The Christian Compass…
Saturday, 15 August 2026
Welcome to This Week's Christian Compass!
Welcome back to The Christian Compass — your Saturday round-up of everything we've taught this week, gathered into one place. One thread has run through every day: what is written must be tested, taken up, and lived out.
We've walked it out day by day — on Monday, worldly thinking dressed up in Bible clothes; on Tuesday, the truth that sets you free — and the error that never will; on Wednesday, the sword of the Spirit and how to handle it; on Thursday, a great door and many adversaries; and on Friday, Part 6 of our Christian Man series — the man in the church. Then we've set five simple challenges to turn it all into action, and pulled out this week's key takeaways.
And to round it off, two bonus teachings you'll only find here — we open with Written For Us, But Not Written To Us! and close with Who's Carrying the Torch?
So put the kettle on, open your Bible alongside us, and let's get back to basics together…
With Christ's love,
Dave & Elaine
Weekly Inspirational Reflections: A weekly segment offering spiritual insights and biblical reflections to inspire and strengthen your Christian Walk…
Written For Us, But Not Written To Us!
Why the Old Testament is for our learning — and why the New Testament is the letter with your name on it…
Every word in your Bible is God's Word. But not every word of it is God's word to you. Get hold of that one distinction and half the fog you have ever felt reading Scripture will lift.
Paul settles it in a single line: For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope [Romans 15:4 KJV]. For our learning — not as our covenant, and not as our commandments. He says it again with Israel's wilderness years in view: Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition [1 Corinthians 10:11 KJV].
Think of it like opening somebody else's post by mistake. Every word inside is true, and you learn a great deal about whoever wrote it — but your name is not on that envelope. The sacrifices, the feasts, the sabbaths, the clean and unclean meats, the temple and the civil law were all given to Israel, under a covenant God made with Israel. We read them and we learn who our God is — His holiness, His justice, His patience, His mercy that never runs dry. What we do not do is lift Israel's commandments off the page and strap them onto the back of a born-again believer as though nothing had changed.
And something did change. Jesus said, Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil [Matthew 5:17 KJV]. Every shadow met its substance in Him — but the body is of Christ [Colossians 2:17 KJV] — and when the substance arrives, you stop living in the shadow. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old [Hebrews 8:13 KJV]. The law did its work, and did it well: the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ [Galatians 3:24 KJV]. A schoolmaster is a wonderful thing — until the day you leave school.
So open an epistle and look at the address line. To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints [Romans 1:7 KJV]. That is not backstory. That is a letter written to the body of Christ, to people on this side of the cross with the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, because God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son [Hebrews 1:1-2 KJV].
Here is where it stops being theory and becomes your quiet time. When you open the Old Testament, ask three plain questions. Who is God speaking to here? What does this show me about God? And what does the New Testament say to me about it? That last question is where your obedience is shaped, because that is where your name is on the envelope.
That is what Paul meant by rightly dividing the word of truth [2 Timothy 2:15 KJV] — not cutting the Bible up, but reading it the way God wrote it. Read the Old to know your God. Read the New to know your walk. Then be doers of the word, and not hearers only [James 1:22 KJV], and you will walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing [Colossians 1:10 KJV]…
Weekly Review: exploring our daily journey of building strong spiritual foundations - read it on the blog and watch the matching short video on our Back to Basics: Christian Living YouTube channel.
Something to Think About: Monday 10/08/26
📖 Read 👉 Worldly Thinking in Bible Clothes!
The modern church is in real danger: worldly, motivational, feel-good talks have become the norm, with a verse or two wrapped around them so they sound biblical when they are not. This is worldly thinking in Bible clothes — fables honoured as "modern-day parables," doctrines of devils that arrive smiling and feed the soul while starving the spirit. The answer is not better motivation but a return to basics: the Word preached plainly, taken exactly, and obeyed daily…
▶️ Watch 👉 Worldly Thinking in Bible Clothes!
Messages from the Outpost: Tuesday 11/08/26
📖 Read 👉 The Truth That Sets You Free!
Truth sets you free — but only truth. Error rarely looks dangerous; it comes polished, warm and quotable, dressing the world up as the Word, and it leaves people comfortable and captive rather than free. False teaching feeds the soul while the spirit starves — and when the blind follow the blind, both fall, for each of us answers for what we believed. Real freedom comes from continuing in Christ's Word: search the Scriptures for yourself, test everything by the Word and not by how it made you feel, come out from what is false whatever it costs, and be a doer of the Word and not a hearer only. Walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing [Colossians 1:10 KJV] — free indeed, because you continue in the truth…
▶️ Watch 👉 The Truth That Sets You Free!
Write This Down: Wednesday 12/08/26
📖 Read 👉 Sword of the Spirit!
Of all the images God could have chosen, He calls His Word a sword — the Spirit's own weapon, placed in the born-again believer's hand to be used, not admired from a distance. It is living and sharp, dividing soul from spirit and cutting truth clean from error. For the discerning heart the lesson is plain: don't measure teaching by feeling, measure it by what is written. Learn the blade, keep it sharp, and draw it as the Lord did — it is written…
▶️ Watch 👉 Sword of the Spirit!
Messages from the Outpost: Thursday 13/08/26
📖 Read 👉 A Great Door — and Many Adversaries!
Paul held two truths in one breath — a great, effectual door and many adversaries — because in the work of God they come together. At Back to Basics: Christian living we have watched God open a door no man could have engineered, and we have felt the opposition that gathers around it. But much of that backlash is not really against us; it is against the message that you are called to do something with the Word you hear. We will not shrink the door to shrink the opposition. We will keep calling believers off the fence and onto their feet — to build on the Rock by doing the sayings of Christ. The door is God's; the adversaries are on a leash; and the fruit, thank God, is already coming through…
▶️ Watch 👉 A Great Door — and Many Adversaries!
Back to Basics Teaching Blog: Friday 14/08/26
📖 Read 👉 Part 6 — The Man in the Church
A Christian man is not simply a believer — he is a member of the body of Christ, a working part fitted together with other believers in a local church. Christ purchased His church with His own blood; forsaking the assembly is not a personal preference, it is a warned-against drift. The church is a body, not an audience: it grows as every joint supplies its part. A Christian man in the church is committed (planted in a faithful fellowship), present (he shows up when the doors are open), useful (he serves with the gift God has given him), and accountable (he is known, sharpened, and shepherded by brothers and elders). Spectator Christianity is not Christianity — a Christian man supplies his joint to the body…
▶️ Watch 👉 Part 6 - The Man in the Church
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Living Out Our Faith: Weekly Challenges! A practical guide offering weekly steps to apply your spiritual learning. These challenges turn Bible teachings into daily habits through simple, doable actions…
This Week's Walk-It-Out Challenge
Everything this week has pointed the same way: the Word must be tested, trusted, taken up and lived. It isn't enough to spot the error doing the rounds — we have to handle the sword ourselves and take our place in the body of Christ. So here are five small, doable challenges, one for each day. Don't try to swallow them whole. Take one, start today, and let obedience become a habit…
- Monday: Take one teaching you've heard lately and hold it up against the Bible — if it isn't there in plain words, let it go, however good it made you feel.
- Tuesday: Search the Scriptures for yourself — read one passage in context in your own KJV Bible before you read anybody's opinion on it.
- Wednesday: Learn one verse by heart and then use it — answer one worry, temptation or lie this week with it is written.
- Thursday: Do the one thing God has told you to do that you've been putting off because of the opposition — the door is His, and the adversaries are on a leash.
- Friday: Supply your joint — do one practical thing for your local church this week: turn up, serve where you're needed, or encourage one believer by name.
You'll not manage any of this in your own strength, and you were never meant to. Lean on the Holy Spirit, take it one step at a time, and let this week's Word become this week's walk. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good [1 Thessalonians 5:21 KJV].
This Week's Key Takeaways:
Here's the whole week gathered into five lines — the heart of what God has been saying. Read them slowly, and let each one settle before you move on…
- Worldly thinking in Bible clothes still starves the spirit — take the Word plainly and obey it daily — [2 Timothy 4:3-4 KJV]
- Only truth sets free; error leaves people comfortable and captive — [John 8:31-32 KJV]
- The Word is the Spirit's sword — put into your hand to be used, not admired from a distance — [Ephesians 6:17 KJV]
- Where God opens a great door, adversaries gather — never shrink the door to shrink the opposition — [1 Corinthians 16:9 KJV]
- A Christian is a member of the body, not a face in an audience — supply your joint — [Ephesians 4:16 KJV]
One thread ties them together: what is written must be tested, taken up, and lived out. Carry one truth above into the week ahead — that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work [Colossians 1:10 KJV].
Standing Strong in Faith! You are equipped with God's strength to build an unshakeable faith—one that will inspire generations to come!
Who's Carrying the Torch?
When this Bible-believing generation is gone, who stands up with the Word in their hands?
Here is a question worth sitting with. When this Bible-believing generation is gone — the men and women who still open the Book, still believe it, and still teach it plainly — who is standing behind us to carry the torch?
Scripture shows how quickly it can go. Joshua's generation watched God work with their own eyes. Then read what came next: And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel [Judges 2:10 KJV]. One generation. No war, no persecution — simply a failure to hand it on. Nobody snatched the torch away; it was quietly put down.
Paul told us how that happens: For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears [2 Timothy 4:3-4 KJV]. Notice who does the gathering — the people. A congregation that wants comfort will always find somebody willing to sell it, and so we end up with speakers who can hold a room but cannot handle a Bible. That is not a shortage of talent. It is a shortage of conviction.
But God has a method, and He has never withdrawn it: And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also [2 Timothy 2:2 KJV]. Count the links — Paul, Timothy, faithful men, others also. Four generations in one verse, and not a platform, conference or college in sight. And mark the word: faithful. Not gifted. Not marketable. Faithful. He gave the ministry for the very same purpose — for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ [Ephesians 4:11-12 KJV]. Equipping the saints, not replacing them.
And where did Timothy come from? Not a leadership programme — a kitchen table. Paul reminds him of the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice [2 Timothy 1:5 KJV], and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures [2 Timothy 3:15 KJV]. Two ordinary women with an open Bible raised a man who pastored a church and received two letters we are still learning from today. So never despise the small setting. The next teacher may be sitting at your own table.
So get the Word into yourself properly, rightly dividing the word of truth [2 Timothy 2:15 KJV]. Teach somebody — one person, with a Bible open between you. Teach them to check you, like the Bereans who searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so [Acts 17:11 KJV]. And pray, because the harvest is His: Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest [Matthew 9:37-38 KJV].
God is not short of a next generation. He is looking for faithful people who will commit what they have received to somebody else. The torch is in your hand while you are still here — do not put it down. Pass it on…
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