True Encouragement From Our True God
Our spiritual life shouldn't be complicated - just listen, believe...
What does it look like to ‘live on mission’ for Jesus? The Apostle Paul encourages Christians to make the people around us our focus - learning their stories, joining them in their activities, and becoming a part of their world. As we put our own preferences and pursuits aside and adapt to the people God puts in our path, we’ll find ourselves with incredible opportunities to share the hope of the Gospel.
Would you surrender a right you’re entitled to if it meant someone else would be able to experience the Gospel? The Apostle Paul sets a high bar for how Christians should think about the things we choose to do or not do, always encouraging us to think about the good of others and the good of the Gospel before we consider what benefit we might receive. It’s a call to selfless service.
What does it look like to put others’ needs before our own preferences? Christianity affords a wide variety of freedom, but that freedom comes with a responsibility to think of the people around us first. If something we choose to do will cause someone else to struggle, we’re called to give up that freedom for their good. Following the model of Jesus, we can love and serve others by limiting our own freedom for the cause of the gospel.
Is it better to be married or single? While marriage can often be held up in the church as a goal for everyone to attain, the Apostle Paul reminds the church that remaining single has great advantages in the Christian life. Singleness can be seen as a gift from God, allowing time and attention to be focused on building His Kingdom and growing deeper in a relationship with Christ. And married or single, Paul encourages us all to keep our focus off of the distractions of the world, and instead focus on the eternity to come.
God designed marriage to be a lifelong commitment, and yet the reality of our broken world means marriages all-too-often are broken apart. What does the Bible say about marriages that end? Does God allow for divorce in certain circumstances? What about remarriage? In the midst of brokenness, we can learn many things about God’s purpose in marriage and understand how seriously He views the commitments we make to one another.
God designed our sexuality to be expressed within a lifelong, committed marriage relationship between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation, partnership, pleasure, purity and remembering the union of Christ and the church. As our world drifts further away from God’s design for sex, we’re called to be different - to follow God’s design and direction for our bodies and relationships.
All sin is destructive, but sexual sin is particularly damaging. It’s for this reason that God puts very specific guardrails around sexuality. As followers of Jesus, honoring God includes resisting the temptation toward sexual sin, running to Jesus, and leaning on his strength to find freedom. The first step is bringing sin into the light and experiencing the forgiveness and transformation only a faith in Jesus can bring.
Conflict is an inevitable part of life in this broken world. When conflict arises between followers of Jesus, the way we resolve that conflict says a lot about whether or not we follow the example of love to which Jesus calls us. The world tempts us to always want to ‘win’ when conflict appears, but the Apostle Paul reminds us that our first priority is to love one another well, always eager to maintain unity within the church family as we serve as witnesses to a lost world.
God takes the integrity of His church seriously. When we encounter someone in sin within the church family, our responsibility is to call it out in love, praying always for repentance and restoration. But our first look should always be inward, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal those areas in which we struggle. With encouragement from our brothers and sisters in Christ, we walk with humility to worship and honor Jesus Christ through whom we receive the gift of grace and freedom from sin.
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