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 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
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 is an expository look at Titus 2:1-10, where Paul tells Titus how he should be instructing the new believers in Crete to live and behave. There are six groups of people he highlights: older men, older women, younger women, younger men, ministers, and employees.
I updated the PDF in August of 2013 when I noticed some mistakes. For all of the thousands who have downloaded it, please get the updated version.
As I revealed in the previous lesson, I realized that while knowing your spiritual gifts, and even understanding His purpose for you, are both important steps in finding God’s direction and will for your life, having an ultimate life goal will dictate your priorities and activities to make you more focused and effective in your Christian life. This lesson illustrates that truth with numerous examples from some great individuals from the Bible: Paul, Moses, Hannah, and Jesus.
This lesson is a follow-on lesson after the spiritual gifts study to drive us to take the results of that study and discern what new activities and direction we should consider. I also made a worksheet including some of the spiritual gifts, talents, and personality traits that might help one discern a bigger picture view of how God made them and what that might mean about God’s purpose for them.
Zip file containing a lesson on basic spiritual gifts (teacher and student versions) along with supporting texts and a spiritual gifts inventory. Study is based on a total of 20 gifts.
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