Bits & Pieces (July 2)

It is hard to believe that we are over halfway through 2022. There has been a lot to rejoice over in the first half of 2022 and a lot to mourn and weep over as well. I pray that as you seek to serve God for the rest of this year that you will be encouraged and strengthened by His Word and that you will have wisdom and grace to do all that He calls you to do.

  • Jesus Changed Everything for Women – “If we could read the Gospels through first-century eyes, Jesus’s treatment of women would knock us to our knees. His longest recorded conversation with any individual was with a Samaritan woman of ill repute (John 4:7–30), and this wasn’t an isolated incident. Jesus repeatedly welcomed women his contemporaries despised.”
  • Seven principles for cultivating a Christian posture toward the world – “What should the Christian’s posture be to a hostile world? Not surprisingly, the question does not allow for a simple answer. The message and model of the New Testament cannot be reduced to a single attitude or strategy. But there are important lessons to learn. Here then are seven principles for cultivating a Christian posture toward our “negative” world.”
  • State of the Bible: Trauma survivors flourish by Scripture engagement – “Scripture-engaged respondents scored 19 percent higher than Bible-disengaged respondents on the six-domain human flourishing index measuring happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability.”
  • Conceited Motherhood: Three Temptations Moms Face – “Jesus Christ is the most humble human who has ever lived. So, to be a humble mom — a mom who fights against “selfish ambition or conceit,” and therefore a mom in the truest, God-given sense of the word — is to look increasingly like Jesus as we look increasingly to Jesus. Only as we realize that he lives to serve his people (us!) will we fight the temptation toward selfishness and long for a heart that looks like his.”
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Growing Together in Service & Christlikeness

This week I have been serving at my church’s weeklong kids camps (what was known as “Vacation Bible School” when I was growing up.)  For someone who is naturally an introvert, the hours of interactions with hundreds of kids can be emotionally draining. However, in His kindness, God always provides the energy and fortitude that I need to serve Him and be an ambassador of His love to the smallest members of our congregation as well as the many community members who attend. While this service area may not be naturally in my wheelhouse, it is one that I am honored to participate in because I know from personal experience how God can use seeds of Scripture planted in childhood to draw a person to Him. A firm foundation of biblical truth is a remarkable gift to give to kids. 

This year this camp came at an interesting time because I have been doing some extensive reading on the issue of ecclesiology (the study of the Church.) It is a compelling dynamic to be reading about God’s purposes for the Church universal and for local congregations, while at the same time spending many hours each day at the place where I personally experience His purposes being worked out. It is a reminder that the Church universal as well as the local body of believers are generous gifts from our Heavenly Father so that our pursuit of Him is not done in isolation, but in community. In His graciousness, God calls us to be part of a local church that teaches His Word, applies His commands, and seeks to represent Him well in the different spheres of influence that He has placed congregants in. As one book reminded me, “By God’s designs, the church is an assembly of redeemed worshippers who together are growing in Christlike holiness.”* The church has a sacred function and as it performs this function, the lives of its members should more closely resemble the life of their Savior. 

What my intensive time of service this week and my reading have both reminded me is that neglecting to actively participate in our local body of believers is detrimental to both our personal relationship with God and our growth in Him. Additionally, when we fail to be a committed member of the Body of Christ as expressed in the ministry of our local congregation, we cause injury to its witness and its outreach. Our church’s impact on the community will be inhibited when we don’t participate as we ought. 

God could have used a variety of analogies to describe the people that He called to Himself. One that He uses most frequently is that of a family. He calls believers His children and as such, all who trust in Him are brothers and sisters in Christ. Let us never overlook what a treasure this is, that we are surrounded by those who love us because Christ first loved them (I Jn 4:19). Let us never forget the joy of pursuing Christ in community with others who share the same goal and have the same aim. And let us not neglect to, collectively and committedly, expend ourselves in service so that many more can become part of God’s family. 


 *John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth. (Crossway, 2017, p. 777).

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