The 1 Question

One of my New Year's Resolution is to post a blog every Monday morning.   Today I'm sharing the questions submitted at Christmas Eve at Chain of Lakes.  Christmas Eve at Chain of Lakes was the largest attended service at our current location.  During worship we took three minutes and asked people to submit one question about God, the church, personal faith, spirituality that each person would like to hear a sermon.  We received 24 questions.  A special thanks to Kathy Brevig for typing up the questions.

I'm not going to share a twenty-four week sermon series.  The series starts this Sunday, January 8 and will go for four weeks.  Later this week I will share the questions for the series.  I will share a blog about the twenty questions that are not chosen.  

I don't know if these questions reflect what people in our culture are thinking about regarding faith.  But I think these questions share a general sense of where many people in our culture are regarding their own thoughts about God and the church.

The 1 Question

1.  How does one keep the joy going – especially in trying times?    

2.  How do I discern my will from God’s will for me? How do I differentiate the Spirit’s nudging from the desire of my heart? 

3.  When considering the Trinity of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, how do you define the Holy Spirit?  

.      Why doesn’t God stifle the harm and hatred in our world?  

5.      Can you be a Christian if you do not believe in the Virgin birth or physical resurrection?

6.      Can we be forgiven for all if we are truly sorry for what we have done? Even regarding the 10 Commandments? 

7.      How can I help people experience God in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit in each one can be so powerful, but people have to take time to listen. 

8.      Why was Jesus named Jesus? Where did God come from?

9.      How many Adam and Eves were there?  

10.  How do I let God lead in my life without being certain of the path I am taking? 

11.  What do you think it means to be “full of the Spirit” ?     

12.  How does grace happen?  

13.  Will I see & recognize my family and friends that passed when I die?   

14.  When you lose faith in God, how do you gain it back? 

15.  If a child is not baptized can the child be baptized at a later age? 

16.  How can a child or someone who never heard the Word not be able to go to heaven? 

17.  Does God really have “a plan”? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? 

18.  Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I forgive?    

19.  What is your best advice and approach for communicating with people who use the word of the Bible to condemn or oppress others?   

20.  Why do bad things happen to good people

21.  Why do people believe in so many different religions and why do they hurt each other because of their beliefs?   

22.  Why does it have to be the Christian God? As long as we all believe in a higher power/general deity what difference does it make? If I believe in energy and you believe in a church God, is that any different? 

23.  If God has forgiven us, even from the most heinous sin, why do we still have guilt and feel like we are not really forgiven?  

24.   As in the days of Noah, so will be the time of Christ’s return.  With current events and moral decay of the times, are we in the near end of times?