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.
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.)
This study came as a follow-on to the study in Colossians that ended in love, and then Jesus’ instruction in John 13. Though we cannot attempt to recreate the setting of the early church, we can at least look at them and learn from their example as a group of new Christians responding without precedent to the Holy Spirit’s direction. Acts 2 describes their characteristics and then shows the results of their behavior. Wow!
This may just be another of the many lessons that I needed to hear. This lesson is an update to the 2005 lesson Time, with additional Scripture references and content on the handout section and a new section with teaching notes.
This lesson lists a number of spiritual disciplines and encourages parents not only to incorporate them into their own lives, but also to focus on the spiritual formation of their children.
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