Podcast Review: What Do We Really Believe?

John Ortberg, senior pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church and former teaching pastor at Willow Creek, is my all-time favorite preacher/speaker/teacher/author and never disappoints. I love the way he uses language and crafts his messages, plus his theological acumen is astounding. He can take complicated theological concepts and put them into very easy to understand terms.

He spoke recently on the topic of belief and a peoples Core Values (What Do We Really Believe? 6/24/07). His main point is that a person's behavior is the best indicator of what they truly believe. (This is something our lead pastor, Tim, has been talking about for a long time. Now I know where John gets his ideas from!)

Here are some clips:

Now, two people affirm the same statements. One man is humble and loving and truthful, surprisingly bold, full of life, and everybody wants to be around this guy. The other man affirms the same beliefs, but he's selfish, angry, judgmental, kind of cold-hearted, gossips about folks, proud, and nobody wants to be around him.

Here's the question: Do these two people share the same faith? Do they really believe the same things, and if they do, why are they so different?

But the real question that this is getting at is:

If faith is so important - if it's such a big deal to God that we actually say that we're saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8) - faith alone - then why does faith sometimes not seem to make a bigger difference in people's lives?

How can two people have the same faith but be so different? Why doesn't faith make a bigger difference in my life?

Later on he says:

But here's what often happens in our day. In our day, we try to get people to trust Jesus for eternity - to get them into Heaven - but without learning to trust Him for their daily lives. As a matter of psychological reality, this just does not work. It reduces people who say that they trust Jesus, and who might even think that they trust Jesus, but what they do will show they do not share His ideas about the way things really are and the way life really works. And, therefore, they are not able to live the way that Jesus would live in their place. We cannot live in the way that Jesus would live if we do not share at the Core level His convictions about the way things really are.

Excellent and highly recommended. (You can download it directly from Menlo Park's website, or subscribe to the podcast through iTunes!)