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5 Assurances for the Disciple of Jesus—a foundational lesson for our new series on Discipleship

2023-05-28 by bible805

This is the start of a new series of lessons on Discipleship, of learning to live, love, and serve our world as Jesus did, which is what everyone who has trusted Jesus as Savior should be about doing.

This short lesson is a foundational one and is entitled 5 Assurances for the Disciple of Jesus

This lesson was inspired by and based on a resource from the Navigators, a Christian group I learned from in college. These 5 Assurances and the verses that go with them were what they felt were essential for a new Christian to know and have stood the test of time as a helpful foundation for a relationship with Jesus.

They had a chart that went with it with each verse on the fingers of a hand. Though the chart was useful, currently I thought it was looking a bit funky and old-fashioned so I redid a new one in Canva to fit on social media formats and as a graphic that can be used in teaching. Click on the image to the left for a PDF of it.

Following is a video of the Five Assurances as a group, then a text file transcript of the video.

On the Bible805 YouTube channel are short (less than a minute) videos of each one. CLICK HERE to go to them.

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The imperative of application whenever we read or listen to God’s Word

2023-05-18 by bible805

Always apply the Bible — We are to always ask how we can APPLY the Bible.

In many ways, the most important of the three goals of Bible805 (for you to know, trust, and apply the Bible) is for you to APPLY the Bible. Though application comes last in our progression of how first we need to KNOW what it says, then TRUST it is God’s Word, and finally to APPLY it, without application, knowledge and trust alone do little to change our lives and serve as a witness to our world.

More importantly, our Lord expects us to apply what He tells us in this Word as James 1:22, NLT commands,

But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.

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A Bible class member wondered why is the story of Abraham, a man who traded his wife for wealth and protection considered a great man in the Bible?—here’s the answer

2023-01-20 by bible805

Abraham sending Hagar away — Abraham was far from perfect in his relationships with the women in his life, especially when seen from contemporary eyes. But reading how God called, saved, and used him can give each of us with our many faults, hope.

Before I share these lessons with you online I teach them to an adult Bible class at my church. Some of the class members are relatively new to following Jesus and have never read through the Bible before. I encourage questions as I teach, and we have discussion following the presentation. I’ve found their questions and comments absolutely invaluable as they help me see things in a new light.

For those of us who have read the Bible many times and with the rose-colored glasses of church interpretations, we can forget how shocking some of the behavior is of the so-called “heroes of the faith.”

I had already planned on discussing this prior to her comments, but I wanted to emphasize in sharing the lesson with all of you that the key teaching I pray people get out of this lesson is that there are NO human heroes in the Bible.

There is only ONE true hero of the faith, and that isn’t a human. The true hero of our faith is our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In this lesson (Lesson #3 in Through the Bible) I use the life of Abraham to illustrate the balance of grace on God’s part in that we did not earn or deserve anything that calls us into the faith and yet our responsibility to take action based on that grace.

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Focus on the things that matter and not “the multitude of trifling things”

2022-11-08 by bible805

Though this quote comes from a secular, self-help site, it is an incredibly important truth to keep in mind as we all try to grow in our Christian discipleship. A.W. Tozer expressed a similar thought in this way:

The wise man will simplify his life by going to the center of it. He will look well to the foundations and, having done that, he will not worry about the rest.

Life, as we know it in our painfully intricate civilization, can be deadly unless we learn to distinguish the things that matter from those that do not. It is never the major things that destroy us, but invariably the multitude of trifling things which are mistakenly thought to be of major importance. These are so many that, unless we get out from under them, they will crush us body and soul….

Every believer as well as every minister of Christ must decide whether he will put his emphasis upon the majors or the minors. He must decide whether he will stay by the sober truths which constitute the beating heart of the Scriptures or turn his attention to those marginal doctrines which always bring division and which, at their best, could not help us much on our way to the Celestial City. A.W. Tozer The Next Chapter After the Last, 11,14.

To repeat his key phrase: It is never the major things that destroy us, but invariably the multitude of trifling things which are mistakenly thought to be of major importance.

Oh, it is so important that we learn to distinguish between the two!

The best way to do that is to spend time in God’s Word, looking at what are His priorities for life and how we should be living. Then, we need to take some time to consider, journal, whatever we need to do to make certain our priorities, how we spend our time and money line up with His.

If we need to make changes, we must do that so we are not destroyed by the “multitude of trifling things which are mistakenly thought to be of major importance.”

Halloween as a time for evangelism—please consider it with the Apostle Paul as our inspiration

2022-10-06 by bible805

Halloween as outreach — We don’t normally think about it in this way but Halloween can be an incredible time for evangelism as people are thinking about death and we KNOW the one who conquered death–Jesus!

When the Apostle Paul went to Athens it says he was “very distressed” (Acts 17:16) at the pagan idols he found in the city. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is that a few days later he is asked to speak before their council and when he does, here is how the Bible describes it:

Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way,for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about. (Acts 17:21-23)

Instead of berating them for what he knew was evil, he took their interest in what they didn’t know, an “Unknown God,” and used it as a bridge to tell them about Jesus.

I think we can use Halloween in the same way.

Yes, there is much that is terrible and evil about it and it seems to get darker and darker in how people are celebrating it yet, think about it—it is also a time when people are obsessed with the afterlife, death, the spirit world and all sorts of related things.

As Christians, we know the one person in all of human history who died and who came back from death. He didn’t do it to scare us or demonstrate evil powers, Jesus did it to secure the salvation he freely offers us.

For years I’ve used Halloween as a primary evangelism time in several ways. On my own, I like to go to the Halloween Superstores and spread gospel tracts around in various places (the pumpkins work well). They are also great to give out along with Halloween treats.

Through my ministry of Effective Church Communications, I’ve created additional challenges and resources

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