Because We Believe Listen to a sample
Nancy Gordon & James Harvill
We believe in God the Father, (echo)
We believe in Christ the Son. (echo)
We believe in the Holy Spirit, (echo)
We are the Church and we stand as one. (echo)
Chorus:
Holy, holy, holy is our God!
Worthy, worthy, worthy is our King!
All glory and honor are His to receive;
To Jesus we sing, because we believe
We believe in the Holy Bible, (echo)
We believe in the virgin birth. (echo)
We believe in the resurrection, (echo)
That Christ one day will return to earth. (echo)
repeat chorus
We believe in the blood of Jesus, (echo)
We believe in eternal life. (echo)
We believe in His love that frees us, (echo)
To become the Bride of Christ. (echo)
repeat chorus
Worship
We are Christians.
We do not mean by that that we are Americans, or that we are caucasians, or any other kind of "westerner". Nor do we mean that we are Baptist or Protestant or catholic or that we are church-goers. We do not even mean that we are a, "Christian family," though each of these things is true in at least some respect. Rather, what we mean is that each of us individually is a disciple, or follower, of Christ. The lyric at right concisely summarizes the heart of our beliefs.
On this page we will not try to explain all that that means, although we will provide links to further information, and we invite you to to dig deeper and learn more. What we want to do here is to show a few of the ways in which our faith operates in our lives, as well as some of the ways in which we strive to serve our Lord.
Many methods have been devised for concisely presenting the good news of salvation. Here are some links to a few of them that we like. If you have never heard the gospel before, or if you have never been persuaded by it, we hope one of these presentations will strike a chord in your heart.
Our Stories
You may think that we exaggerate — or even prevaricate — when we claim to all be Christians, since some of our children are quite young to be making such commitments. Well, the fact is that each one of them has decided to ask Jesus to live in their heart at around the age of four. We have never pressured them in this. Our method has always been to wait for them to ask the right questions and then explain the gospel to them. Each time such an opportunity has arisen, we have helped them to understand that it is sin in their hearts that leads them to do wrong things, that God cannot allow such sin and must punish it, that sinless Jesus took punishment for our sin when He died on the cross, and that He offers us forgiveness as a gift if we will only accept it. Each time we asked them questions to confirm their understanding of what we were telling them. Each time we asked if they wanted to accept His gift right now. And each time but one, they said no.
Patrick's case was somewhat different, partly because Megan — our official family evangelist — was the one talking to him when he decided to say yes, and partly because Patrick is just different. He's not that big on asking questions, yet he absorbs surprising kinds and levels of information without even seeming to listen. (Ask him about the rapture sometime.)
After each child has prayed with us to accept Christ, we have watched them carefully, and asked them questions from time to time. They have always confirmed with word and deed that their understanding of the gospel is clear and that their faith is genuine. Of course they have also confirmed that their sin natures have yet to meet final destruction. But they have each given us many precious moments when we can see in them a genuine heart for God. Now we just pray that we can fulfull our responsibility of, "Train[ing] them up in the way they should go," and that, "When they are old they will not depart from it." (Pr. 22:6 - paraphrased)
As for ourselves, Mindy also accepted the Lord at a very young age. She was convicted of her need for salvation while at a revival when she was six. Having been raised in a home of solid believers, she never lacked the guidance she needed to understand and live by God's word. Steve's story is more confused though. He too was raised in a, "Christian home," but that home was shaken by many moves and other troubles, and Steve lost his way. It was later in life — December 7, 1981 to be precise, at the age of 26 — that he finally made a fully informed decision to accept Jesus' gift for himself. If you are interested, you can read the full story in his terribly long-winded testimony.
Our Church
We attend Colonial Baptist Church in the nearby city of Cary. Mindy teaches a pre-school class of four year-olds while Steve rotates through all of the pre-school classes playing guitar for kids from one to five. In the next hour, Steve, Mindy, Megan and Christopher attend the worship service together while Cameron and Patrick enjoy another hour of Sunday School. Recently, Steve has also started playing with a group from Colonial's Care Ministries that conducts a worship service once a month at a nearby nursing facility.
Since we began attending Colonial in the spring of 1999, after moving to the area from Durham, we have only been moderately involved in the ministries of the church. We have chosen to focus our attention on raising our young children instead. Now that they are getting older though, we look forward to becoming more involved again.
Along our way we have made many special friends. Some of those friends have gone on to be involved in ministry as missionaries, educators or what have you.