until his return. All of these ideas, plus many very practical pieces of advice throughout the book, have greatly helped me as a leader in both religious and secular work settings.

Spiritual principles and scripture quotes are found throughout the book, guiding readers to think about leadership like the Lord himself would. So , whether you’re a leader in your workplace, here at church, in our community, or in the military; some of these principles (and maybe all of them, to some degree) will be helpful guidance for you. The presence of godly leaders in the world is a blessing from God, and so if more of God’s people can become the leaders that we should be, we can more fully become a channel of his blessings to the world.

-Dan Lankford, minister  

Click here to get it in paperback.

Click here to get it on Kindle.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus took some of God’s commands and taught his followers how to keep our hearts several steps back from breaking those commands. One of his most memorable examples of this was these words: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Mt. 5:27-28)

To lust is to wilfully look at and think about anyone other than one’s spouse with sexual desire. This is what makes pronography wrong, and it’s what warns us to be very wise and to have some serious self-control with how we use all of our internet-connected screen devices.

Lust and pornography are the most serious challenges that many face with the screens. When we take Jesus’s words seriously, we start to realize how often we are confronted by the temptations to these things. And when it comes to our devices, we often find that the things which tempt us to lust are not only available, they relentlessly badger us, showing up surprisingly even when we deliberately seek to put them away. This problem is made particularly acute by the large-scale internet usage of “the algorithm.”

“The algorithm” is the common shorthand way of describing how dozens of services from TikTok to Amazon suggest content that machine-learning believes will interest an individual. It’s based on the typical online behavior patterns of people in our same age bracket and of our same gender. And it’s based, to a large extent, on our own browsing, searching, and viewing habits. So if you watch a lot of videos on a certain topic, whether innocuous or unholy, you’ll probably find that you’re being shown more of those videos. And if you’re being shown a lot of similar or related videos, ads, or suggested sites; it may be because the algorithm’s awareness that you’ve already gone there.

This is a good reminder for us to be on guard against lustful thoughts wherever they come to us. We don’t have to be hunting across the internet for unholy content; it’s already hunting us in every channel from the most innocent social media services to the far darker corners of the web. And so we first guard our hearts, and then we’ll have the motivation to learn how to guard our devices (more on that in next Wednesday’s post).

In Matthew 5, Jesus continued his teaching with these words: “if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” (Mt. 5:30) If our screens are opening up a way into a temptation that we simply haven’t been able to endure, then Jesus’s advice to “cut off your right hand” might best be applied to our cutting off the thing that we hold in our hand. Maybe either a fast from screens or an all-out purge of them is the best thing some of us could do for our spiritual well-being. Better that we enter into life without a smartphone than to enter into Hell with one. Is that a sacrifice? Of course. Is it worth it? Absolutely!

- Dan Lankford, minister 

(images sourced from Storyset.com)

One thing that Christians sometimes neglect to include in their efforts toward spiritual growth is the reading of faithful books. Obviously, the works of uninspired men are not of the same caliber as the inspired word of God when it comes to guiding our spiritual growth. But, just as we listen weekly to godly teachers & preachers who offer their insights into the word of God, there have been many authors down through the centuries who have faithfully expounded the Scriptures’ meaning in some really helpful ways. So, on Sundays in January, these articles will recommend spiritual books that can help us more clearly see God’s plan and our place within it.

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How To Read the Bible For All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, is a guide to wisely interpreting the different genres of writing found within the Bible. It is similar to the adult class study that we undertook here at Northside in August of last year. It gives advice on what to look for and think about in the books of prophecy, in the Apostles’ letters, in Moses’ Law, and in the wisdom literature. Think of it as a guide to meditation—not the meditation itself, but a guide to getting the most out of the Spirit’s words in their various forms.

Why is accurate Bible reading an important skill to develop? Or, to ask the question in the inverse: What can possibly go wrong if someone doesn’t know how to read the Bible correctly?

For generations, Bible teachers have insisted upon respect for context when reading and applying the God-spoken truth of the Bible, and they have been right to do so. The book being recommended here expands that context to not only include the flow of thought in a group of paragraphs, but more fully to the writing style and historical backdrop of a book of the Bible.

I have found these instructions to be immensely helpful in my personal reading of the Scriptures, which obviously helps in my teaching ministry. Though I don’t claim perfect understanding, I can look back at my walk of faith and clearly see that my current understanding of some Biblical matters is much more truly Biblical than it once was. And this is, in large part, due to an increased ability to read the Bible more on its own terms and less in pursuit of what I believe it should say. That is, to respect its context.

As the Psalmist said, God’s word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. And so we should meditate on it day and night, letting its truths penetrate our hearts, making us more like Christ himself. And if we can have some help handling that word of truth more accurately, then I think we should take advantage of that opportunity.

It’s my prayer that the teaching you receive here at Northside, as well as the book being recommended here, can help us all know the truth more fully.

Click here to get it in paperback.

Click here to get it on Kindle.

-Dan Lankford, minister

Something never comes from nothing. That’s one of the most fundamental facts about our natural world. Stuff doesn’t just pop into existence; it always comes from a source. For that reason, when we look at all the physical stuff around us, we’re compelled to ask the question: “Where did all of this come from?” Because something never comes from nothing.

That simple reality is why the old-school skeptics used to argue that our universe was eternal, that everything has always been here. Turns out that the best way to avoid the question of origin is to argue that the universe had no origin. They argued vehemently for the eternal universe, and, in some cases, even cut corners to win the argument. The reason Einstein made the rookie mistake of dividing by zero when establishing his theory of general relativity was to avoid the fact that his equation proved the universe was not eternal. 

Of course, this debate was put to rest in 1919 when a man named Sir Arthur Eddington first observed that our universe was in a constant state of expansion. He found that everything in the universe was exploding outward in every direction from a central point – like shrapnel from a bomb. It was as if the entire universe had burst into existence from a single infinitesimal point of nothingness. Edwin Hubble would go on to observe the same, and because of this discovery, the scientific community would go on to accept that our universe was not eternal. That’s why the prominent atheists of our day no longer argue for an eternal universe, but that our universe originated with a “Big Bang.”

It is a verifiable scientific fact that our universe had a beginning – something did, indeed, come out of nothing.

What does that mean? It means that our world cannot be explained naturally. It means that our existence must be the result of something “supernatural” – something beyond the physical. What we see when we consider the origin of our universe is precisely what is written in Hebrews 11:3, “By faith, we understand… that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”
 

- Jonathan