Bible Studies

Do Your Part – How to Strengthen Your Faith

2 Peter1:5-8
For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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Where Do Your Treasures Lie?

What is God’s will for our lives? God’s purpose for our lives should always take a precedent over our own desires, and that includes all aspects of our marriage, work, career, family, and play. If we are not sure if we are doing the will of God, then we need to carefully consider our actions and pray about it. I know it is difficult to make God first in our lives, but He has shown us how to give Him first place in our hearts.

So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” Or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31 NIV)

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The Gospel – Key To Change

by Tim Keller

The Greek term “gospel” (ev-angelion) distinguished the Christian message from that of other religions. An ‘ev-angel’ was news of a great historical event, such as a victory in war or the ascension of a new king, that changed the listeners’ condition and required a response from the listener.So the gospel is news of what God has done to reach us.It is not advice about what we must do to reach God. What is this news? God has entered the world in Jesus Christ to achieve a salvation that we could not achieve for ourselves which now:

1) converts and transforms individuals, forming them into a new humanity, and eventually

2) will renew the whole world and all creation.

This is the ‘good news’—the gospel. And it is good news in three important ways.

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Answering The Skeptics About God’s Existence

Is Jesus God?
As a believer have you ever been confronted with someone who is skeptical that Jesus Christ exists or that He is the Savior of the world? How about those logical, intellectual folks that like to downplay creation for evolution? Have you ever heard the one about how people evolved from oysters?

I don’t know about you, but I have a bit more faith than that. Do you realize how long it would take for a human to evolve from an oyster? More than the billions of years that they like to say the earth is old. Scientific evidence has yet to prove God does NOT exist. So the evolutionists and the creationists are in the same boat – still waiting for proof to disbelieve the other.

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We Can’t Just Wait Around

2 Peter 1:2 NRSV
May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Grace is a very elusive term. We often hear grace defined unmerited favor. But Strong’s goes further. The Greek word for grace is charis. Strong’s 5485 defines it as “especially the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life.” It seems to me that grace is rather interactive.

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How Are You Treating Your Gift?

2 Peter 1:1 NRSV
Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith as precious as ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Do I think that my faith is precious? That word just jumped out at me on the page when I read it. Did you know that the English word precious comes from the Latin word that means price. And that’s what our faith is: it was paid with a price, with the blood of our Savior. I think that sometimes, in the midst of the frenetic pace of our lives, we tend to take our salvation for granted. It’s been a part of us so long that we forget that there was a time when we didn’t have the hope of heaven.

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Submission to Others

Romans 15:1-2, 5-7
We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification. . . . Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.

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Difficult Biblical Passages for Jehovah’s Witnesses

1. 1 John 5:1 – Teaches that ALL who believe in Jesus are born again–not just a sub group (i.e., the “144,000”)

2. Isaiah 43:10 – Teaches that ‘no G/god was/will be created before or AFTER the one true God’ (contra their teaching that Jesus is “a god” created before creation).

3. Isaiah 6 in relationship to John 12, proving the deity of Christ. See Isaiah 6 on this web site.

4. James 1:27 – Pure and undefiled religion to visit orphans and widows. JWs completely neglect works of mercy, instead spending all of their organization’s resources on spreading their ideas.

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Weary Yet Pursuing

Then Gideon and the 300 men who were with him came to the Jordan {and} crossed over, weary yet pursuing. Judges 8:4, NASB(emphasis added).

The story about Gideon and his meager band of men defeating a massive enemy gathering is always inspiring to me. First, I’m reminded that no battle is ever won in my own strength. Second, I’m encouraged by the fact that nothing is impossible with God.

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Do You Feel Your Sins Cut You Off From God and All Hope of Change?

This is written for those who say:
“The things I have done and said weigh on my heart like a mountain of lead. This burdens me and keeps me from Christ. My sins cut me off from all hope of heaven. I am afraid that my past eagerness to relish my behavior has so twisted my mind, seared my conscience, and hardened my heart–that I will never be able to repent with any hope of pardon!”

But I answer you,
Is your sin greater than wicked King Manasseh’s, who “sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced witchcraft and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists”? (2 Kings 21:2-7)

Is your sin greater than Paul’s drinking up the blood of saints?

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