Psalm 119:25-32 “Depression – A Journey” Week #4 of our study of Psalm 119

Are you studying with us through Psalm 119?  Great!  This is Week #4.  Psalm 119:25-32,  “Depression – a Journey”

These 8 verses are a great description of depression.  And the Psalmist sees the solution in the Word of God.  So in this week’s lesson, I’d like us to consider whether or not the Word of God is sufficient to heal depression.

I think I’ve experienced depression.  Not so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed every day….or had to be under a doctor’s care, but bad enough that I knew, even if most people in my life didn’t, that I was not the same as before.  That everything was moving very slowly for me.  That I didn’t enjoy life very much.  That I had no desire to do anything about the way I felt.

It was real…and discouraging…and, well…depressing.

Did reading my Bible heal me?  I’ll tell you in a minute.

Ist Timothy Chapter 3 “Leadership”

1st Timothy Chapter 3

The job of Pastor is described in this chapter…with a pretty daunting list of qualifications.  You’ll probably read through this list and say: “Whoa!  Who would ever want to do this job?”

But I can tell you from my own experience as a Pastor’s wife that the man who is called of God to shepherd a church has a burning desire to be the man described above, and wild horses couldn’t pull him away from it.

Click HERE to view or download the entire 1st Timothy study.

How to Share Your Faith

How to Share Your Faith
Over 14 years ago I asked one of our church’s young college girls to lunch.  I was wondering if she was a Christian, and thought over lunch I would just ask her.  We had a nice time together, and I just point blank asked her: “…have you ever asked Jesus to be your Savior?”  She said no.  She was interested in what I had to say after that – about how to become a believer in Jesus.  And she told me she’d think about it.
We talked a few more times, each time she had questions.  And each time she told me she was thinking about it.  Then she called me one night and told me something that made me smile:  “Kathleen, will you help me become a Christian?  I have a friend who was just asking me a lot of questions about Jesus, and I was giving him the same answers you have been giving me, and suddenly I realized: ‘I can’t help this guy when I have never even believed in Jesus myself!’  So…will you help me become a Christian?”
She didn’t realize it, but she had already come to believe in Jesus…she just wanted someone to pray with her as she told Him that.  So of course, with great rejoicing, I did.
From then on, she had the fire in her belly to tell the whole world about Jesus.

The Value of Simply Reading the Bible Out Loud

An excerpt from “Clouds of Witnesses”, by Carolyn Nystrom and Mark Noll.  Intervarsity Press.

“In the year 1870 in the forested interior of India, a small famly of five tattered but learned pilgrims sits cross-legged under a shade tree near a well-traveled road.  The youngest, a girl of about twelve, reads from handwritten Sanskrit the ancient words of sacred Hindu texts.  Occasionally, she looks up from the carefully lettered words, gazeds in to the forest and continues to recite from memory, sometimes for an hour or more.  If she tires, antoher family member picks up the task – her mother or older brother or sister.  Her father, grizzled with age and nearly blind, slumps against a ndarby wall and listens.  Hundreds of people pass without a glace.  A few stop and listen for a moment, then place  small gift on the gorund:  a pretty stone, a flower petal, perhaps a few precious grains of rice.  Late in the day, the family picks up these offerings, their only earnings, and walks to some other sacred spot.  The recivation and reading conintues there.  The family has lived this way since their youngest was 6 months old.

In 1892 a small Hindu woman in her mind-thierties sits at a table in the front room of a large honeycombed building called Sharada Sadan, in Pune,India.  Her door is open.  She reads aloud to her eleven-year-old daughter, who sits next to her.  Students, workers and children pass by outside the doorway.  Some stop to listen.  A few step inside for a moment.  Some come back the nxt day and listen again to words read – without comment or explanation – from a Christian Bible.  The child of the forest and the woman of the home are the same.  Pandita Ramabai, one of India’s most influential Christians of the 20th century.”

Psalm 119:17-24 Week #3 “Bountiful”

Are you studying with us through Psalm 119?  Great!  This is Week #3.  Psalm 119:17-24,  “Bountiful”

We all want our lives to be full of good things.  In this passage, the Psalmist is asking God to be “bountiful” in His blessings.  The Psalmist is asking for good things to fill his life.  He sees himself as a servant, so he is not demanding this bounty from His Master, but he pleads for it.  He needs it and wants it.  And he knows that if His God will, indeed, grant this prayer, then he will be able to live life fully, and keep the words of God.

Click on Week#3 to the left and read it through.  See how my comments and thoughts line up with what you’ve gotten out of this third set of 8 verses in Psalm 119 as you studied it this last week.   Make comments or post questions if you want.  I’ll answer them if I can.

And then start working on your assignment for this next week…you’ll see it at the end of this week’s comments.

As you start studying your next assignment on your own this week – a verse or two a day…see what you can get out of it….what you can learn every day…and then next Monday I’ll post my comments it.

Have a bountiful week!  – Kathleen

Heaven Bible Study

I taught this Bible study on Heaven in January of 2012.  You can click on the image to the left to read it or download it, and also I’ve uploaded the audio for each lesson below.   It was just 4 weeks long, but our little group had a really great time talking about Heaven – as we attempted to ask and answer a few questions about our real home.  For many of us, it was a sweet time of remembering our loved ones who had already gone to Heaven – and realizing how fantastic their lives are right now as they live and walk with Jesus every day.

Below are the audio files for the 4 weeks of the study  – just click on the play button to listen.

Week #1 

Week #2

Week #3

Week #4

1st Timothy Chapter 2 “Warfare”

1st Timothy, Chapter 2

It’s a battle.  Church is God’s plan to reach the world…and it’s a battle.  Chapter 2 of 1st Timothy lets us know what our very unconventional weapons are in this battle.

We could say it like this:  “Because of the fact that you are actually in a battle, Timothy, here’s what you should do…and remember…

  • It’s not a battle in the ordinary sense of the word.
  • It is not fought with ordinary weapons.
  • The enemy does not fight fair.  He quite often will masquerade as your closest friend.
  • It may seem over sometimes, but it’s not.  It will only be over when Jesus returns and gives us a new heaven and a new earth.  Don’t let down your guard.”

Therefore, Timothy, pray.

Click HERE to view or download the entire 1st Timothy study.

Understanding the Bible

 

Understanding the Bible

If you don’t remember anything else from this little booklet, please forge this into your memory bank:  There are Three (3) necessary, but simple steps for understanding the Bible:

  1. Open your Bible
  2. Pray
  3. Read your Bible….every day.

It really is no more complicated than that.  You can’t even begin to imagine the things you will learn about God, about Jesus, about life, about yourself, from the Bible, until you  1.  open it and 3.  read it.

But….I know so little to start with….I’ll be confused….it won’t make sense….there will be words I can’t understand….I can’t pronounce all the names….so many people have so many different opinions about what things mean….how will I ever understand it?

That’s where 2.  pray  comes in.  You see, God Himself wrote the Bible.  He “breathed” it into 40 men over a period of 1,500 years.  Everything each of those 40 men wrote agrees with everything the rest of the 40 men wrote.  It is all from God.

So, if He wrote it, He knows how to explain it to us.  He knows where to direct us for answers within the book itself.  After you open your Bible, pray – talk to the Author – and ask Him to open up your understanding.  He wrote it for you.  He will answer your prayer.

Psalm 119 – Week #2 “Kids, Too!!!”

Are you studying with us through Psalm 119?  Great!  This is Week #2.  Psalm 119:9-16,  “Kids, Too!!!”

Do we have to expect that a child will at some point “sow his wild oats”, and then hopefully come back to God?  Can’t children live for Jesus now and keep living for Him for the rest of their lives?

Click on Week#2 to the left and read it through.  See how my comments and thoughts line up with what you’ve gotten out of this first 8 verses in Psalm 119 as you studied it this last week.   Make comments or post questions if you want.  I’ll answer them if I can.

And then start working on your assignment for this next week…you’ll see it at the end of Week #2.

As you start studying your next assignment on your own this week – a verse or two a day…see what you can get out of it….what you can learn every day…and then next Monday I’ll post my comments on the Week #3 passage.

Habakkuk “What Are You Doing, God?”

Habakkuk Bible Study

Habakkuk deals with a down-to-earth part of life…not only an Old Testament prophet’s life, but also our lives….the part where we have questions for God.

Maybe we don’t always verbalize those questions, even to ourselves, but we do have them.  Habakkuk shows us that it is acceptable to God for us to ask questions.  And then he also shows us how to ask those questions, so that we can follow his example.  The  answers Habakkuk gets from God are so deep and stirring that we may not even have questions left to ask once we are through with his book.