Belief

A person’s beliefs are, naturally, very personal. A person believes only what he thinks is true. A person’s beliefs about God, religious truth and eternity are the most personal of all. Conflicts arise between people when their beliefs clash. This makes the Christian mission to teach the Word of God to all nations a very challenging one. When the Word of God is taught, you can literally hear beliefs clashing. But, with God’s help and strength, Christians all around the world are teaching the Word of God, willing to endure the conflicts that clash. At Faith Lutheran Church, we want to teach the Word of God in our little corner of the world. To us it is worth the challenge. The Word of God has challenged our beliefs and where ever we were shown to be wrong in our beliefs, the Word of God corrects us and this is a wonderful thing. The Word of God brings sinners to faith in the truth for salvation from sin. We desire to challenge you with the same Word of God so that you too may believe and be saved.

But wait. What is the Word of God anyway? Where do we find it? We find it in the Bible. The Bible is “the word for word” Word of God. He inspired human writers like Moses and David and Isaiah and Matthew, Luke, Paul, Peter and John and directed them to author exactly as he desired. It is easy, of course, for any church to say, “We hold to the Word of God in every doctrine.” The challenge for you is to determine whether we are actually teaching the Bible correctly. Is it worth the effort for you to do this? God says so. In fact, he says that there is nothing more important. While we can teach you, only God can lead you to believe what you might hear from us. Only God can empower you to leave behind any previously held belief that does not square with the Bible. On this website we offer you our statement of faith which you can find on the page “About Us”. By reading it over, you can learn in summary form what we believe and confess. Our pastor, Rev. Matthew W. Crick, offers Bible Basics instruction for anyone who is interested to learn more in depth.

Some of you have more working knowledge of the Bible; others have less. If you have less working knowledge of the Bible, don’t let that stop or intimidate you. The Bible, which centers on the person of Jesus as the one divine, yet human Savior from sin, is not difficult to understand. Children learn the Bible’s teaching very well simply by attending Sunday school regularly. A thorough understanding of the Bible does not happen overnight, but it is important to take that first step. Through it, God leads those who earnestly study it into greater knowledge of the Bible and a deeper faith in him. By faith in him we are saved from our sins.

In our statement of beliefs, we have attempted to present the central teachings of the Bible as plainly as possible, as well as providing biblical support for everything we confess. We simply want to show you that a) it matters what one bellieves and b) it matters to which denomination you belong, but teaching sadly varies. Not all church bodies are the same. Some are more biblical. Some are less. The more, the better.

Depending on your Bible knowledge, much of our confession may sound familiar to you. You may find that you already hold much in common with us at Faith Lutheran Church, or you may find nothing in common at all. Regardless, God calls each of us to study and believe the Word for ourselves and seek out the church body which teaches and confesses it. To be straightforward with you, we believe the Lutheran Church is that church by God’s grace. For more on the history of the Lutheran church, see the web-article entitled, “Martin Luther and the Birth of the Lutheran Church.”

This does not imply by any means that the Lutheran Church is the only saving Christian church. Any church which teaches that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, born a sinless human male, and that he died for the sins of the world and rose again, and that salvation comes by faith alone in his name, is a saving church.

You may be aware that there are many different Lutheran church bodies today. Sadly, there are many unfortunate divisions between us. In short, we don’t all teach the same thing anymore. But the teaching of the original Lutheran church is the full return to the teaching of the Bible. God brought about this return through Martin Luther and the Lutheran Reformation. By God’s grace, there are still some Lutheran church bodies that continue to hold to the biblical teaching of Martin Luther. By God’s grace, one of those church bodies is our own, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod. You may visit our synod’s website.

May God bless your study of his Word. May your faith in the Word of God be your most personal, treasured belief.

Please come and visit us sometime.

In Christ,

The members of Faith Lutheran Church