Group Bible Study

What does God want for His people worldwide this next year? I have a habit of asking that question as we are about to jump into a New Year. I am not prophesying it, but I do believe that the Spirit of God is speaking of a stretching for His Church in this coming year. Over the years, I have seen that Christians are like elastic bands; they have to be stretched to be effective. When you placed your faith in Christ, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, a deposit or down payment, guaranteeing what will be ours in the future (Ephesians 1:4-5; 13-14). What we do with that potential and power is up to us to determine, according to your faith. God honors faith and faith sees beyond one's capabilities and looks to the power of the Holy Spirit resident within us. The Holy Spirit wants to stretch our faith to realize all that God has given us. Paul, the apostle, wrote to the church at Corinth, telling them that Satan had blinded the minds of unbelievers (2 Cor

I have now walked with Christ for 42 years. I have seen a few things in that time. One of the things that still shocks me is the way the enemy works by inoculating people against true biblical Christianity. Some people get vaccinated by a “shot of religion,” that produces immunity to the real thing. When we grow up in a religious environment devoid of knowledge about what God has done for us through the death and resurrection of Christ, we do not get the true picture. We are like the Superman comic stories of Clark Kent with Kryptonite wrapped around our minds keeping us from understanding the power available to us. Every true Christian has incredible power at their disposal, but for many of us, our thoughts are restrained from seeing our potential in Christ. This strategy is a widespread tactic of the enemy and one he uses to keep God's people from walking in the power of their identity in Christ. When we do not understand the authority we have as God's children, we abdicat

Over the last few days, I have shared about the six different stages of a gospel presentation that I use when leading a person to give their lives to Christ. Yesterday we talked about actually praying with a person to receive Christ—one of the most joyful things ever in a Christian’s life. So now we turn to the sixth and last stage. After a prayer of salvation, I usually tell them that heaven is rejoicing at the moment (Luke 15:10) and that I want to welcome them into the family of God. Shake their hand; give them a hug, whatever in your culture communicates congratulations. Then I take them back to the Word of God, to the words of Jesus: Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life (John 5:24). I now tell them: "You have heard His Word and placed your trust and belief in Him, and by God's Word you now have, present tense, not will have, but have eterna

Over the last few days, we have been talking about how to share the gospel with friends and relatives. What truths are we to share? When I get an opportunity to share Christ, if the person will allow me to, I go over six important topics with them: 1. Salvation is a gift.  2. All have sinned. 3. The wages of sin. 4. The substitutionary death of Christ. So now we come to the fifth topic, that of receiving the atoning death of Christ for ourselves. 5. Repent and Receive Christ. Repentance is from the Greek word  metanoia ;  it is made up of two words:  meta  and  nous .  Meta  means "change," and  nous  is the Greek word for "mind."  It means to change your mind, and therefore a change of direction towards God. If we say we change our mind about something and then do not change our actions accordingly, do we believe? If you believe the good news, it will change your life.  “I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their d

In our daily meditations, we are continuing our theme of being equipped to share the gospel with others. Often, the difficulty we have is how to share the gospel. We need training on what to share. We have already gone over three elemental parts of a gospel presentation: 1. Salvation is a gift 2. All have sinned. 3. The wages of sin. So now we come to the fourth part, that of the reason why Christ, God in the flesh, had to die. He died as us and for us. He died the death of a substitute. We are now getting into the good news itself, and this truth should be explained clearly so that people can settle the issue of righteousness once and for all. If a person feels unworthy, they will never approach God. Trying to live the Christian life on our merit and effort is impossible. There is a reason why Jesus had to suffer on the cross, and this is the crucial thing that people need to understand: For Christ also suffered once for sins,  the righteous for the unrighteous , to bring

In our daily meditations, we have said that the Lord Jesus expects His people to take and make opportunities to share the good news of Christ's salvation with others. The question before many is, how does one do that, and what are the elements of a gospel presentation? When I get an opportunity, depending on how open the person is, I try to go through six different topics: 1. Salvation is a Gift 2. All Have Sinned 3. The Wages of Sin 4. Substitutionary Death of Christ 5. Repent and Receive Christ 6. Assurance of Salvation We have already covered the first two, that salvation cannot be bought or earned; it is a gift. Then we talked about communicating that all of us have fallen short of God's standard—we have all sinned, and by ourselves can never be good enough for a place in eternal life with God. In the third stage, we must make clear to the person that there is a wage that God, in His justice, must deal out to all who have sinned—the just penalty of sepa

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift (2 Corinthians 9:15). Joseph and Mary set out for the eighty-mile journey to Bethlehem from Nazareth in Galilee. We like to think that she rode on a donkey, but we have no evidence at all that she rode to Bethlehem. Regardless of the way they traveled, it would have been a dangerous and challenging task for the young couple. Think of what it would have been like for this young teenage girl to carry her baby eighty miles, knowing that she was approaching the baby's birth and that she would be away from her mother, her friends, and even a midwife. It seems likely that the couple was completely alone when Jesus was born. When Mary found out that there were no rooms to be had in Bethlehem, what would have been her thoughts toward God? Surely, she would have been puzzled that there was no provision for them. Why didn’t the Lord arrange for a warm room for His Son to be born into the world?  In the plan of God, nobody can say that Go

There are six crucial elements that should be communicated when sharing the gospel with your friend or relative. The six are:   1. Salvation is a Gift 2. All Have Sinned 3. The Wages of Sin 4. Substitutionary Death of Christ 5. Repent and Receive Christ 6. Assurance of Salvation 1) Salvation is a Gift  I often start a gospel presentation by talking about the concept of salvation being a gift. For many people, they have been brought up thinking that they have to earn their place in heaven by their good works. The enemy suggests to them the idea of a set of scales making them think that their good works must outweigh their bad practices. These kinds of thoughts come from the pit of hell. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves,   it is the gift of God ;  9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). Jesus answered her, “If you knew  the gift of God  and who it is that asks you for a drink, you wou

Most people have difficulty in bringing up the subject of the gospel with their friend or relative, so asking a question can be an excellent way to bring up the issue. We can learn from Phillip’s conversation with the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8: 30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet.  “ Do you understand what you are reading? ”  Philip asked.  31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.  32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth.  33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.”  34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?”  35 Then Philip  began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good

There have been times in my life, usually in times of beautiful worship, when God has drawn close, and His presence seems to be heavy in the room. Have you ever been to a meeting like that? Imagine what it would have been like to experience that type of an encounter with Jesus present in the flesh: They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick (Luke 5:17). When we have experienced the presence of the Lord in a meeting, we often think to ourselves, “if only my friend had been there and experienced the presence of God, he would have given his life to Christ!” However, people need more than an experience of God’s presence, as we see when we examine the ministry of Jesus and His disciples. The Scriptures indicate that people became very open to the Lord after seeing the power of God at work. Let's observe what happened in one of Peter's ministry trips:  32 As Peter traveled about

According to statistics in 2004 from the Barna group, nearly half of all Americans who make a profession of faith and acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Savior do so before reaching the age of 13 (43%), and that two out of three people who profess that they are born-again Christians (64%) made that commitment to Christ before their 18th birthday. One out of eight Christians (13%) made their profession of faith while in the age range of 18 to 21 years old. Less than one out of every four believers (23%) embraced Christ after their twenty-first birthday. Of the Christians who embraced Christ before their teen years, half were led to Christ by their parents, with another one in five led by some other friend or relative. Comparatively few accepted Jesus in response to a minister's prompting (7%) and only one out of eight cited a special event as the turning point in their journey. Among those who mentioned events, about half identified a church service. Just 1% said media evangel

Over the last few days, we have been talking about Jesus giving His ministry into the hands of the body of believers all over the world. The Lord is relying on us to share the message of salvation, and make disciples of all nations. In our reaching out, there must be a heart of compassion and love for the one to whom we share the message of life. Don’t have a pushy attitude, but be gentle and kind to each person with whom you share the good news about Jesus. There is an old Christian song that says, "You're the only Jesus some will ever see." The Body of Christ is like a many-faceted diamond. The thing that makes the diamond shine and makes it beautiful, is the light. We are like vessels to be filled, or diamonds that God wants to shine His light through. We trust in the power of His truth, His light, His love.  Even if you feel that your words are faltering and you feel inadequate, people will sense the love of God in you, and they will respond to His words one

In our meditation yesterday, we began talking about four things that God brings to bear when a person witnesses to another about the Kingdom of God. It is good for us to know these truths, because we often feel the pressure of the responsibility, our lack of knowledge, and our own sinfulness. Let’s take that pressure away by looking at Part Two, the other two things that interact when we share Christ:  3) The Body of Truth in the Word of God.  There are specific truths that should be communicated if we want people to believe and trust in the finished work of Christ. The more we convey the truth of the Word of God, the higher the chance that the person will come through to a powerful life-changing experience of being born again (John 3:3). Our own words can come up short, but Scripture tells us that God’s Word never returns to Him empty, without effect or void. (Isaiah 55:11). How many times have you heard a message that entertains, but lacks any truth and fails to point to Chris