These next two weeks, we will be discussing the topic, “decision making and the will of God.” We will be examining two of the most important and unfortunately misunderstood concepts of Christianity, how God speaks to an individual and how to discern God’s will for one’s life. These are two very important issues that every Christian needs to have a correct biblical understanding about. Understanding how God speaks and directs us has significant ramifications on how we live our life and make decisions. From my own personal experience, once I understood God’s will and how He communicates His will, it brought tremendous stability and confidence for decision making in my overall life. While this discussion may be challenging to what we believe, I encourage all our students to listen and consider the biblical evidence, rustle with the issues for themselves, and develop their own conclusion. I’m greatly looking forward to this time. Hope to see you there!

This Thursday we will be examining the statement “never read a Bible verse.” This concept comes from Greg Koukle of str.org. This phrase is not teaching to not read the Bible but rather when we read the Bible we should never read only one verse. When reading the Bible or any literature it is important to read the paragraph before and after to develop the background information and gain a better understanding of the author’s intent. Many Christians read one or two verses out of the Bible and come to their conclusion of what it means without trying to understand the author’s intent. Many Christians develop wrong theology because of this practice and often read the Bible through relativistic lenses. “What does this verse mean to you?” This Thursday, we examine in more detail how to study the Bible, as well as look at specific verses that Christians have used to develop wrong theology by not reading the surrounding paragraphs. Lastly, we will discuss how the concept, “never read a Bible verse”, fits into our overall Biblical worldview.

This Thursday we will conclude our systematic study on the five major parts of a worldview. This week we will be examining the source of truth, knowledge, and morality. Our goal will be to help our students develop a correct biblical worldview in these three areas and to show how what we believe about these concepts has an affect on our thoughts and behaviors.

While this week will be the last week that we have a formal study on this topic, all of our future discussion will help to develop and complete our biblical worldview. In these past five weeks we have constructed the skeleton of a biblical worldview now we will begin to add the flesh and muscle to our worldview skeleton.

This Thursday we will continue to study and develop our own biblical worldview.  Over the last two weeks we have discussed the importance of a biblical worldview as it is the source by which we speak, act, and make decisions.  In order to have a biblical worldview we must have a correct understanding of God, man, truth, knowledge, and morality. This week we will be studying the view of  man. We will examine four important questions about man: who is man? what is man’s nature? what is man’s purpose? And what is man’s destiny? We will spend time studying scripture to help form a correct biblical worldview to these questions. In addition, we will look at a few opposing worldviews to these questions and discuss how our belief about man has a tremendous affect on our speech, actions, and decisions in life.