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Gospel-Centered Bible Study Ideas for You

by | Jul 15, 2014 | Learning Story

It’s July 15 — can it really already be time to think about back to school and back to Bible study? Apparently so, since I received a from our women’s ministry leader that teachers needed to let her know by August 1 what we’re teaching.

If any of you are looking for good material, be sure to check out the Living Story Bible studies. I wrote these to help you know the story of grace Scripture tells, to know your own stories, and to live them out in real life. I address questions that people new to Bible study may ask and that people who have been doing it for years may need to be reminded of — in short, the good news of the gospel.

There are now three studies in the series — you can do them in sequential order, but they will also stand alone:

LearningGodsStory_CoverLearning God’s Story of Grace looks at the whole story of redemption: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation, and what it means for our lives.

 

LivingGodsStory_CoverLiving God’s Story of Grace focuses on the struggle of faith and hope that we all experience.

 

COVER_Loving-In-Gods-Story-of-Grace_smallLoving in God’s Story of Grace is about, you guessed, it — love — the radical, countercultural love that the gospel tells.

 

 

Try them — you’ll like them! And, if you do one of these studies with a group and would like me to meet with your group via Skype or telephone, let me know! I would love to interact with you!

Check out this “theological theme,” in which I try to take some “big words” and make them make sense in real life:-)!

Theological Theme:  Justification by Faith

“Abram believed and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

In the first chapter of the study, we asked the question, “What does faith do?” One of the most important byproducts of faith is “justification.” To understand the word justification, consider this story:

I had spoken impulsively, reeling off some sarcastic remark sure to draw peals of laughter from my daughter’s friends. Immediately I felt chagrin. My joke came at the expense of my daughter’s dignity. I wanted to justify my action, saying I was only trying to be funny, but it was clear there was no excuse – I had traded my daughter’s reputation for a moment of fame among a group of 13-year-olds. In God’s court of law, I would have been declared guilty of a love-failure.

As sinners, which we all are (Romans 3:23), there is no justification for our sin. In a court of law, we are declared guilty. That is why Genesis 15:4 is such a radical statement. Abraham is declared “righteous,” that is, “not guilty,” just because of his faith. Abraham’s righteousness does not come from his moral rectitude or good actions – it comes from his faith, which comes from God.

Faith in Christ brings an even more astounding reality to our stories. We receive the credited righteousness (see imputed righteousness in Learning God’s Story) by transferring trust from our own efforts at being good to Christ’s finished work on the cross (Romans 3:23-26). When a person confesses, “I believe Christ has fully paid the price I owe for my sin,” we are credited with Christ’s righteousness (Romans 4:23-24).

The radical concept of justification by faith should humble and astonish us. One of the great old hymns asks, “How can we keep from singing?” Indeed, when we understand that the holy God sent his holy Son as the only adequate substitute for our sins, how can we keep from living a life of loving God and loving others?

In Good Company: A Story

by | Apr 9, 2014 | Learning Story

I had already taken mental notes — did people carry  the little clear plastic shot glasses empty or full? Did they drink at the altar or in the pew?

My son had chosen the very back row for us, so we were the last to reach the front, and just as it seemed to be our turn, all of the servers retreated. Not disappeared, just moved to the right and back about five feet.

I was confused. Was it over? Did we come too late to the feast?

I mean, my heart was already happily full with the Word read and preached —

“John has a deep thought for you — if you are suffering deeply, you are in good company.” Yes, Jesus waited to visit Lazarus, so long that his beloved friend died. Yes, Jesus wept — over death’s destruction, over the similar but so different story he would soon live and die. And yes, there was a point — that God may be glorified. John 11:1-45.

As I stood there, taking it all in, I looked toward the server closest to me, the Pastor, and sorta shrugged, like, “Is it over?” A wry smile, a gentle nod of the head, as if to say,

“Come on over here, we’re still feeding sheep.” [And you are definitely a sheep! Was he thinking that too?]

I stood before him, somehow feeling safe looking him in the eye. He smiled again, a broad smile, and spoke an unexpected word: “Welcome.”

Ah, to be seen, and known, and welcomed. “He knows. He knows I’m a stranger here.”

Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest…”

The welcoming Pastor spoke different words over the bread too, though I can’t remember them. No mere repetition of rote sayings, a message that seemed directly for me from God…

A gift. A gift of true communion, a choice morsel of breaking bread with a forever Friend who weeps over my broken body.

As I drove the four hours home, the memories swirled — a welcoming smile, a surprising word, a chunk of bread and a shot of grape juice — a shepherd spreading the Shepherd’s shalom.

Come.

Leave your confusion behind. No need to know why this keeps happening. He is working. He is with you. And He knows what he’s doing.

Come to me.

You’re in good company.

Welcome. Well-come.

Your Name: A Pearl of Great Price

by | Mar 10, 2014 | Learning Story

My daughter created this for me with an app. When I look at my initials, I think about my many names and the stories that go along with them.

My daughter created this for me with an app. When I look at my initials, I think about my many names and the stories that go along with them.

I swear I did not put him up to it. It’s just my husband’s natural curiosity that leads him to ask random questions of complete strangers. Though in this case, she was our waitress, and she did tell us her name, and it was an unusual name, so it actually made perfect sense to me that he would ask her what it meant, though I think my daughter might have had a brief, “Oh, Dad” moment.

Perla? he asked. What does your name mean? She flashed a beautiful smile and shrugged.
“I’m not really sure — my parents are hispanic, and I guess they thought it was a pretty name.”

It troubled me slightly. I’m so much in the habit of making meaning and searching for stories that I’ve been told more than once, “You’re overthinking this.”

But it also came two days before five women and I will meet to search for stories, beginning with an exploration of our names.

Names are significant, says Scripture. In Genesis 1, God creates and he names:
“God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night” (Gen. 1:5a).

In Isaiah 43, Isaiah delivers God’s promise to care for his people even in the painful exile they have brought on themselves with these words,
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”

And one day, Revelation tells us, God will gives us our new name, the unknown but intensely personal name we await.

So of course I wondered about Perla. No hint of accent on her tongue. No interest in her hispanic name. Would knowing more of the story of her ancestry only bring pain? Was it a story her parents did not want to tell? If so, why did they give her that name?

Did she not even know that it means “pearl,” as in “pearl of great price”? (Or could it be related to that heart-wrenching short story by Steinbeck, the one where the family loses what is most precious for a pearl of no worth?) (Now you see why people think I overthink things:-).

I hope Perla asks her parents about her name now. What about you?
Do you know your name? Do you know what part of your story it tells?
Do you know that God names you as his redeemed, precious possession?
How do you feel about being named by God?

If you are interested in investing six weeks in learning more about your name, story, and calling, please contact me. I am offering both group and individual coaching around this topic.

Now, that makes sense: what the Bible reveals about story!

by | Aug 27, 2009 | Learning Story

1 O my people, listen to my teaching.
Open your ears to what I am saying,
2 for I will speak to you in a parable.
I will teach you hidden lessons from our past—
3 stories we have heard and known,
stories our ancestors handed down to us.
4 We will not hide these truths from our children
but will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord.
We will tell of his power and the mighty miracles he did. Psalm 78:1-4

The Bible is a story, and it is full of stories. Psalm 78 gives us the command to tell our stories – the stories of the glorious deeds of the Lord. The Hebrew words used for story here and in other places in the Old Testament, mashal and chiydah, suggest puzzles, hard questions, riddles. Indeed, the story of the Bible and many Bible stories are, like our own stories, quite puzzling. What sense does it make that a sinless God would love a sinful people so much that He would send His sinless son to die for us? That sentence summarizes the gospel story, and it simply doesn’t make much rational sense.

When you think of the beloved Bible stories, a lot of them are puzzling – God tells Noah to build an ark for a flood that has not yet occurred; David commits adultery with Bathsheba but is presented under the title: A Man after God’s Own Heart; a man who stoned Christians is struck blind and when he regains sight he decides to spend the rest of his life suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ (the apostle Paul). Yes, biblical stories are full of paradox, seemingly opposite realities, and that should tell us that the same is true of our stories.
Another thing that the words mashal and chiydah suggest about our stories is that they can be both simple and profound. Psalm 78 suggests that stories contain two levels. On one level, the story relates events that occurred in space and time. Too often we stop telling stories at the surface level: we tell the story of how truly rotten our day (or our life) was, but we don’t pause to reflect on the second level. When we remember that our stories are authored by God, we pay attention to sign-ificant realities of our stories.
As Brent Curtis and John Eldredge point out in The Sacred Romance, God is not merely the author of the story but the central character: “Just what if we saw God not as Author, the cosmic mastermind behind all human experience, but as the central character in the larger story? What could we learn about his heart? The story that is the Sacred Romance begins not with God alone, the Author at his desk, but God in relationship, intimacy beyond our wildest imagination, heroic intimacy. The Trinity is at the center of the universe; perfect relationship is the heart of all reality.” If God is the author of our stories and also the central character, then our stories are signs pointing to God, showing us and the world something about who God is. As we study our stories, we begin to see that God is a hero who came to save, perhaps not in the time and the way we would have wanted. We also come to see ourselves as the beloved He has come to save. Behind the simplicity of every story is the profound reality of God.

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