When I was in seventh grade, I made a terrible decision and betrayed the confidence of a friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As puberty set in, I could sense that all of my friendships were beginning to change, and that scared me. One of my closest friends was becoming beautiful and popular and unpredictable: sometimes she acted like we were still best friends, and sometimes she acted like she hated me. I was mousy and bookish, a bonafide Goody Two-shoes and terribly scared of being left behind. One day, my friend wrote me a note and confessed that she had a crush on a boy we both knew. To this day, I have no idea why I did what I did next. Maybe I thought I was being helpful to my friend, shortcutting all the back-and-forth between boy and girl. Or maybe it was easier to preemptively destroy this friendship, rather than wait for its inevitable come-apart. But regardless of my reasons, I took her note and handed it directly to the boy she liked, breaking her confidence and spilling the beans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s just say, there are some letters that you\u2019re never meant to share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thank God, the gospel is nothing like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Paul wrote letters to the early church, he did not show favoritism or any ounce of secrecy. He didn’t gossip, spread rumors, or betray confidences. From the confines of prison, he wrote words of encouragement and instruction to friends and churches all across the known world. And as those letters passed from hand to hand\u2014from house to house\u2014he intended for his letters to travel among the established churches so that even from a small prison cell, he preached the message of the gospel. These letters reinforced the courage and fortitude of the early church, a church that was growing despite the context of oppression and persecution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Colossians 4:16, Paul instructed the church at Colossae to read his letter aloud and exchange it with a nearby church so they could read another letter he had originally sent to Laodicea. The two cities were approximately ten miles apart\u2014incredibly close by modern standards\u2014and the exchange of letters would mean they each had a chance to read both. When I first read this verse, I felt shocked. After all, there is no book of \u201cLaodiceans\u201d in the Bible. But no matter what happened to the second letter, it\u2019s amazing to think just how hard Christians have worked over the course of history in order to preserve the sanctity and veracity of Paul\u2019s original letters so that you and I can read and receive wisdom from them from where we sit, nearly 2,000 years later. May we continue to heed his instruction to share these words with our friends and neighbors, as far as humanly possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Written by Claire Gibson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was in seventh grade, I made a terrible decision and betrayed the confidence of a friend. As puberty set in, I could sense that all of my friendships were beginning to change, and that scared me. One of my closest friends was becoming beautiful and popular and unpredictable: sometimes she acted like we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":71282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[289],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philippiansandcolossians"],"acf":{"hero_background_image":false,"author_name":"","author_bio":"","guest_social_media":false,"related_plans":[71272],"weekly_truth":false,"grace_day":false,"share_text":"#SheReadsTruth","devotional_text":"SHARING THE LETTER<\/b> When I was in seventh grade, I made a terrible decision and betrayed the confidence of a friend.<\/p> As puberty set in, I could sense that all of my friendships were beginning to change, and that scared me. One of my closest friends was becoming beautiful and popular and unpredictable: sometimes she acted like we were still best friends, and sometimes she acted like she hated me. I was mousy and bookish, a bonafide Goody Two-shoes and terribly scared of being left behind. One day, my friend wrote me a note and confessed that she had a crush on a boy we both knew. To this day, I have no idea why I did what I did next. Maybe I thought I was being helpful to my friend, shortcutting all the back-and-forth between boy and girl. Or maybe it was easier to preemptively destroy this friendship, rather than wait for its inevitable come-apart. But regardless of my reasons, I took her note and handed it directly to the boy she liked, breaking her confidence and spilling the beans.<\/p> Let\u2019s just say, there are some letters that you\u2019re never meant to share.<\/p> Thank God, the gospel is nothing like that.<\/p> When Paul wrote letters to the early church, he did not show favoritism or any ounce of secrecy. He didn't gossip, spread rumors, or betray confidences. From the confines of prison, he wrote words of encouragement and instruction to friends and churches all across the known world. And as those letters passed from hand to hand\u2014from house to house\u2014he intended for his letters to travel among the established churches so that even from a small prison cell, he preached the message of the gospel. These letters reinforced the courage and fortitude of the early church, a church that was growing despite the context of oppression and persecution.<\/p> In Colossians 4:16, Paul instructed the church at Colossae to read his letter aloud and exchange it with a nearby church so they could read another letter he had originally sent to Laodicea. The two cities were approximately ten miles apart\u2014incredibly close by modern standards\u2014and the exchange of letters would mean they each had a chance to read both. When I first read this verse, I felt shocked. After all, there is no book of \u201cLaodiceans\u201d in the Bible. But no matter what happened to the second letter, it\u2019s amazing to think just how hard Christians have worked over the course of history in order to preserve the sanctity and veracity of Paul\u2019s original letters so that you and I can read and receive wisdom from them from where we sit, nearly 2,000 years later. May we continue to heed his instruction to share these words with our friends and neighbors, as far as humanly possible.<\/p>","share_image_height":"640","day_number":"26","scripture":"Colossians 4:16-18, Hebrews 3:12-14, Hebrews 10:23-25, 2 Peter 3:15-18","available":true,"ad_banner_name":"","ad_banner_image":false,"ad_banner_url":"","songs":"","key_verse":"","key_verse_reference":"","background_image":false,"background_color":"#FBF7F3","scripture_references":false,"share_image":false,"show_ad":true,"ad_override":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\r\nby Claire Gibson<\/i>
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