What do you believe?

Put sim­ply, I believe the Bible—at least, I try to believe the Bible. Granted, most every­one says that, so I’ll try using some big words. I’m kind of a Calvin­ist, charis­matic, com­ple­men­tar­ian; I’m basi­cally the kind of guy your mom should have warned you to stay away from. Let me do some explaining.

Calvin­ist

I believe that God cre­ated all things good. I believe that Adam rebelled¹ and ever since then, all mankind has been com­pletely inca­pable of lov­ing God with heart, soul, and mind and strength (the great­est com­mand­ment); there is not a part of us that is not affected by sin.² I believe that God, of His own mercy, chose to save mil­lions of His own ene­mies even in their rebel­lion. I believe that God’s choice to save a sin­ner is not depen­dent on any­thing in the sin­ner; rather, it is God’s free choice.³

I believe that Jesus Christ died to atone for the sin of every­one who will ever put their faith in Him and His work.⁴ I believe that His death also affects those who will never believe by grant­ing things which none of us have ever earned like food, breath, and even plea­sure (Spur­geon called this belief unlim­ited lim­ited atone­ment).⁵ I believe that God will effec­tu­ally call all those whom He has cho­sen before time to save. We may resist for a time, but if God has cho­sen to save you, He will even­tu­ally give you a new heart to love and serve Him.⁶ I also believe that God will make sure that those whom He has cho­sen to save, who have believed on Jesus, will never fall away.⁷

Charis­matic

I believe that God still does mir­a­cles. I don’t believe that they hap­pen often. I don’t believe that you can work your­self up into a frenzy and “make” God do any­thing. I believe that He is a good Father and will always pro­vide what is nec­es­sary for His chil­dren.⁸ Put sim­ply, I believe that God can and does work in super­nat­ural ways, but I don’t believe He does this often. I also believe that ask­ing for the Holy Spirit to give wis­dom or words to speak in a dif­fi­cult time is a very good thing to do.⁹

Com­ple­men­tar­ian

I believe that men and women are equal. I believe that men and women have dif­fer­ent roles, like the Father and the Son within the Trin­ity.¹⁰ I believe that women are called to sub­mit to their hus­bands like the church is to sub­mit to Christ.¹¹ I believe that men are called to love their wives extrav­a­gantly, lay­ing down their lives in such a way that their wives never have to doubt whether or not sub­mis­sion is a wise thing to do.¹² I also believe that women are not to occupy a posi­tion which puts them in a posi­tion of author­ity over a man, not because she is inca­pable (often, women are far from inca­pable) but because God designed things else­wise.¹³