More Ways to Listen
In Christ & Culture podcast with Dr. Ken Keathley, we explore how the Christian faith intersects all avenues of today’s culture through conversations with leading thinkers.
Today’s Episode: Have you ever doubted your faith or the Bible? Today we speak with Dr. Todd von Helms about his book, Before You Leave: For College, Career, and Eternity. He gives you his wisdom on how to address and better understand the challenging questions of the Christian faith.
If we minimize sin and we minimize hell, then we’re minimizing the gospel.
What inspired him to study the Bible more thoroughly.
“[My professor said,] ’Many Christians know God, they think they know the Bible, but they don’t. Most of them have never read it. And when they quote the little bit of it they do know, they do so out of context….’
“That really stuck with me. From there on, I said I need to investigate this and really know what the Bible says. Better yet, I need to read it for the first time cover to cover.”
On the doctrine of hell.
“If we minimize sin and we minimize hell, then we’re minimizing the gospel and the power of the crucifixion and resurrection that overcome our sin and death and hell.”
On the importance of parents modeling faith to their children.
“They need to see their moms and dads reading the scriptures and praying…. And they need to be in the scriptures with their children. We need to be expecting them to read the scriptures. We need to place such a value on it that they know it’s important to us. Probably one of the most haunting things that I would hear time and time again for students that grew up in the church, some even attending Christian schools, they would go off to college and walk away from their faith (which, so many surveys tells us more than half of them do). So many of these students I have worked with said, ‘You know what? There was really nothing to walk away from.’ There was no foundation.”
On prayer.
“My first advice would be to just seek God. Even if the first prayer is, ‘Lord, I believe. Help me with my unbelief.’ Or, ‘Lord, I don’t know if you exist, but if you do will you reveal yourself to me.’ What I have found is that by simply praying, starting, knowing that there truly is… God almighty, creator and sustainer of the universe, [who] wants to hear from his children. His line is never busy, he’s not preoccupied, he never sleeps. Charles Spurgeon said, ‘It should be the duty of every man… each morning to seek the face of God before anyone else.’”
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