God, Morality, and Judgment

I am excited to prepare a Bible study for our high school kids this week during our AWANA meeting. We are coming off of Christmas break plus one week due to Covid and I am excited to be able to spend some time with the teens. They are such a good group of kids. I love their passion to learn. As we study, they always have tons of questions and during each study session, we discover answers to those questions. Some of our previous lessons were on such subjects as:

Our Great Creator God

It is hard to image that this time, three years ago, we began a journey of walking through the entire Bible. Last Sunday was the final lesson in that journey. This coming Sunday, we are going to start over and do it again. I am excited because every time I study the Bible, no matter how many times I have studied the passage, I always learn something new and applicable to my daily life.

We are returning to a familiar passage this coming Sunday, Genesis 1. If you have a Bible, open up Genesis 1 and let’s see what we can discover together.

Love, Faith, and Obedience go hand in hand

I am so excited to be able to meet with the high school students tonight during AWANA at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. It has been a few months since we have been able to meet. Tonight, we are going to study a few passages from the Apostle John’s first epistle. This epistle is known as the “love epistle“. John’s favorite subject is love. The interesting thing that John does is to tie love with faith and obedience. Do you ever think about love being synonymous with faith? Do you ever think about faith being synonymous with obedience?

Are you a genuine follower of Christ?

I am excited to prepare this Connect Group lesson for this coming Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. As I have shared many, many times in these articles, here at Southern Calvert Baptist Church we are walking through the entire Bible over a three year period. We are in the Gospels currently and this week’s lesson is on John 6. Jesus uses the teachings in John 6 to reveal the genuineness of people’s faith. This is an important topic of discussion because, there are many people in this world who claim to have faith. We need to know what genuine faith looks like so that we can first of all, examine our own faith and then make sure we are teaching genuine faith to others.

Don’t Compromise on the little things

Over the past couple of weeks at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we have been learning about Daniel. His life is powerful. The reason that his life is powerful is because he never compromised in the little things. When Daniel was a child, he was taught the Word of God. His parents had a few short years with him but, they did such a wonderful job impacting his life in a positive manner that, he was faithful in the little things for the rest of his life. Daniel was taken prisoner to Babylon when he was around 15 years old. That means that his mother and father had about 15 short years to invest in this boy. They did it so well that Daniel became a champion of the faith. As I mentioned earlier, the secret to Daniel’s success was the fact that he did not compromise on the little things. As a teen, living in a foreign land, learning a new language and culture, even having his name changed from a godly name to a pagan name, Daniel chose to remain faithful to the Lord.

Biblical Faith

If you have ever visited a church or, if you have ever hung around church people, then I know that you have had or heard a discussion on the subject of FAITH. If you were to ask ten different people what “faith” means, you are likely to get fifteen different answers. The best thing to do in order to discover what God has in mind when He uses the idea of “faith” is to go to the Scriptures. I want to examine a passage of Scripture that reveals what “faith” looks like in every day life and how the lack of faith in God is manifested. Would you like to discover what faith really is and how it is manifested practically? The passage that we are going to examine is Luke 18:9-23. This passage is broken up into three separate teachings linked together by the manifestation of faith.

Superficial Faith vs. Genuine Faith

I had the privilege today of leading a Bible study on the Gospel of Mark chapters 11 and 12. It has been eye opening to study through the Gospel of Mark, learning how Jesus Christ ministered while on this earth. If you have not been following the previous lessons, you can check them out here:

 

The Church and the Day of the Lord

I am preparing to teach the next lesson in the study of II Thessalonians and we are going to examine the relationship of the church to the Day of the Lord. This is teaching number 4 in the series.

• The importance of communication
• Genuine faith endures persecution
• Concerning the Day of the Lord

We have seen that it is very important for the followers of Jesus Christ to remain excellent students of the Scriptures so that we will not have our faith shaken by false teachings or by false teachers. Paul is writing to the Thessalonians to encourage them and to get them back on track so that they can remain faithful to the Lord, serving Him by preaching the Gospel in the midst of persecution and suffering. One of the areas in which the Thessalonians had been led astray was in the area of the Day of the Lord. There are many people today who are confused when it comes to the rapture, the Day of the Lord, and the Coming of the Lord. These are three distinct events yet often lead to great confusion for people who attend church or read the Bible. We fully covered the idea of the rapture in the last lesson so I will not get into explaining it in this lesson.

Genuine faith honors Scripture over Religious Traditions

I am working through the Gospel of Mark during my time off from work over the Christmas holiday season. I have been teaching through Mark with my preschool teachers. It has been amazing to experience Christ’s loving touch through His mighty Word. After Christmas break, we will jump in and study Mark 6. After that, we will dive in and study Mark 7, the source of this article. If you have not been following the teaching series, you can access the previous teachings by clicking on the article titles that follow:

1. Jesus: Experiencing His Life and Ministry
2. Jesus the Rescuing Teacher
3. The unpardonable sin
4. The parable of the sower and the seed
5. Failing Faith needs a Faithful Friend
6. Jesus serves individuals
7. Discipleship according to Jesus

Jesus: Experiencing His Life and Ministry

I am getting ready to meet with my preschool teachers to begin studying the Gospel of Mark so that we can unify as a team, grow in the Word, and prepare to continue investing the Gospel in the lives of the children whom God has entrusted to us. This week’s lesson is Mark 1:1-28.

I. Jesus the person