Bible Tips And Tidbits:
Savoring God’s Word One Bite At A Time.
Remember the Poor
The coronavirus is raging. The stock market is plunging. Panic is spreading. People are hoarding as toilet paper flies off the shelves! The rush to hoard because we can hurt those who can’t afford to hoard. In times of crisis, we should remember the poor. Those who have little to start, lose what little they have when supplies are limited. The first century church obeyed God’s call to care for the poor because they trusted God’s provision for their daily needs. 
Falsely Accused?
Have you ever been falsely accused? Someone has impugned your integrity or questioned your veracity? Perhaps others have circulated stories about you that painted a negative picture. Guilt by association or statements taken out of context were used to undermine your credibility. The stories went viral through social media. Your ministry is threatened because people wonder if you can be trusted to tell the truth. How should you respond? Should you defend yourself? 
 
Our Missional Purpose
God saves us to send us. Every Christian serves Christ’s mission from the moment of conversion to the last breath of life. We must not live aimlessly but purposefully. Paul illustrates the urgency of this mission in Galatians when he tells us that God revealed Christ to him “so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles” (Gal. 1:16). The purpose of saving was sending! Paul did not go up to Jerusalem to be credentialed by the apostles but went straight to Arabia before returning to Damascus (Gal. 1:17). 
 
Who’s More Important?
We put great stock in the appearance of importance. Who is the biggest or tallest, finest, or greatest? The trappings of success become the symbols of power. The church, sadly, succumbs to the world’s measures of importance. Our credentials and endorsements advertise our authority. Who we know and who we follow opens doors in ministry, so we name drop strategically for maximum effect. A hierarchy of reputation rests on the outward appearances of importance, like the size of our church, the success of our ministry, or our circles of fellowship.
Energized for Mission
Christ commissioned His church to carry out a global mission. The strategy of the early church was to divide and conquer. Christ entrusted the gospel to Paul to reach the uncircumcised while He commissioned Peter to lead the mission to the circumcised (Gal. 2:7). We (the modern church) follow in their footsteps to fulfill our mission to reach the world for Christ. Not only did Christ call the church to a global mission, but God also energized the church to carry out the mission.
 
Divide to Multiply
Living organisms grow by division. Cells multiply by dividing. In the human body, for example, almost two trillion cells divide every day. Parent cells divide into daughter cells in the continuous cycle of life. The body of Christ is a living organism, which means the church multiplies by division. We have one mission – to reach the world for Christ – but we must divide to accomplish that mission.
Win/Lose Church Fights
Not all church conflicts should seek win/win results. Some church fights must be win/lose! You are either on the right side or the wrong side, but there is no middle ground. The issue carves a dividing path like a glacier between truth and error, life, and death. The “Great Circumcision Debate” was one of those issues in the early church. Paul has been addressing this debate in the autobiography of his battle for the gospel (Galatians 1-2). The early church was dividing over the issue of circumcision, but Paul did not seek a win/win solution where both sides could save face. 
Battling for the Gospel
We downplay theological disputes today. “Just give them Jesus” or “doctrine divides” are slogans of the modern church. Perhaps these are helpful cautions when it comes to peripheral matters of the faith over which we have too often divided but not the gospel. There can be no compromise over the gospel. Battling with others about the gospel gets messy, even ugly sometimes, as we see in Galatians 2, but we must be willing to divide if the gospel is being corrupted. A “Jesus Lite” gospel is no gospel at all. Click to read more…
Our Fear of Failure
We fear failure. No one wants to work without results, to serve to no end. We set goals, but we face many goal blockers in ministry, which can lead to the fear of failure. Paul, too, feared working in vain (κενός – Phil. 2:16; 1 Thess. 3:5; Gal. 2:2) or for nothing (εἰκῇ – Gal. 4:11). But what does failure look like? Do we measure failure by declining attendance as people go to other churches? Failure for Paul was not that someone would attend another gospel-preaching church but that the two churches would not be united by the true gospel. Click to read more…