Bible study series: week 6: Identity and Prayer/Meditation

Identity and Prayer/Meditation

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn how to live freely and lightly. (Matthew 11:28-30 Message)”

Bible study series: week 5: Money and Materialism; Frugality and Sacrifice

Money and Materialism: Frugality and Sacrifice

 

1 Timothy 6:10: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Bible study series: week 4: Gossip and Silence

Gossip and Silence

Ephesians 4:29: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Bible study series: week 3: The Heart and Solitude

The Heart and Solitude

Verses about the Heart:

Proverbs 4:20-24 reminds us to keep the words of God's wisdom "in the midst of your heart," and that from there "they are life to those who find them, and health to all their whole body." (vs. 21-22 NAS) Then comes the exhortation, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life." (vs. 23).

Bible study series: week 2: Pride and Secrecy

Pride and Secrecy

We all know that Pride is a deep issue of the heart that we all struggle with. Here are some verses about pride and humility, followed by a description of the spiritual discipline of secrecy from the book: Spirit of the Disciplines, by Dallas Willard. Then there are some thought questions to think about.

Bible study series: week 1: Spiritual Formation and Spiritual Disciplines

A few years ago, I did a bible study series with one of my small groups addressing different issues of the heart and a relevant spiritual discipline to help "train" that issue of the heart. We started with a vision for our small group and an article by Dallas Willard called: How the disciple lives naturally comes out of who the disciple is. It was an awesome and fruitful series, so here is week number one and the following posts will be weeks 2-6.

Goals/ things to think about for Bible study this year:

What does it mean to be a Christian?

What does it mean to be a Christian? On one hand, there are some simple and basic answers. But on the other hand, there are some profound, complex aspects to the internal and external outworking of what it means to be a Christian (as an individual and community/church). In a sense, it takes a lifetime to increasingly live into and come to an experiential knowledge of what it means to be a Christian--a believer in and follower of Jesus. Here are a few thoughts on what it means to be a Christian.

A few months ago Tom came to see that things were not quite right in his life. In his honest, quiet moments, he felt alone, lost, broken, superficial, and empty inside. He did not know what was truly real about God, himself, reality, and life after death, and he did not know what a truly good, significant life looked like.

What am I to do with the Bible?

What to do with the Bible

by rev. w. h. pike

THE Bible is wonderful because it gives us a knowledge of God, of men, of the Universe, and of Redemption. No other book can be compared to it in this respect, but it not only informs us about these important truths, but it also tells us what we are to do with it. We have within the Bible itself instruction as to our attitude toward it

We are exhorted to:

How shall I Study My Bible?

How Shall I Study My Bible?

by frederic w. farr, d. d.

PEOPLE are always asking, how shall I study the Bible? What is the best method? There is no short cut, no royal road, no magic method. Say to such an inquirer, “Read the Bible over and over again—not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but many, many times.” And that is all any one can do. Read it until you become familiar, cognizant of its contents, until you are so familiar with your Bible, be it Bagster or Oxford, that you can close your eyes and visualize the passage by locating it upon a particular page just where it belongs.

In riding upon a railroad train, you hear the trainmen call out the stations, and you refer to your time card to verify the call as each station is passed, and you wonder at the trained memory of the man who can repeat that long list of way stations without a mistake, and you ask him how he ever does it, and he smiles and replies that he has done it so long it is automatic, done without thought and without effort; and so the best product of Bible study becomes spontaneous and involuntary. You have read the Bible so frequently, so thoughtfully, so earnestly, so prayerfully that it comes to you without direct effort on your part where to locate a passage and you label it instinctively. And when the facts of Scripture are all in your head and heart, you can safely trust the Holy Spirit to interpret those facts, and you need not that any man teach you, and therefore the only thing to seek and to secure is to become familiar with the contents of the Word—thoroughly cognizant of all the facts of Scripture, and read them so often that you see them on the page where they occur, even with closed eyes. In that way, a man with one book, if that book be the Bible, has a large and liberal culture and an education that will serve manifold purposes in solving the problems and bearing the burdens and discharging the duties of daily life.