Our lives are ever running lower on time to love and serve the Lord. We cannot make earthly matters, including our home, our chief priority in favour of the cause of Christ and of souls. Are we living too much for things that are doomed to pass away?

Spiritual knowledge, though vital, is merely ego-inflating if unaccompanied by active love for Christ, for His cause, and for souls, as well as by an active conscience warning of sin, and urging to Christian duties. Here is how love and conscience work to make knowledge effective, and to keep us humble.

Paul earns his own living to avoid hindering the Gospel. However, God commands the normal support of preachers. Here is the obligation of the persuasive offer of the Gospel, and it is consistent with election and regeneration. Also, maintaining fervour for souls, and the woe pronounced against slackness.

To be saved by the Gospel means to live for the Gospel. 1 Corinthians 9 is often used to justify compromise with the world, so called 'front line' living, even patronising pubs and clubs. It actually condemns this, presenting real dedication to the Gospel, gaining much instrumentality.

In the wilderness, the Israelites were punished not only for idolatry and fornication, but also of wanting the foods of Egypt, being dissatisfied with spiritual provisions, and for 'worldly' worship. Astonishingly, the latter offences are widely approved in churches today. Here is the counsel of the Apostle Paul.

Here are eight kinds of trial and seven kinds of temptations possibly arising from them, with God's assurances of how He overrules to fix the limits of these, and helps His people overcome and bear them. Here are the 'ways of escape' enabling us to overcome them all.

'The communion of the blood of Christ' is a remarkable term speaking of partnership or sharing with a divine person. Yet Christ is not known by touch, voice or bodily sensation, but by faith. Here is the way in which we know strong personal spiritual familiarity with Christ.

Seeking the wellbeing of others above our own is a key objective for Christ's people. How we speak of others as well as to them, and how we help them in deed must be Christ like if we hope to be used by Him, and have spiritual fulfilment.

Paul tells women to wear the veil of their society, which symbolised subjection. Our society has not had this dress code for decades. Hats no longer signify subjection. Is Paul's requirement to be literally obeyed today, or may the principle be observed in a different way?