Reformed Basics - The Christian Faith in Catechism

The great preacher Charles Spurgeon once responded, when asked how he reconciled God's sovereignty with human responsibility, that he did not-he never reconciled friends. There is no tension between the authority of the Creator and the freedom of the creature.

What is a covenant? A covenant is a solemn bond, sovereignly administered, between two or more persons with attendant blessings and curses. Or put simply, covenant is the way God relates to His creatures.

Pastor Douglas Wilson talks about how the Scriptures contain many prophecies, and so it is that one of the most important things we can do as Christians is learn how to read them. We are to do more than believe what we read-we are supposed to understand what we are believing.

So if you put your faith on a slide for a microscope, and stare at it for hours, perhaps muttering exhortations to it, the one thing you can be sure of is that it will not grow. But if you learn to look away, if you learn to look to Christ, and if you turn to Scripture, you will find that your faith-precisely because you weren't paying attention to it-has been quietly growing.