The Periodically

It's my turn to blog this week, and it is Vacation Bible Camp week. Dilemma. Am I copping out by letting someone else write for me. Maybe. This blog post by Trevin Wax on the Gospel Coalition site is a much better post than you could squeeze out of me this week. I posted this to my Facebook page and some of you have liked it, so I thought I'd try for an even wider audience here. Here is something to wet your appetite from the post: "I often meet Christians who are uncomfortable with the idea of evangelism. Whenever I dig down to the root of the discomfort, I encounter issues related to the nature of truth, what it means to follow Jesus, and the role of worship.  Here’s a fictional example of how this kind of conversation usually goes…"  As I endeavor to continue equipping the saints at Bethany in evangelism, I think each of us would benefit from reading Trevin's post  here . Remembering the Gospel is for all of us, every day... Pastor Ben

The Apostle Paul instructs the believers in the churches in Galatia to bear one another’s burdens, and tells them that when they bear one another’s burdens they will fulfill of law of Christ (Gal 6:2).   The instruction is clear: Bear burdens. But what is the law of Christ, the law that we fulfill in burden bearing?  The  law of Christ includes the law of love, and the law of love says that believers are to love their neighbors as themselves (Gal 5:14). Followers of Jesus are repeatedly instructed in the New Testament to love one another (John 13:34, 15:12; Rom 12:10; 1 Thess 4:9; 1 Pet 1:22, 4:8; 1 John 3:11, 23; 4:7, 11, 2 John 5). Therefore, we can conclude that bearing one another’s burdens is a practical outworking of the love that believers have for one another. Burden bearing is to be a mark of the Christian. How are we to do this? How do believers bear one another’s burdens? First, we recognize that the command to bear burdens is broad, encompassing numer...