Too many who claim Christ lack confidence in their faith. They believe in Jesus... but they don’t truly know the why or what behind what they believe. And when life gets tough, they’re uprooted, responding no differently than those who’ve never heard the message.

We’ve embraced the idea that doctrine and theology are boring or irrelevant—and it’s cost us dearly. This mindset has produced people who profess Christ but lack the truth about Him.

Without good doctrine and theology, faith can become a fragile, emotional experience rather than an unwavering devotion.

And the evidence of the cost of this shallow faith is staggering:

• 70% of evangelicals believe Jesus was created, rather than eternal.
• 51% see the Holy Spirit as a force, not a personal being.
• 37% say religious belief is just a matter of personal opinion, not objective truth.
• Despite over two-thirds of Americans claiming to be Christian, only 6% demonstrate a biblical worldview or consistently apply biblical principles.

...In other words, we’ve created a generation of people who profess Christ but possess little of the truth about Him. We need deeper roots.

These numbers aren’t just statistics; they reveal a theological crisis. A faith built on half-truths cannot stand in the face of trials. Without firm roots in sound doctrine and theology, we hold on to flimsy foundations when the storms come.

So how do we respond?
The Bible calls us to pursue being firmly rooted in Christ and established in faith.

It's time to deepen our roots. 

“The doctrine of the Trinity is to the Christian experience of God what grammar is to poetry—it establishes a structure, a framework, which allows us to make sense of something which far surpasses it. It is the skeleton supporting the flesh of Christian experience. The Christian experience of God was already there, long before the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated, but the doctrine casts light on that experience and helps us to understand who it is that we are experiencing. It interprets our experience of God as experience of God” (pp. 147–48).

SOURCE: Alister E. McGrath, Understanding the Trinity (Kingsway, 1987)

“Everything depends on our retaining a firm hold on this doctrine in particular; for if this one totters and no longer counts, all the others will lose their value and validity.”  - Martin Luther

“If Jesus rose, then this gospel is what it professes to be; if He rose not from the dead, then it is all deceit and delusion.” - Charles Spurgeon

"There are three things which the true Christian desires in respect to sin: Justification, that it may not condemn; sanctification, that it may not reign; and glorification, that it may not be."
Author: Richard Cecil
 

• Justification is “an act of God whereby He pronounces a sinner to be righteous because of that sinner’s faith in Christ.” We are justified, or declared righteous, at the moment of our salvation/decision.    
• Sanctification refers to a separation from sin and the world; and a separation to God and His word. In Sanctification we are saved and being saved from the power of sin. 
• Glorification refers to that final change and redemption of the body.  In Glorification we are saved from the presence of sin in us and in the world. 

The skeptical New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan is typical of historians where he states that the fact that Jesus “was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”

A Man named Jesus Christ truly walked the planet. He was truly crucified under Pontius Pilate and unexplainable events accompanied this crucifixion. This really happened. As believers, we are to know that it is a fact, but also be aware of what it means for us.  

Philippians 2:5-8 - Have this attitude [e]in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be [f]grasped, 7 but [g]emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death [h]on a cross.

Slides w/ Videos and pics can be found here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fJJzK1rmFL0bpxzK4RhUrxSyK7Sh56cBImqVJckYb64/edit?usp=sharing

"If the Atonement... is anything to the mind, it is everything. It is the most profound of all truths, and the most recreative. It determines more than anything else our conceptions of God, of man, of history, and even of nature. The Atonement is a reality of such a sort that it can make no compromise. The man who fights it knows that he is fighting for his life, and puts all his strength into the battle. The surrender is literally to give up himself, to cease to be the man he is, and to become another man. The cross of Christ is man's own glory, or it is his final stumbling block."
Quoted in J.I. Packer, "The Atonement in the Life of the Christian," in The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Theological, and Practical Perspectives

The Atonement was:

• Necessary
• Sacrificial
• Just
• Expiatory and Propitiatory
• A Vicarious Substitution
• A Fulfillment of Isaiah 53
• Multi-faceted

We are to believe and follow Christ in all things, including His words about Scripture. And this means that Scripture is to be for us what it was to Him: the unique, authoritative, and inerrant Word of God, and not merely a human testimony to Christ, however carefully guided and preserved by God. If the Bible is less than this to us, we are not fully Christ’s disciples.

The Preacher and God’s Word.
 James Montgomery Boice

“3 For I delivered to you [b]as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins (week 4-5) according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day (week 2-3) according to the Scriptures (week 6-7), 5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” 1 Corinthians 15:3-5

The New Testament has more and earlier manuscripts than any other work of ancient literature.
Regarding the New Testament, it is humanity’s most reliable ancient document.

According to Biblical scholar John Warwick Montgomery,
“to be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.“

The Word is God-breathed, true, reliable, and authoritative for our lives. 

“We are dealing with God’s thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.”
― D.A. Carson

“Some people like to read so many [Bible] chapters every day. I would not dissuade them from the practice, but I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day than rinse my hand in several chapters. Oh, to be bathed in a text of Scripture, and to let it be sucked up in your very soul, till it saturates your heart!”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Exegesis and Eisegesis

How I would define them:

Exegesis - The careful, mindful study of scripture that attempts to understand a passage as the writer intended it, based on their language, historical context, other writings of the author, and scripture as a whole. The reader attempts to understand the passage in the author's “world” before trying to bridge the gap into their own. The reader attempts to “draw out” meaning with as few presuppositions as possible.

Eisegesis - Attempting to, whether willfully or unwillfully, approach the scripture with a predisposed opinion or agenda in order to make it say what the reader thinks it should. The reader isolates the passage from the whole counsel of scripture and adds in their own cultural understanding or biases in order to “read in” to the scripture.

I would hope on hearing the definitions that one is clearly a faithful way to handle the text and one is not.