Thinking Girls Bible Study

Recent events in our world have reminded me of the time in which I grew up. A week ago I was preparing my next lesson to teach the fourth and fifth graders at my church. The designated lesson is about Paul’s third missionary journey. I knew this would be a great lesson to tie in what we had just witnessed with the assassination of Charlie Kirk and his testimony and witness. Initially, I was going to start out by saying how much harder it is for kids today to be witnessing all this violence and hatred and how the world was different for them than it was for me and even my co-teacher who happens to be my daughter-in-law from the Millennial generation. But then I remembered the day when I was nine years old and had stayed home from school because I was sick. I was watching TV when they broke into the regularly scheduled program to announce that President Kennedy had been shot. We had already witnessed the Cuban Missile Crises. Over the course of the next few years, we would live through m...

The biggest fight is here and you are a contender. The book of Jude was written “to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ.” In other words, it was written to believers. Jude started out to write about our common salvation, but was then compelled to exhort us to contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered to the Saints. As always, we will look at the original Greek and Hebrew words to get a better understanding of this exhortation to believers, beginning with verse 3: “Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Emphasis mine.) The Greek word for exhorting you is parakaleō . In the Blue Letter Bible Outline for Biblical Use we see “to call to one's side, call for, summon. To address, speak to, (call to, call upon), which may be done in the way of exhort...

I’ve had a few people ask me recently, “Do you think this is the end times?” The context for their question had more to do with the world’s fight against Israel and how we know Israel remains a key figure—and a controversial one—up until the last days. But even without that context, is it difficult to imagine that the world we live in today might be rapidly approaching its end as we know it? That the labor pains we are warned about (1 Thessalonians 5:3) are the pains we see on the news right now? Our once perfect, now fallen world is groaning for redemption. It is easy to imagine that this world—just like us—is anxiously longing for God to swoop down and make it new again. “And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Revelation 21:5 Right now, it might feel like the world is rapidly deteriorating into a wasteland. We know God uses the wilderness often. He moved His chosen people around the wilderness for 40 years. He called Jesus into the wilderness ...

We all need reminders. We have calendars, appointment books, reminders, notes, alerts on our phones, sticky notes, etc. We are forgetful people, but that’s only part of it. We all live such fast-paced, busy lives, and we process so much information each given day that we need reminders to bring our focus back to our priorities. There are a few essentials and priorities that we need to remind ourselves of every day. The first is the Gospel. 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” Beginning the day by reminding ourselves of the gospel brings gratitude to ourselves, reminds us that God’s Word is true because it was “according to the Scriptures,” and puts it fresh in our minds for the people we will come in contact with that day who need the Gospel. Taking this a step further, when I remember the ...

I'm excited to announce the first collection of Thinking Girls Bible Studies in my new book, JEWELS FROM THE JOURNEY .   I had no way of knowing when I started writing these studies back in 2017  that God would link them together with a common thread—our identity in Christ. These studies have been revisited and many of them revised. Even if you have read them previously, I hope you'll notice fresh insights. It's my desire that everyone know the joy and blessings of knowing who we are in Christ and Christ in us. I also encourage you to check out the first book published under the Thinking Girls Bible Study banner, A 21 DAY BIBLICAL GUIDE TO OVERCOMING ANXIETY . It's not just easy to feel anxious in today's world, it's almost a guarantee. Our Father has given us tools in Scripture to help us overcome our anxiety and experience the "peace that passes all understanding!" I hope this three-week guide is a useful resource to help embed Scripture in the rea...

Philippians 1:29: “For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” Suffer. Doesn’t that word just make you pull back and feel uncomfortable just at the mention of it? The Greek word for suffer is pascho and means to be affected or have been affected, to feel, have a sensible experience, to undergo, to suffer sadly, be in a bad plight. Strong’s Definition: apparently a primary verb; to experience a sensation or impression (usually painful) — feel, passion, suffer, vex. (1) There’s also the word suffering, which in the Greek is pathema meaning:      1. That which one suffers or has suffered           A. externally, a suffering, misfortune, calamity, evil, affliction                i. Of the sufferings of Christ                ii. also the afflictions which Christians...

It's been a while since posting HAVING EARS TO HEAR, Part 1. Click here to read it or if you want to refresh. As we begin part 2 of this study of “Having Ears to Hear,” I noticed that throughout the Gospels when Jesus was on the earth and face to face with the disciples, He used the phrase “he who has ears to hear,” but when He had ascended into heaven after the resurrection and wrote the letters to the seven churches found in Revelation, He said, “he who has an ear to hear.” I wonder why the difference? Could it be that by that time, we, the Church, had already turned away a bit, so that we are just listening with one ear? Ear - ous - 1. An ear, 2. metaph. The faculty of perceiving with the mind, the faculty of understanding and knowing. We will begin this continuation with Matthew 13:13. Jesus tells His disciples after He has given them the parable of the soils, “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do the...

There’s always more to the story. The Bible can never be exhausted. That’s one of the many beautiful aspects of God’s love letter to us. And the Lord has such a lovely way of bringing things full circle. Recently, I was talking with a friend who was dealing with an issue that has also been an ongoing issue in my life for many, many years. Without going into detail, this is something that involved decisions that only I could make for myself and I had to make those decisions according to what God’s Word says. If I’m being honest, those decisions come with lots of overthinking and caring too much that other people will think I’m dumb or foolish. But I know the only thing that matters is what I know the Lord would have me do. So when this conversation happened, all the issues that went into coming to these decisions came back into question. I was pleading with the Lord the next morning to please speak to me and show me, if indeed, we had already settled this. I opened up to Job 2:9-10: “Th...