Shirley: Sola Fide

(sew la fee day) —Latin for "by faith alone"

We are very excited to have our third consecutive year of VBS at Nokendai Bible Fellowship (NBF) provided by you, the Lighthouse Christian Church. There are not words to adequately convey our gratitude for all of you who come to minister to us and those who continue to pray for us.

As the Japan Missions Team is already making preparations, I wanted to share what has been on my heart for several months now, a guiding principle for us at NBF in Yokohama, Japan. What we have learned is to make sure people understand they can go to God directly, emphasizing that no person, or organization should serve as an intermediate. We know as soon as they walk through our doors that he or she will stop coming to church on some given date. Jobs move families periodically, junior high school becomes very time-intensive for kids, weekend sports clubs also take children away from us, so it is important to optimize the time we have together. Our messages are exceedingly simple: turn to Jesus for everything in prayer, in worship, in good times or bad. Life in Christ is really not that complicated and church life is meant to refresh and renew our souls and our lives, not to drain us dry. If people really do meet Jesus during their time with us at NBF, we have accomplished what we have set out to do. It is then up to each person to decide if he or she wants to walk with Jesus on a daily basis, hence sola fide, a very personal and individual decision. We pray that this, too, is what you will be praying for the people of NBF with us.

Someday, we hope to open a coffee shop with this name. Sounds pretty in Japanese too ソラフィデ. More importantly, we hope people will ask us what it means and then apply it to their lives by embracing the One who gave it all for us!

I found this quote on the web by John MacArthur:
"No doctrine is more important to evangelical theology than the doctrine of justification by faith alone—the Reformation principle of sola fide. Martin Luther rightly said that the church stands or falls on this one doctrine.

History provides plenty of objective evidence to affirm Luther's assessment. Churches and denominations that hold firmly to sola fide remain evangelical. Those who have strayed from the Reformation consensus on this point inevitably capitulate to liberalism, revert to sacerdotalism, embrace some form of perfectionism, or veer off into worse forms of apostasy." (from Pulpit-Shepherds' Fellowship, 2004)

I will end this entry with Pauline scripture, since I started with a Pauline concept.

"I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:3-6

Amen