When you listen to many in the Christian community who profess they believe the Bible is the word of God and the ultimate authority in their lives you might want to dig a little deeper to see if that is in fact the truth or if  what they really mean is they support their Christian doctrine with their particular slant.  There are many who profess they believe that scripture is the final word in their lives when it is not.

Just because people surrender to Jesus Christ doesn’t mean they are living and thinking like the Lord would desire. The apostle Paul spoke about the need to “NOT” be conformed to the thinking of the world but to be “TRANSFORMED” in our thinking so our choices and actions would be pleasing to the Lord and our lives would be blessed. The problem is that we so often exchange transformation of thinking for learning doctrine, which often hardens our hearts rather than making them softer towards the Lord. Transformation is a process rather than a belief and transformation doesn’t happen without God’s help and our cooperation.

What if we could have more confidence in prayer? What if we could pray with greater confidence and really see things change, rather than just praying with little expectation like too many of have a habit of doing, would you and I pray more or pray less? My belief is we would love to pray with confidence, except much of our praying seems more like wishful thinking than confidence.

If you find some things in scripture that are hard to swallow, or hard to apply, you are not alone. I have walked with God since 1969 and still find some things difficult that God calls me to do or believe. Some things cause me to outright argue with God or at least invoke in me desire to avoid them. Why? Because my salvation is still in progress and God is not through helping me to get a Kingdom mindset rather than a selfish worldly one. This leads me to voice a concern I have with modern preaching and teaching in the body of Christ.

This is now the fourth article exploring whether God changes his mind. What we think about God’s willingness to change things based on how and why we pray makes all the difference in the world as to if we are motivated to pray as we are challenged by scripture to pray. If you have not read articles 1-3 please do so before reading this one.

This is the second part in a series on the “Myths” we as Christians have embraced as if they were biblical when in fact scripture speaks otherwise. The hard part is to know what is biblical and what is not in our beliefs when the only sources we rely on are sermons on Sunday morning or various books pastors might recommend. No pastor or teacher has a market on the truth of scripture and that includes me so what I’m advocating is to study the scripture and not just rely of what others say just because they are good pastors or good teachers.

Many Christians say they trust the Bible, that is until some new bit of science comes out and gives us a “NEW TRUTH” that contradicts reliability of scripture and at least causes doubt about the trustworthiness of scripture among believers. This is not excluding the “THEORY” of evolution taught in public schools long before I was in grade school in the ’50s. In times like these many professing believers, even strong ones, secretly capitulate to the intimidation of scientific information. When you question the book of Genesis and the story of creation for the theory of billions of years of evolution you already are making science as your god, not the God of the bible.

Many of us probably would say very strongly that we don’t believe in myths but if we looked closer at our beliefs we might find out that our strong held beliefs are based on someone’s ideas or desires, rather than on history, fact and what comes from the word of God. Many of our beliefs have been constructed by what we have been taught rather than from what we have observed. When it comes to biblical beliefs the same holds true.  We have constructed a belief system which was gained from pastors and teachers throughout our lifetime. These people may have taught us the word of God or they could have mixed truth with myth without even realizing it.

This is a multi part topic and this is the second in the series in asking the question, “Does God Change His Mind,” or has God set in motion everything that ever will happen? The “CHANGEABLENESS” of God is not in question as to whether God is reliable and consistent with his character and action, but does God change with regard to our behavior or heart attitude.

Believe it or not, the title is an important question because what we believe about how God responds or doesn’t respond to our actions, especially with regards to our prayers, makes all the difference in the world. Prayer is the most vital link we have with God because scripture reveals, in general, the mind and will of God for the believer but it is prayer that creates and develops the relational side of our relationship.