Current Studies

Destroying Transformation (Judges 8)

It is hard to believe how far people can fall in their lives. We are certainly able to watch it in the lives of celebrities who seem to have it all only to lose so much due to their foolish ways and sinful decisions. But this is not a problem that only afflicts those who are without God. There are many people in the scriptures who are recorded for us to show the great fall that they experienced so that we would learn from them. Unfortunately, Gideon is one of those men whose life takes a catastrophic turn to spiritual disaster. In our last two lessons we have seen the rise of Gideon by the power of the Lord. We were introduced to Gideon as a man hiding in winepress, threshing wheat in order to hide it from the Midianite invaders. We concluded Judges 7 with Gideon taking 300 men by the power of the Lord and defeating the 135,000 Midianite army with only trumpets and torches…

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Questioning God’s Honor (Malachi 1:6-14)

We are in a series called Fresh Faith where we are looking to how we can prepare ourselves for this coming new year to have the faith that God wants us to have and that we want to have. Our first step to a renewed faith is to see God’s love for you that he chose you before creation to adopt you as his child. This morning we are going to look at the second picture of faith and how we can move closer to God. We are in the book of Malachi. One of the unique features of this book is that God will make a statement and the people will question that statement. Then God will give the answer to their question. So God is working with a people who are questioning God and working to move them to saving faith…

To read more of this lesson click here.

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Against All Odds (Judges 7)

We like to be in the majority. We like to be in the majority because we can think that this means we are on the right side. This is part of our culture war right now. There is a battle for the majority because the belief is if you have the majority, then you must be right. When you are outnumbered, then it can be really frightening. We also see this in our culture today. It is becoming more frightening to be a Christian because we now for the first time really feel like we are outnumbered. We feel like we belong to a very small minority. Now we always were in a small minority but it wasn’t as obvious as it is now. I think about what happened to Daniel’s three friends. Nebuchadnezzar proclaimed that everyone needed to bow down and worship the statue when the music played. All the people of the nation were considered to have gathered for this moment. Can you imagine what it looked like when the music sounded and thousands of people began to bow down to the ground and worship the statue but there were these three men who remained standing? It is hard to stand against overwhelming odds. But this is where God is going to put a man named Gideon at this moment…

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Questioning God’s Love (Malachi 1:1-5)

As we come to the end of another year our minds often turn to starting fresh in the upcoming new year. We like the idea of a fresh start. We like the idea of being able to start over. We want a new start and there is something about a new year that offers that kind of hope to us. This year will be different last year. This time I am not going to fail where I failed before this. So I wanted to take a few lessons that will carry us through the end of year that can help start with a fresh faith and a new start with God as we look with hope for the new year.

Now you might find it strange where I am going to take our series of lessons from in God’s word. But I want us to find fresh faith from the book of Malachi. The reason this book is going to help us is because we are going to read about a people who belong to God, but a number of things in their lives have gone wrong. Because of what they are going through, the people are questioning God. In fact, the framework of the book of Malachi is different from other books in God’s word…

To read more of this lesson click here.