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Rachel and I sat to talk last night about the people suffering the aftermath of an earthquake in Nepal, the decision regarding marriage before the Supreme Court, and even longer about the situation in Baltimore and the hurt we feel for all involved. The events seem so huge; the issues involved, so complex; the people needing help, so many. We both wanted so badly to do something to bring healing, reconciliation, help, immediate relief, but what could we possibly contribute?

We began by looking at the sole basis of our fellowship, unity in Christ, and then turned to taking advantage of every means of grace afforded us to foster gospel-centered community that makes Christ supreme in every area of life. In particular, we looked at how small groups

I pointed out a distinction the Bible makes between progressive sanctification and positional sanctification. As we learn together, I thought it would be helpful to highlight the distinction for you again and then show you why this distinction matters for your Christian walk.

The application of 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 sometimes suffers from two unhealthy extremes in contemporary Christian circles: undiscerning "engagement" and exclusivist "holiness". Here are some questions we should be asking to avoid both.

Being “authentic” is popular nowadays, and usually carries with it connotations of casting off all the outward constraints preventing someone from “true self-expression.” But that’s not the sort of authenticity I have in mind or that one should find characterizing Jesus’ church, especially when the church is defined, not by what is inside us but by what is outside us. If there is any casting off to be done, it is to be the casting off of what is inside us

We meet together as a church to help each other live in the good of the gospel daily. And that means motivating each other to follow Jesus with the gospel’s empowering truth(s). We lead each other to drink deeply from the endless fountain of God’s glory in Christ, so that our souls rise with gratitude and run with faith.

In this post, I begin by looking at devotion to biblical truth. From the start, the church devoted itself to the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42; 4:33). Fellowship wasn’t centered on just anything, but on the living word of God, which revealed Christ to them, brought them joy, and shaped their devotion to God, their love for one another, and their witness to the world (Acts 2:41; 6:7; 11:1; 12:24; 1 Cor 15:2; Col 3:16; Jas 1:22).

A new book is out titled, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships, by Matthew Vines. The question the church must answer is this: “Does Vines’s interpretation of the Old and New Testament passages on human sexuality accurately represent what God says about human sexuality?” Several leaders in the evangelical church have already served us well by giving extensive interaction with Vines’s book. The answer to the above question remains No.

The aim of the following posts is to give you a biblical framework on the church, that you might better understand how care groups serve the church’s health. Each post will make observations from the Bible on the nature of the church, also giving vision for how her members function together and clarifying how to walk out this vision in the smaller setting of care group.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers when circumstances such as the one with ISIS transpire, but the Bible instructs us to respond in at least the following five ways. These are not five additional things to “tack on” to your Christian walk; they are the overflow of who God has already made us to be in Christ.