PAULA WEBSTER: "THE DANGER OF FALSE PROFESSIONS & AN UNEXAMINED FAITH"

MP3 Available Here

PAULA WEBSTER, the wife of noted Evangelical Christian apologist and author WILLIAM WEBSTER of Christian Resources (see www.ChristianTruth.com) will address the theme "THE DANGER OF FALSE PROFESSIONS & AN UNEXAMINED FAITH". According to Paula's own testimony, "If you had asked me a few years ago if I was a Christian, I would have responded with an immediate and very emphatic, YES! The question would have surprised me as I had never doubted my salvation. It would never have occurred to me to do so. Having been brought up in a Christian home, I had professed faith in Jesus as a child, and had accepted without question the Bible as the inerrant word of God. I believed, therefore I was a Christian. Though unhappy and rebellious as a teen, I settled down in my twenties to a normal life of marriage and children. I rededicated my life to God and determined to make up for lost time and wasted opportunity. To that end, I applied myself earnestly and diligently. It was my desire to really know God and please Him, so I purposed to achieve this goal beginning with a daily quiet time and prayer. I memorized scripture, read ‘how to’ books, attended Bible studies and conferences and even went witnessing... Years passed and my activity increased. I was a teacher, a leader, a discipler of others. I was doing all the right things and from all appearances, I was doing well. But I knew that in reality I was getting nowhere. It was all mechanical. The deep need and desire of my heart was not being met, and I was no closer to achieving my goal. I felt the frustrated unhappiness and rebellion of my teens beginning to return. Life was still empty and meaningless in spite of all my effort. For all my striving to know God, He was still a distant and impersonal Being of Whom I was much afraid and before Whom I felt continually unclean and unsure. I was growing in my knowledge of facts relating to Jesus, but not growing closer to Him. And although those facts had altered my behavior, checking sin externally to a degree, they hadn’t changed my heart. Every effort to claim verses, to appropriate Christ, or to pray through to victory ended in total failure. I was being conformed to a system of Biblical principles, but not into the image of Jesus Christ. For all my learning and activity, two things were still missing in my life: personal (instead of mere factual) knowledge of Jesus Christ and the capacity to live a holy, obedient life within..."