Correct Thinking

This morning I went for a three mile run. Even though it was nine in the morning, it was already really hot (living in Houston, Texas). This was one of the hardest runs I have ever went on. The weird thing was, my body felt great. Legs were strong and the knees were holding up fairly well. The thing that started to fail me was mind. When things started to get harder and the heat was kicked up, I felt like I should stop. It was a mental battle to keep going. I questioned if I should stop because of the heat. I thought "there is no way I can keep going!" For most of the run I had these thoughts and this made things extremely hard. It's not like I was running a marathon or even a half-marathon, three miles should be pretty easy for a 21 year old guy. But, the incorrect thoughts I was having beat me down.

After the run I started thinking about how this relates to the Christian Life. Our culture these days puts so much emphasis on "running" (service, living for the Lord, community ect.), that thinking correctly takes the back seat. This, to me, seems backwards to all of the New Testament Epistles. Paul, in the majority of his letters, started the first half of the book with doctrine and how the believer should think about things (Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians ect.). Never, does he ask the believer to live a certain way, before instructing them on key doctrines that relate to living. Our Christian life, and service must be founded on correct doctrine or the end result will be failure.

This is not to say that serving the Lord isn't needed but the focus in most churches has shifted from doctrinal teaching to application only. We need doctrine to think correctly with the end result of living correctly.

This is a must read in addition to this post:

http://www.brenhambiblechurch.org/pastors-blog/doctrine-is-dead/.

Dr. JB Hixson cleverly portrays the Christian culture of the day. Very good! Article titled "Doctrine is Dead"