Winning Ways -- Hillcrest Baptist Church

Tools for Soul Development
by Tom Goodman
April 8, 2015

What are the best "tools" for developing your soul? Last Sunday, we began a series of Sunday messages designed to answer that question.

Across the next few weeks we'll show you how to . . .

explore the Bible,
explore prayer,
explore church, and
explore grace.

We begin this Sunday with the role that the Bible plays in soul development.

Maybe you're stalled in your spiritual search or your spiritual growth because you doubt the Bible's dependability. Anne Rice was like that. For 30 years she was a popular writer of novels involving vampires and witches. She said her writing "reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God." And then Anne Rice came to Christ.

It began by studying the Bible during her frequent periods of depression. But even after placing her faith in Jesus, she wondered about the reliability of the Bible. So Rice began to research the New Testament era. She started with the writings of skeptical and liberal historians, perhaps assuming like much of our culture that they would be more objective than conservative scholars. She said she "expected to discover that their arguments would be frighteningly strong, and that Christianity was, at heart, a kind of fraud."

The opposite occurred. "What gradually came clear to me," she wrote, "was that many of the skeptical arguments -- arguments that insisted most of the Gospels were suspect, for instance, or written too late to be eyewitness accounts -- lacked coherence.... Absurd conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all."

This Sunday, I'm going give you five reasons you can be confident that the Bible supplies reliable information about the life and teaching of Jesus. I'm going to show you why you can trust that . . .

contemporaries of Jesus wrote the New Testament.
the Bible was faithfully copied.
archaeology verifies the stories of the Bible.
the presentation of truth is consistent throughout the Bible.
the church carefully selected what writings counted as "scripture."

The Bible faithfully gets you straight to the words and deeds of Jesus. Come Sunday at 10 to find out more.

The "Get Anchored" Dinner is Tonight! If you're exploring Christianity, or if you want to better explain it to others, The Anchor Course can help. The "Get Anchored" Dinner will introduce you to this 8-week study through a book I've written called The Anchor Course: Exploring Christianity Together. Learn more about the course at Hillcrest.Church/AnchorCourse.

--Tom

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Winning Ways - from Hillcrest Baptist Church, Austin, Texas	Contact Tom Goodman, Pastor
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Tools for Soul Development by Tom Goodman April 8, 2015 What are the best "tools" for developing your soul? Last Sunday, we began a series of Sunday messages designed to answer that question. Across the next few weeks we'll show you how to . . . explore the Bible, explore prayer, explore church, and explore grace. We begin this Sunday with the role that the Bible plays in soul development. Maybe you're stalled in your spiritual search or your spiritual growth because you doubt the Bible's dependability. Anne Rice was like that. For 30 years she was a popular writer of novels involving vampires and witches. She said her writing "reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God." And then Anne Rice came to Christ. It began by studying the Bible during her frequent periods of depression. But even after placing her faith in Jesus, she wondered about the reliability of the Bible. So Rice began to research the New Testament era. She started with the writings of skeptical and liberal historians, perhaps assuming like much of our culture that they would be more objective than conservative scholars. She said she "expected to discover that their arguments would be frighteningly strong, and that Christianity was, at heart, a kind of fraud." The opposite occurred. "What gradually came clear to me," she wrote, "was that many of the skeptical arguments -- arguments that insisted most of the Gospels were suspect, for instance, or written too late to be eyewitness accounts -- lacked coherence.... Absurd conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all." This Sunday, I'm going give you five reasons you can be confident that the Bible supplies reliable information about the life and teaching of Jesus. I'm going to show you why you can trust that . . . contemporaries of Jesus wrote the New Testament. the Bible was faithfully copied. archaeology verifies the stories of the Bible. the presentation of truth is consistent throughout the Bible. the church carefully selected what writings counted as "scripture." The Bible faithfully gets you straight to the words and deeds of Jesus. Come Sunday at 10 to find out more. The "Get Anchored" Dinner is Tonight! If you're exploring Christianity, or if you want to better explain it to others, The Anchor Course can help. The "Get Anchored" Dinner will introduce you to this 8-week study through a book I've written called The Anchor Course: Exploring Christianity Together. Learn more about the course at Hillcrest.Church/AnchorCourse. --Tom Beacon Articles Available Online: The staff newsletters that appear each week in the Beacon are also available on our website. You can find them here. Check out my weblog here. Do you know friends who would appreciate Winning Ways? Just forward this e-mail to them! Have you subscribed to Winning Ways? You can subscribe by clicking here and following the instructions. Your e-mail address will not be sold or given away to anyone, and you can automatically change your subscription or drop it by following the easy steps provided with each e-mail. FRESH NEWS AT HILLCREST UPDATED WEEKLY: www.hillcrestaustin.org LISTEN TO RECENT SERMONS: Click here. MANAGE YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS TO OUR EMAIL NEWSLETTERS: Click here. If you do not have access to the web, please send a note to newsmaster@hbcaustin.org to tell us of any changes you would like to make.