Every Sunday night we have a group of people in our home to study the Bible. When we first started meeting together quite a few months ago, we went through a marriage study. It was really good, with a DVD speaker and a book to read and discuss questions.
When it was over, my husband felt like God was impressing on his heart that the next "study" we should do as a group was a little more simple....and a lot more difficult. We proposed to our small group that we study the Bible. Novel concept you might say, after all, we are talking about a "church" small group. However, what we have found is that most people do not study the Word of God very much. They either attend church or Bible Studies where more "experienced" people "bring the Word" or they use the hunt and peck method of reading their Bible. Come on, I know you have done it. You are distressed about something, so you lay your Bible on your lap and let it fall open. You run your finger over the page and randomly stop on a verse. As long as it says something positive, you take that as your "word" from the Lord.
What if you fall on Jeremiah 50:22, which says, "The noise of battle is in the land,and great destruction!" Whoa, that doesn't sound too good, let's try again for something better!
This method of reading the Word is really not very effective. I think we all would agree that even though all of Scripture is inerrant and God-breathed, there are certain verses that just can't be taken out of context. We are so blessed with a wonderful group of friends we study with, and they were all completely thrilled to corporately go through the Word of God and study it in a particular order, write down our thoughts, and hash them out together for a couple of hours every Sunday night. It has been quite a blessing to me. So far, we have read the book of 1 John seven times and the Gospel of John twice. We have talked through each chapter of those books and really let the truth that God wanted to communicate through this beloved apostle sink in.
This week, we are reading the book of Mark and will discuss it on Sunday night. I love all of the gospels, so this has been great. Mark is such a fast paced book, and I love to hear the clips and tidbits of the life of Jesus, moving along from adventure to adventure. In light of my previous post on my rebellious tendencies, I thought I would share with you a couple of verses in particular that stood out to me. As I have already said, I really struggle with whether or not I can be a "rebel" for Jesus Christ. I don't want to be obstinate and hard to get along with, but I always want to stand on the Truth. Often I am accused of being "over the top" or of taking things "too far." This can be in regard to my relationship with Christ, our home schooling lifestyle, the fact that my teenagers are not allowed (and have no desire) to date at this point in their lives, or any other myriad of things that we do that are considered strange to say the least.
As I was reading Mark this morning, I found the following verses in Chapter 3, "Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again,so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, "He is out of his mind."
Do you get this? Jesus' family, said "he is out of his mind."
Then, reading on to the next verse, Mark 3:22, it says, "And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "by the prince of demons he casts out the demons."
So, Jesus' own family said he was out of his mind and the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said he was possessed by an evil demon!
Being called "crazy" is looking better and better!! If it was good enough for Jesus...
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