What Women Wish Their Preacher Knew...Continued from page 1

Another begs: “Please, Pastor, preach the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is written.”

An Illinois woman writes: “I am grateful that my pastor understands that women and men alike have the exact same problem: their own sin?and they need the exact same solution: the gospel. The best thing my pastor can do for me, as a young woman in his congregation, is ‘preach the Word, in season and out of season.’ If he does this faithfully, then all women will be empowered through the Word and by the Spirit. ... When any pastor rightly divides the Word of truth, Christian women will know that God is able to make all grace abound to them.”

Our Nation?A Smorgasbord of Religious Beliefs!

According to the Barna study, we are a nation where “nine out of 10 adults own at least one Bible,” and “eight out of 10 consider themselves to be Christian,” but you’d never know it from the “smorgasbord of religious beliefs professed by most people!” Many people today have adopted beliefs that “conflict with the teachings of the Bible and their church.”

Did you know that 44 percent of adults believe that “the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths”? And that only 38 percent of Americans reject that idea?

What do a majority of Americans (54 percent) believe about truth? They think “truth can be discovered only through logic, human reasoning, and personal experience.”

“Over the past 20 years we have seen the nation’s theological views slowly become less aligned with the Bible. Americans still revere the Bible and like to think of themselves as Bible?believing people, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Christians have increasingly been adopting spiritual views that come from Islam, Wicca, secular humanism, the Eastern religions, and other sources. Because we remain a largely Bible?illiterate society, few are alarmed or even aware of the slide toward syncretism?a belief system that blindly combines beliefs from many different faith perspectives.”³

It is imperative that pastors today focus worship services on Scripture. Thom Rainer writes: “The clear teachings of biblical truth are demanding and convicting. The Holy Spirit speaks through God’s Word in such a way that the cost of discipleship is understood. No higher expectations could be placed upon believers than these truths of Scripture.”⁴

Philip Yancey writes: “I find it remarkable that this ... diverse collection of manuscripts written over a period of a millennium by several dozen authors, possesses as much unity as it does. To appreciate this feat, imagine a book begun five hundred years before Columbus and just now completed. The Bible’s striking unity is one strong sign that God directed its composition. By using a variety of authors and cultural situations, God developed a complete record of what he wants us to know; amazingly, the parts fit together in such a way that a single story does emerge.”⁵