WITNESS ~ INSTRUCT ~ NURTURE / Volume 1 Issue 30
Nov 16, 2005
Hi !
In this issue, you'll read:
THE BOOK OF 1st CORINTHIANS - PART FIVE
THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT
COPYRIGHT 2005
A WORD FROM THE EDITOR - THIRTIETH EDITION But for some, this will be just another day. There are those who have no family or friends. There are those who feel as though they have no blessings for which to be thankful. For some, this holiday season will just be a reminder of how much pain and turmoil they are suffering. Matthew 25:34-36; For those of us who are Christians, this is a perfect time to pause and pray for those less fortunate than us. Maybe we will have opportunity to be a blessing to someone in need during this time of Thanksgiving. Maybe we will have the opportunity to help someone with a holiday basket of food or clothing. Or it may be that we are led by the Holy Spirit to invite someone in need to come to our home for dinner and fellowship. Let's not pass up an opportunity to share the love of Jesus Christ, even if it means stepping outside of our comfort zone. Until next time...God bless you in all that you undertake! In Jesus Name, All editions of The W.I.N. E-Mail Newsletter are available on the Internet. To find them, navigate to www.fcgm.org and click on the "Newsletter" link. Feel free to copy as many as you want and pass them out to family and friends. If you would like to be added to our mailing list, send an e-mail containing your name and e-mail address to winsubscribe@fcgm.org. Each morning, read a Scripture passage of your choice. Talk with the Lord as you read his Word. When you are finished, go back and select one or two verses that you believe the Lord is using to speak to your heart. Meditate thoughtfully and prayerfully on what he is saying to you. II. Bible Study In this edition, we will look at the second subsection of 1 Corinthians 7-10. In this subsection, Paul answers the question that they had asked him in their letter to him about the eating of meat that had been offered to idols. Read 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 and answer for yourself the questions associated with it. Type out your answers (or jot them down on a piece of paper) and place them in your Bible for further meditation and study. Read 1 Corinthians 8:1-4 1. How does Paul describe the effects of knowledge in contrast to love? (8:1-2). Read 1 Corinthians 8:5-10 1. What is it that not everyone knows? (8:5-8). Read 1 Corinthians 8:11-13 1. What could destroy the weak brother? (8:11). III. Memory Verse 1. Ask the Lord to help you remember his Word (see John 14:26). 2. Use the version of the Bible you are most familiar with. What you normally read in your Bible is what you need to be memorizing. 3. Don't just memorize the contents of the verse; memorize its "address" (the verse reference) as well. You can do this by following this pattern: Step 1: reference; Step 2: verse content; Step 3: reference. Then repeat steps 1-3. Note that you are quoting the reference twice as many times as you quote the actual verse content. This gives the verse a clear "reference tag." 4. After you have read your memory verse out aloud several times, try going through your memory verse without reading your computer screen. 5. Look up your memory verse in your Bible. Look at its immediate context and read the verses that come before and after your memory verse. 6. Print out your memory verse or jot it down on a piece of paper. Take this paper with you when you go to work or do other daily activities. Meditate on the meaning of the verse throughout the day. 7. During your noon appointment with the Lord, take out your memory verse and go over it again. Talk to the Lord about what this verse means to you personally. 8. In the evening (at either your evening study or your evening devotions), see if you can quote your memory verse from memory. Then, without looking at the memory verse itself, see if you can find it in your Bible. 9. The next day, before you begin committing a new verse to memory, rehearse your previous day's memory verse and see if you can remember it (without cheating!). 10. Finally, at the end of the week (possibly on Sunday), collect all your week's memory verses, rehearse them and see if you can recall them without reading them. Spend a little extra time on any verses you have difficulty recalling. 11. Remember: Don't just memorize a verse. Put it into practice (James 1:22). It is not being able to quote a verse from memory that counts. It is His Word abiding in your heart that counts (John 15:7). When you actually apply a verse consistently to your daily life; that is when you truly know that verse! This article is Copyright © 1999, The Online Bible College. It is used by permission and formatted for presentation in this newsletter. An expert in the Torah (the Law of Moses) asked Jesus the question, "Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" The Law had a total of 613 commandments, and the rabbis and sages had often discussed this question. But in essence, the religious expert was asking, "What matters most to God?" Jesus' primary answer is a quote from the Shema, found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, which is considered the core of God's command to Israel. The Shema begins this way: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might." What does God want from you? Nothing other than a love that is "with all your heart" and "with all your soul" and "with all your might [strength]." Nothing more and nothing less. This is what matters most to God, and this is what he has designed to be the core of the Christian life. The covenant may have changed, but the core issue has not. Read Revelation 2:1-5 In this passage, Jesus speaks to the Ephesian church and starts by commending them in verses 2-3: "I know your works, your labor, your patience...and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name's sake and have not become weary." You can't get a better commendation than that! This is high praise, coming from the mouth of the Lord Jesus himself. Wouldn't you like to get a commendation like that - to have worked hard and persevered, to have endured hardships for the sake of Jesus' name, and not grown weary? Yet Jesus follows this glowing commendation with a rebuke in verse 4: J Oswald Sanders makes this observation: "At first blush this may not seem a matter of tremendous importance against the background of their admirable qualities, but such a view is terribly superficial. Is it a small thing to a wife if her husband abandons the love he had for her at the first? A beautiful home, a large bank account, good social position would be as ashes to her if he withdrew his love. No suffering is so poignant as that of unrequited love."1 What Jesus is saying is simple. As a church, we can be a shining example of all that a congregation should be - diligent, enduring, reaching out to the lost and the dispossessed - and yet have failed in the Greatest Commandment. As a believer, you may "have it all together" and yet still be lacking in what matters most to God. You may regularly give, pray, worship and read your Bible, but still be found wanting in the most important area. So what does Jesus tell the Ephesian church - a church that had received some of the most powerful apostolic input (from Paul and from John)? In verse 5, he says: "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works..." Our love for God must be the prime motivation for all we do, for it is this love that God desires above all else. And it is out of this close love relationship with God that all else in the Christian life flows: our praying, our reading of the Bible, our worshiping, our witness to the lost, our service to the poor and needy. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, (for God and for others), I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." Eugene Peterson, in The Message, paraphrases these verses in a very powerful way: "If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, 'Jump,' and it jumps, but I don't love, I am nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love." Unless otherwise noted: All Scripture is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Welcome to the thirtieth edition of the W.I.N. E-Mail Newsletter. It is only one more week until Thanksgiving. For many, this will be a time to join with family and friends in fun and fellowship. They will be partaking of a big dinner with their favorite trimmings. It will be a time to reflect on the blessings of the past year and to give thanks for them.
Rev. Sam T. Leigh
Presiding Bishop
Freedom Covenant Global Ministries
E-mail:
Website: www.fcgm.org
Bishop's eCorner: www.fcgm.org/ecorner/
Back to top
THE BOOK OF 1st CORINTHIANS - PART FIVE
I. Devotional Reading
2. Who is it that God .knows.? (8:3).
3. What was it the Corinthians "knew"? (8:4).
2. What was Paul telling them to be careful about? (8:9).
3. What effect could their use of their freedom have on someone with a weak conscience? (8:10).
2. Who does Paul that the Corinthians sin against if they choose to exercise their freedom in such a way as to wound their brother? (8:12).
3. What is the yardstick by which we measure everything we do? (8:13).
1 Corinthians 8:6; "yet for us there is only one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live."
Back to top
THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT
Read Matthew 22:35-40
""Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love."
Back to top
COPYRIGHT 2005
This newsletter Copyright © 2005 Freedom Covenant Global Ministries. All Rights Reserved. Individual articles displaying copyrights from other ministries are used by permission, have been formatted for use in this publication, and remain the property of respective ministry. Permission is granted to copy, print, and distribute this newsletter for ministry purposes, whether whole or in part, so long as ALL copyrights remain in place and no copies are printed or distributed for sale or commercial purposes.
Back to top