There is a danger of making a particular verse, or part of a verse, your flagship (aka, your purpose statement).  When you pull out just a small snip-it of scripture and build all you think, believe or do around that one piece you can easily loose sight of what that scripture means as a whole.  Making a verse our flagship inadvertently fosters leaving out pieces of what that verse means. Instead we wind up treating that verse like the meaning we assign to it is the whole truth of what the verse means.  The overarching mistake in this is we fail to understand the verse in light of context and other biblical passages.

All of the Bible is true.  But not one part of the word stands alone apart from the rest.  The word of God is given to us as a whole, as a unit.  Within that unit there are subsections that are individual books, then chapters, then verses.  (note: your favorite verse is in a book and chapter in the bible.  Therefore, as good as that verse is, it does not stand alone apart from the Bible or the book or the chapter, or the paragraph or even (if applicable) the verse it is in.)  Each verse has a context.  Have you studied and considered the context that your favorite verse is in?

The dangers of making your verse your flagship:

• You miss the actual meaning of the verse.
  • It usually doesn’t start that way, but it often ends that way.
  • Example: John 3:16
    • The point of John 3:16 is Gods love and our surrender.
    • But many have grabbed this verse and tried to force it into a box that says, ‘my will be done’ on the side rather than God’s will.
    • We hear it all the time, ‘whosoever will.’  As though the only question in the issue of Salvation is the will of the person.  But that is not true.
    • In John 3:16 we see this: “For God so loved (Gods heart) the world (the object of His affection) that He gave (His action) His only begotten Son (What God gave for the object of His affection) that whosoever believes (the description of those who are the recipients of the gift) in Him (The Gift) shall not perish, (Our deliverance from eternal suffering by God’s grace) but have eternal life. (our salvation given to us by God.)
    • See how much is in John 3:16?  The vast majority of it is actually about God.  The only part that is about us is an implied part of our surrender to this Great God and His gift of Grace.
  • So when we start saying ‘whosoever will’ as a rallying cry, we focus all our energy and understanding about this verse on one part of the verse that is actually far outweighed by other points in the verse when we look at just how much Jesus was saying.
• You run the risk of misleading new believers.
  • New believers don’t know.  Many of our churches are unaware of this.  They think that everybody went to VBS as a kid and knows the basics.  Not true.  We live in an age where more and more are completely unfamiliar with the church.  All they know of you is what their atheist neighbor told them and what the news said about a church in another state.  (Yes, it is a shock to some of them to learn you are not like a certain protesting church in Kansas.)
  • So when we teach people scripture, we have to teach the actual, contextual meaning of the passage or verse.  It is the primary way people receive biblical education.
  • Our flagship verses are often mishandled, misrepresented, and therefore misunderstood.
  • Our goal is to not proliferate those wrong teachings (ok, you didn’t like me saying ‘wrong teaching,’ how about incomplete?) incomplete teaching among those who do not know the scriptures to begin with.
• You force your teachers and leaders to handle your flagship verse in ways they otherwise might not.
  • Depending on the teacher, you might remove this verse from the pastors arsenal of verses because of the misconceptions tied to it.
  • Verses that are treated as a flagship are often used in one side of a debate.  Hence they are divisive.
  • This forces your teacher to make choices that are not usually the best use of his time or yours.
    • Example 1: A pastor may abandon the use of this verse.  – Not wanting to be seen as taking sides in a disagreement between two groups of people, both of whom he must pastor.
    • Example 2: He may have to devote extra time to explain your flagship verse and the questions it is intended to answer biblically.  This is no doubt a needed effort, but still better if the misconception had never been introduced to the church in the first place.

Flagship verses are usually intended to convey a point.  But they are often pulled out of context so badly that the original meaning of the text is lost.  You wind up using the verse to make your point and convey your view, but Christ’s view has been (usually unintentionally) discarded.

So when you study the Bible, when you memorize scripture, when you share verses with others, be sure you have understood the context and shared it along with the context that is found in the Bible.

Context matters.  Learn what your Bible really says.

“Though he slay me, I will hope in him.” – Job 13:15

When things are good, it is easy to offer thanks to God for his blessings.  But when things go wrong, we immediately start asking what we did wrong to deserve this, or why God would be so uncaring toward us?  But at no point are we told that we should respond this way.

I know when I struggle I find myself turning inward.  I do not pray or trust or read His word.  I find someway to be focussed on myself.  Now don’t get me wrong, I could justify any of it… I might say, I’ll go visit so and so to encourage them.  Or I might say, I need a break, I’ll go see a movie.  Not that these are bad things, and sometimes I do it out of a sincere heart.  But not all the time.  Sometimes, I am hiding from my discomfort, my pain, my struggle.  Instead of turning to Christ and trusting Him on days like that, I turn to my own ideas.  The result is just that much more time spent away from where I need to be.

The bottom line in my mind is this is a personal temptation.  Temptation to put my faith in myself instead of God.  This is exactly what the Devil would have me do.  But Christ was clear when he said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  I trust him with my eternal soul, why not with my daily peace?  The answer is I should in fact trust him with my daily peace.  To choose not to is to turn essentially to a false god.  (a false god named ‘self.’)

Turning to that false god is often taken lightly in our world.  But turning to false gods is a life and death situation.  Ex.  “You shall have no other gods before me.”  and  “You shall love The Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength.”   Life and death.  Do we look at it as a life and death question?

I know three men who understood it.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.  If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.  But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

– Daniel 3:16-18