This site is a repository of Bible study resources I have developed over the last 14+ years. Many are lesson notes I have used to present to our adult Bible study at church, but there are also more developed resources I have written for use by church leaders in remote areas that have been published in various forms.
The format of the lessons is typically pretty obvious. The lessons have varying levels of detail on a skeleton outline, but hopefully the direction will be pretty clear. Most have blanks after each of the questions, but for some I have recorded either suggested answers or answers given by class members in a handwriting-like font. Some older lessons have duplicate half-pages for copying. Most references are quoted from the NASB, unless stated otherwise. Recently I have begun posting audio recordings of my presentation of the material.
All Bible study resources on this site may be freely used in any Christian ministry without restriction or cost. They may be distributed freely as long as it is done without restriction or cost. I would appreciate attribution. No other authorship may be claimed. All other rights reserved.
I’m in tears praising God for His presence, faithfulness, and kindness.
This morning in my quiet time, I read 1 Samuel 24-30 about a key time of David’s development. His “Biggest Issue” was that Saul and 3000 of his best warriors were chasing him to kill him due to Saul’s misplaced jealousy. And at this point, David had already proven unequivocally that he was not trying to kill Saul and in fact was completely loyal to him, and had received Saul’s assurance he would stop trying to kill him! It’s telling that this period in David’s life was what drove his writing a number of the Psalms.
With David’s “Biggest Issue” in the background, it’s really cool that God designed a little life lesson to remind him that He could and would vindicate him at the right time. 1 Samuel 25 contains the story of David’s interaction with Nabal, a rich man who David and his small band of warriors apparently served as a protective guard for some period of time. When David asked Nabal for food for his companions, Nabal refused. And as David was apt to do in those days, he gathered up his 600 troops and went to kill Nabal and take the food had requested, plus everything else.
Nabal’s wife Abigail (an “intelligent and beautiful” woman) heard what her worthless husband had done and that David was on his way to kill him. She quickly gathered a huge feast worth of food and drink and loaded up her donkeys to try to stop David and his men before they found Nabal. She found him, and her excellent persuasive speech and demeanor turned David’s anger, and even prompted him to bless her for her wise behavior and her stopping him from the mistake of taking the matter into his own hand.
Abigail left David and found her husband, who was hosting (and fully participating in) a big party. The next morning she told him what had happened, and the impact of what Abigail had saved him from stunned him into unconsciousness. Ten days later, he died.
In the bigger flow of David’s story, this could be seen as an irrelevant sideshow. But as you read David’s response in verse 39, you see that David saw God’s hand in his life, protecting him, vindicating him, and teaching him.
In reading this story in the bigger context, I realized that God was showing / reminding David that He was present with him, helping him, and could handle David’s concerns without him taking them into his own hands. And David learned the lesson, as evidenced in his next encounter with Saul’s army in the following chapter.
God used this smaller issue to help David deal with his “Biggest Issue”!
It’s not often that God not only gives me some sort of insight into His Word in my quiet time, but then nearly immediately plays it out in my own life. Today he did.
Like David, I have a “Biggest Issue”, as we probably all do. It feels incessant, intractable, and interminable. I often wonder if God will ever intervene, even for a moment of relief. Sometimes there is little hope it will ever go away.
Well, a little while after my quiet time, within four minutes of each other, I received a phone call and a text that instantly resolved two separate big issues I have been struggling with for over 1.5 years in one case, and two months in the other.
My immediate response to God was, “God, how do you do this?” He is so amazing in His power – and His timing! Even to the point that as I was beginning to praise God out loud for these two miracles, the song “Egypt” that happened to be playing on my computer confirmed, “You’re the God who fights for me, Lord of every victory, Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” I can’t express my joy and gratitude!
And then God brought it home for me like he did for David. “I’m here! I’m able! If I can handle these matters in a moment as if they were nothing, I can handle your ‘Biggest Issue’, too. It’s just not time yet.”
Our study through the book of James continues into chapter 4 with good momentum and incredibly practical and challenging content from the text. Here are the notes divided into sections.
Here we are at the beginning of another year! This lesson is a break from our James study, though the topic flows directly from our discussion from the first two verses in James 4, and we will actually land right back in James 4 for our conclusion. God had given me this topic back in October for our annual New Year’s lesson, and I had been thinking about it since late 2015.
Lately there has been a lot of talk about “casual Christianity” in church and among our leadership. The more I think about it, the more concerned I am that I and many others are practically living exactly that type of Christian walk, and aren’t even aware of it.
It is because of that possibility that this study compares Jesus’ “greatest commandment” and our lives to see if we are living up to His expectation of us – and our commitment to Him.
Our study through the book of James continues into chapter 3 with an appropriate balance and reasonable speed. You’ll notice that my study notes changed format with this study. My Bible program of 20+ years finally broke with the latest MacOS update, so I had to (hurriedly) buy and get up to speed on the excellent, but incredibly pricey Logos. Here are the notes divided into sections.
Our class decided it would be cool to change our tack a bit and do a Bible book study instead of our typical topical studies. I’m not sure they’re still glad they did because we (I) are taking quite a bit of time going through, and I’ve gotten a bit too technical in the presentation. I think we’re doing well with a better balance of background, application, and velocity in Chapter 2. Here are the notes divided into sections.
In our class times together, passages and themes from the book of James kept coming up and we decided it would be cool to change our tack a bit and do a Bible book study instead of our typical topical studies. I’m not sure they’re still glad they did because we are (I am) taking quite a bit of time going through, and I’ve gotten a bit too technical in the presentation. You’ll notice as we get close to the end of chapter 1 that I started doing better with that, and I think we’re doing quite well with a better balance of background, application, and velocity in Chapter 2 (next post). Here are the notes divided into four sections along with a bonus (no extra charge!) simple worksheet that I created for my kids since we are studying it with them in parallel.
James Introduction (Pt. 1 of 2) – March 13, 2016 – AAC, 42 min., 21MB
BTW, if you’re interested in the discussion in the introduction about the actual name of the author of the book of James, you should also listen to the first eight or nine minutes of the Palm Sunday lesson, since that topic came up at the beginning of our time together that next week.
James Introduction (Pt. 2 of 2) – March 27, 2017 – AAC, 39 min., 19MB
This lesson is a detailed timeline of the last week of Jesus’ early ministry, and will likely be very controversial for those who are stuck on a traditional Good Friday crucifixion. But, I believe it is the best fitting explanation of all of the biblical data.
This lesson contains a couple of helpful things I learned while reading two books by Shanti Feldhahn, For Men Only and For Women Only. There is good insight for both husbands and wives.
LOL! As you can see below, my title for the lesson was boring. This title came from my dear wife who always has a knack for spicing things up! Anyway, this lesson (intended to be just one Sunday, but ended up being three…) is what I believe is God’s challenge for our class members for the new year.
Here are the recordings of my teaching this lesson (AAC format playable in most browsers, iTunes, and iDevices):
(My new lapel microphone does a much better job getting my audio, but a much poorer job picking up audio from the group, so I remove those silent gaps. That results in some odd transitions, but it’s better than wasting your time. I have purchased another microphone so I can record both.)
Week 1 – Ministry (12/20/15), 31 min., 15MB
Week 2 – Leadership (1/10/16), 42 min., 21MB
Week 3 – Personal Holiness (1/17/16), 44 min., 22MB
(I apologize for the sound quality of this lesson. It’s all the fault of my sound engineer. (Me.) As mentioned above, I purchased an additional microphone to capture ambient sound (discussion from the group) and used it this week. As it turned out, I didn’t make it through all the clicks needed to start my lapel microphone so I only have audio from the new ambient microphone (which is actually pretty impressive). But there is lots of noise from the lectern that the microphone was sitting on, along with my iPad and my hands. Lesson: get something for the microphone to sit on that will isolate it from the lectern noise. And get a better app that requires far fewer clicks to get it working.)
This study came from four different sources that are closely related in their practical truths. I was reading something and came across this quote:
“Bad habits are easy to make, but hard to live with. Good habits are hard to make, but easy to live with.”
And somehow God took that thought and reminded me of one of my favorite Andy Stanley sermon series, Destinations: The Principle of the Path. And when I started thinking about that, I remembered a recent sermon by one of our teaching pastors where he talked about the process of how our thoughts become attitudes and actions, and how those actions become habits, and how those habits will determine our lives. And then I remembered some great wisdom from Andy Andrews that really helps make it all practical.
I began thinking about all four principles and realized there is an important reminder / warning for us at any age and place in life that we be careful with our minds, intentionally choose what is influencing our decisions, and make sure the destinations that are set by our current paths are where we want to end up.
Here are the recordings of my teaching this series (AAC format playable in most browsers, iTunes, and iDevices):
(My new lapel microphone does a much better job getting my audio, but a much poorer job picking up audio from the group, and this lesson had a huge amount of wonderful discussion that ended up being large chunks of silence on the recording, so I had to remove it. That results in some odd transitions, but it’s better than wasting the listeners’ time. I may have to start running two separate recordings to capture both well.)
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