I am sure that you know of at least one person who has worn a shirt, posted on the internet, written on their face, or otherwise through various media espoused a short little blip of wisdom or encouragement by way of posting one poignant verse of scripture. The point of this is presumably to condense scripture so that it is powerful, yet brief enough to shout at someone as you drive by on an interstate. Let's use Jeremiah 29:11 as an example.
Here's what people take away from this verse: God loves me (check) and has a plan for me (hmmm... smells fishy in context) and therefore everything will turn out with me being happy (yeah, definitely not) and everything being okay (depends on your definition of okay).
Here's what the verse means in context. God has a plan for Israel. That plan is that He is going to restore them. This will be accomplished by them submitting themselves to exile to Babylon. We later learn that the people that stayed behind were no longer part of Israel; they became the Samaritans. The word 'Samaritan' sounds good because of Jesus' parable about one dude (again, context) and the Billy Graham ministry with a questionable name, but it isn't such a positive thing here.
There are some books and verses of the Bible where using one verse is pretty useful. Proverbs is pretty much a one verse kind of deal. John 3:16 is not. Philippians
4:13 is not. Isaiah 26:8 is not. In these cases (and many others), it is simply a matter of bad practice to use one verse of scripture and nothing more. Use your head and enjoy the full truth of scripture!
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