The Mileses

Paul and Olena Miles with Grace Abroad Ministries

independence

Three reasons why you do not want Jeremiah 29:11 to be about you

​Have you ever seen a conversation like this take place between two believers?

​Believer 1: How is life going, Believer 2?
Believer 2: Oh, life is terrible! My dog left me and I stepped on a LEGO. Things will never get better. Blah blah blah.
Believer 1: Oh no. Be encouraged! The Bible says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Believer 2: Oh, wow! You’re right! Everything is just swell. I think I’ll ride off into the sunset now.

​Believer 1 has just quoted Jer 29:11. If we look at the context of this passage, I think we’ll find that he has actually misused this particular verse (though, I’m sure his intentions were good).

​Now, Jer 29:11 is a source of encouragement for many believers and I don’t want to rob anyone of encouragement. So, I have compiled a list of three reasons why we should rejoice that this passage is not about us. If Jer 29:11 was indeed about us, then:
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What does the word, “baptize,” mean?

Here are some samples of Greek literature that were written before or around the same time as the New Testament. They all use a particular word in Greek and you’ll find the English translation of this word in boldface. Read the passages and see if you can come up with an idea of what the word means:
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Read the Bible like an Architect Part II

This is Part II of a two-part series.   Read Part I.

We are reading the Bible like architects by using what we know to find what we don’t know. In the last article, we looked at the core of Jas 2:14-26 and saw that “justify” only means “to declare righteous.” God calls someone righteous when he believes and people call someone righteous when they see his good works. For example, Abraham was justified by and before God by faith and he was justified by and before men by works.

Here are nine easy things we noticed about Jas 2:21-25 in Part I:
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Read the Bible like an Architect Part I

​When I was in High School, I took an architecture class that I especially enjoyed. We got to use paper, right angles, compasses, and other cool instruments that architects use along with our knowledge of geometry to solve whatever problems the teacher presented to us. Often the problems involved taking limited information and using it to extract other information. He would always say the same thing:

​Use what you know to find what you don’t know.

​That’s some solid advice. Once we establish that something is true, we can use it to make sense of things that we don’t know or don’t understand. The applications of this advice go far beyond High School architecture; it’s essentially how we progress in science and technology. It is also a fundamental concept to interpreting documents, whether they be laws, historical records, or even the Bible.
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Judge not?

Many people are quick to quote the first two words of Matthew 7:

​Judge not […] (Matt 7:1a KJV)

​But, did you know that in the rest of the chapter, there are three judgments that Jesus tells us to make about people? Let’s take a look at what Jesus says in the rest of the chapter and see if we can reconcile it with the entirety of Matthew 7:1.[Read More]

In 2 minutes, you will know 30% of NT word occurrences.

Say, “kai.” Now, say, “ho.” “Kai. Ho.” Kinda like that song from Slumdog Millionaire.

In Greek, “ho” means “the” and “kai” means “and.” In the New Testament, these two words are used 29,028 times (technically, ho will change forms in different situations, but it’s still basically the same word). Since there are only 138,162 words in the New Testament, you now know 21% of word occurrences in the NT. Congratulations!
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