Know Why You Believe! Pass on What You’ve Experienced!
What defines the Christian faith? What does it really mean to be a true follower of Christ? What are the core beliefs making a Christian a true disciple of Jesus? Will your children embrace the true faith of their parents? Most Christians can’t answer those questions. And without a clear understanding of what Christianity is, we will struggle to both live out our faith and pass it on to our families and the world around us. Perhaps this reality is what is behind the alarming statistics that shows that most of our teens professing to be Christians will walk away from the church after they leave home and never return to their faith. Yet that wasn’t the case with the early church. By the second century those who called themselves Christians had a clear understanding of who they were, why they were here, and where they were going. In fact, over a period of 200 years the church went from some 25,000 Christ followers in AD 100 to 20 million by AD 300. That is an increase of 800 times! They knew something about passing on the true faith to their families. In The Unshakable Truth, Josh and Sean identify the twelve core truths that defined the vibrant faith of third century Christians. All twelve truths of the book have four chapters as a 4-part process to discover what the truth is, why it’s true, how it is relevant, and how to live it out. Josh and Sean have structured the book that way to help each truth come alive to your life.
A 4-Part Process 1. What is the Truth? We run across hundreds of Christians who tell us something like this:
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“I’m a Christian and want to pass my faith on to my kids. Yet I don’t feel very equipped to do that. But I definitely don’t want to lose my kids to a godless culture. What can I do?” The fear of the culture capturing our kids is real. This handbook is designed to better ground you in the essentials of the faith that will serve as a platform to successfully instill a robust and active Christianity in the lives of the next generation. This is the first of a 4-part process of clearly understanding what you believe and instilling the true faith into our young people. This involves defining the core truths of Christianity, understanding what they mean, and knowing why they are so important to our lives. That is why we have devoted a chapter on each truth that we, as Christians, are to believe -- all twelve of them.
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“This is the most incredible comprehensive handbook to learn and absorb the truth of the Christian faith.” James Burns, PhD - President HomeWord
A 4-Part Process
A 4-Part Process
2. Why should I believe it?
4. How can I live it out?
We are not simply to believe God’s truth blindly. He wants us to believe them with confidence and conviction. That is why it is important to also know why we believe what we believe. This is where evidence for our faith comes in.
Knowing what we believe, why we believe it and how it is relevant leads naturally to the fourth step: living out the truth. John, the disciple of Jesus, said, “Let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions. It is by our actions that we know we are living in the truth” (1 John 3:18-19). Truth is to be lived, and when it is lived it also becomes an example to others.
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A faith rooted in the truth that we have reason to believe is objectively true will ground us in the knowledge of the truth both intellectually and experientially. When we know the truth and why we believe it ourselves, we can then offer to our young people a faith that appeals both to the heart and the mind. That is why each truth is followed by a chapter that gives rock-solid evidence for why we can believe all twelve truths.
Lest you give up hope before you even begin, let us be quick to say that being a living example of the truth doesn’t mean we must live perfect lives. Believe it or not, those around us need to see us fail and humbly seek forgiveness. The Spirit of truth through his Word is there “to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right” (2 Timothy 3:16). So, a concluding chapter to each truth is devoted to how we can make the truth a living reality—applied to our lives to bring us joy and purpose. It is then we can pass on the true faith to those around us.
3. So what? How is it relevant to my life?
About Josh & Sean
We may know what we should believe and why we should believe it, but until we understand how it applies to our life it doesn’t mean a lot.
Since 1961, Josh has delivered his ministry messages to more than 10 million young people and has written or co-written 115 other books.
God’s truth is relevant to our lives, because truth by its very nature is relational. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), he was saying truth is a person to relate to, that “the way” is a person to interact with and follow, and that he is the only true source of life. To explain or present God’s truth outside of relationship is to distort or invite error into Christianity. Every one of the twelve truths of the faith is relationally relevant to our lives. The core of Christianity is about who we are and how we relate to God, what we believe about him, how we gain a relationship with him, and how living in relationship with him defines all other relationships. So each and every truth has a chapter on how it is relevant and practical to life.
In his own right, Sean is an author, conference speaker and educator and has authored or coauthored several Christian books. Josh and Sean McDowell live with their families in Southern California.
Photo by: John Robert Woods
You will seldom, if ever, have exhaustive evidence, but you can find sufficient evidence to establish that what you believe is credible and objectively true. That is what knowledgeable faith does—it rests its case on sufficient evidence. Noted author and apologist J.P. Moreland aptly defines faith as “a trust in what we have reason to believe is true.”
Josh McDowell Ministry | 2001 W. Plano Pkwy, Ste. 2400 | Plano, TX 75075 866-252-5424 | www.Josh.org/Truth