January 3, 2010 Bible Study Reading:

Title: Life’s Greatest Pursuit

Philippians 3:3-7

“For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who
glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh- though I myself have
reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put
confidence in the flesh, I have more; circumcised on the eighth day, of the people
of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regards to the law, a
Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness,
faultless. But what ever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of
Christ.”

“God say, “There is something in life worth bragging about, but it’s not your bank
account, your position in the marketplace, or your educational degrees.” God says
there is only one thing in life worth bragging about: “Do you know Me?”

“Do you know God well enough that He could brag on you if He wanted to?”

References:

Evans, T. (1995). Time to get Serious: Daily Devotions to Keep you Close to God. Wheaton:
Crossway Books.

Zondervan NIV Study Bible. (1973). Grand Rapids: Zondervan

January 4, 2010 Bible Study Reading:

Title: Telling the Truth

Reading: Isaiah 6:1-7

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, seated on a throne, high and
exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each
with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered
their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD
Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
“with smoke. Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips,
and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the
LORD Almighty. Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand,
which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and
said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin
atoned for.”

“Part of coming to know God intimately is hearing the truth about ourselves. We
need someone who will tell us the truth. We don’t do that with each other: We
don’t tell people the truth because we don’t want to offend them or make them mad
at us. Besides, all of us like being lied to occasionally. No one wants to hear that a
new hairstyle or dress is the worst thing we have ever seen in our life. God calls it
as He sees it. When God begins to unveil who He is, it also unveils who we are.
God does not just leave us in our current state. The proper treatment for sin is
salvation, through the blood of Jesus Christ, who provides us with forgiveness for
our sins by His death on the cross. “

“ Have you ever thanked God for telling you the truth about yourself?”

References:

Evans, T. (1995). Time to get Serious: Daily Devotions to Keep you Close to
God. Wheaton: Crossway Books.
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was
filled

Bible Reading – January 5th

Title: The God Who is Spirit

John 4: 19- 26
“ Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped
on this mountain, but you Jews claim that he place where we must worship is in
Jerusalem.” Jesus declared, “Believe me , woman, a time is coming when you will
worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans
worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is
from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers
will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the
Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah.” (called Christ) “is coming. When he
comes, he will explain everything to us.” The Jesus declared, “I who speak to you
am he.”

“You can’t get very far in a quest to know God without talking about worshiping
Him. And you can’t worship God the way He wants to be worshiped until you
understand that ‘God is spirit’. What does it mean to say something is spirit? First
of all, it means that God is nonmaterial. He does not have a body. Spirits don’t
have bodies ( refer to Luke 2:39). However, a person may say “Jesus has a body.”
Yes He did as Jesus became man, not because that’s who He is in His eternal
essence. In God’s essence He is immaterial. The Bible knows we have trouble
with this issue because we are material beings in a material world. Therefore the
Bible speaks about God in human terms: “the hand of the Lord” or “the eyes of the
Lord.” These references help us to relate to a spirit being we may not otherwise be
able to relate to.”

“We must worship God in His essence. This is why we should not make images of
God and bow down to them. He forbids it, because there is nothing on earth which
could represent our awesome God properly. The great God who is spirit is actually
looking for people to worship Him in spirit and in truth! Want to join up?”

References:

Evans, T. (1995). Time to get Serious: Daily Devotions to Keep you Close to
God. Wheaton: Crossway Books.

Zondervan NIV Study Bible. (1973). Grand Rapids: Zondervan

Bible Study Reading- January 6th

Title: God Can Handle It

Ephesians 1:1-6

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the
faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he
chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his
sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in
accordance with his pleasure and will- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he
has freely given us in the One he loves.
God is self sufficient. “He doesn’t need anything or anyone to complete Him. If
we look at what God has created, how glorious and sufficient He is. If you really
want to know how sufficient, how good, how complete something is look at what it
produces. If what it produces is glorious, then the person responsible for that
production must be more glorious than the thing produced and must be sufficient to
produce it. That is why God does not spend time trying to prove His existence to
atheists. Only a fool would reject the existence of God after looking at a creation
as complex and orderly as this world. God’s self sufficiency is good news for us.
This is what grace is all about, and that’s why we can call God our Father. The
self- sufficient poser that God exercised in creation and in our salvation is the same
power by which He will keep us secure until He comes for us.”

References:

Evans, T. (1995). Time to get Serious: Daily Devotions to Keep you Close to
God. Wheaton: Crossway Books.

Zondervan NIV Study Bible. (1973). Grand Rapids: Zondervan

Bible Study Reading – January 7th

Title: Encountering A Holy God
Psalm 11: 4-7
The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD is on his heavenly throne, He observes
the sons of men; his eyes examine them. The LORD examines the righteous, but
the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates, On the wicked he will rain
fiery coals and burning sulfur, a scorching wind will be their lot, For the LORD is
righteous, he loves justice; upright men will see his face.

Bible Study Reading- January 12th

Title: A True Know- It- All
Psalm 139: 1-6

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you
perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar
with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem
me in- behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful
for me, too lofty for me to attain.

“God know you intimately, every cell in your body, and He loves you! When you were in grade
school you had a “know- it- all” in your class. This person could expound at length on any
subject. Nothing made you madder than to see this kid act like he or she knew everything,
because you knew they didn’t know half of the information. In this universe only one person
knows all- God. One of the attributes of our God is His omniscience, a word made up of two
words: omni, meaning all and science, which has to do with knowledge.”

“God is all knowing. God’s omniscience refers to His perfect knowledge of all things both
actual and potential. The omniscience of God means that there is absolutely nothing He doesn’t
know- that there is no information system or set of data that exists anywhere outside of God’s
knowledge- nothing. He depends on no one outside of Himself for any knowledge about
anything. Are you living in light of the fact that God hears and sees everything you say and do?”

References:

Evans, T. (1995). Time to get Serious: Daily Devotions to Keep you Close to
God. Wheaton: Crossway Books.

Zondervan NIV Study Bible. (1973). Grand Rapids: Zondervan