The Basics

Heb 5:11 Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.  
Heb 5:12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
Heb 5:13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.
Heb 5:14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.


My blog is titled Basic Christianity because I believe that it is impossible to go forward with any degree of success without being grounded in the basics. As a military man I spent two months being trained to engage an enemy and to remain alive through the conflict. And then, like an Infantryman I was sent to AIT, Advanced Individual Training, to learn my specialty. Even though my life expectancy was 3 minutes and thirty seconds in combat, the Army expected me to expect to survive. They had grounded me in the basics and for the next six years I was repeatedly run back through those principals by repeated Field Maneuvers at scheduled and at unknown times, in the middle of the night and, just, whenever. During the thirty months I spent flying in a helicopter in Vietnam, those basics saved my life and the lives of the men under me many times.


A Christian, a follower of Christ, is likewise trained and has chosen to live in this manor. Living, now, with the final stage of MS and once more looking death, square in the face, I go to Sunday services, both, to teach and to be taught. And then, as I live out the week, save Wednesday night, I encounter lost men and Christ Followers in need of teaching.


When I was two years in the faith and forty-seven years of age, God called me to teach. I had heard the sermons and had read the passages of stricter judgment for teachers and I did not want to seek that job at all. But, as it should be, God had His way! I began to teach the Primaries Class at Church and there could be no better class for a forty-seven year old Baby Christian! I learned more than my students probably did. I'm certainly not saying that God did not work through me because in my second year of teaching my entire class was saved before June. But the point is that God taught me to teach the basics of Christianity. The very principals by which every man and woman is saved.


Today, my class is titled "The Grumpy Old Men and I'm still teaching the "Basics” of the Christian faith. Just as I could not survive in hand to hand combat without basic skills, neither can I be an effective teacher without the basics of my faith.


Today there are many false teachers and almost everyone seems to fear naming them as such. But there are a multitude of false teachers in this world today and some of them are dangerous like Jim Jones and David Koresh and others just lust after the money like Benny Hinn. The problem is that, by and large, these men are never important enough to become nationally known so we never hear of them. But they plague the Baby Christians and they will destroy their faith where it is possible. Joni Erickson Tada was almost one of those that were lead astray by these false teachers. Joni is a quadriplegic and was told that the only reason she could not be healed was because her faith was not strong enough.


It is a very popular teaching today that every person can be healed of any disease if they just believe. The problem with that teaching lies directly within the Basics of Christianity. If this teaching is true there should never be a Christian that dies and yet all of the disciples of Christ are dead including Paul who was stoned and left for dead, beaten with rods, received 39 lashes three times, ship wrecked and bitten by a viper. Paul is, by far, the best example of the errancy of this teaching. God healed Paul, right up until it was time for Paul to go to Heaven, then he died.


Others, like Joni and myself, God has chosen to glorify Himself by working through us in spite of our weakness. Does that mean there is no Healing Ministry that is genuine? Certainly not! There are two women in my church that engage in that very ministry. They are both poor, by the world's standard, and yet they do not go on tour or get on the radio and television demanding that people send them a million dollars. They just quietly perform their ministry and seek only to glorify God.


When we remember to stick to the basics we can be successful at anything God wants us to do because we learn to put ourselves out of the way and to allow God to work through us.