Women's Bible Study - January 17th, 2024 - James
January 17, 2024 · Deborah · James
Scripture referenced 6 passages
The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
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James 4:8 God draws near to us when we draw near to Him
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
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Keep this verse
2 Peter 1:20-21
no prophecy came by human wisdom but by movement of the Holy Spirit
20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation.
21 For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit.
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Hebrews 4:12
the word is alive, powerful, sharp like a sword, exposing thoughts and motivations
12 For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
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2 Timothy 3:15-17
scripture is God-breathed, shows truth, corrects mistakes, trains us to live in God's ways
15 From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
16 Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness,
17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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John 14:6
Jesus says I am the way, the truth
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.
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James 4:14
this world is but a vapor and will disappear
14 Whereas you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor, that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.
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Recap
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
This was the opening session of a winter Bible study through the book of James at First B Jackson. Deborah set the stage by making the case for why the Bible is worth serious attention in 2024, drawing on statistics about declining faith in the Intermountain West and a lengthy personal essay by British writer Paul Kingsnorth about his journey from atheism through Buddhism and witchcraft to Christianity. The message was less a verse-by-verse teaching and more a call to consider what it actually means to live out what the Bible says.
What was said
Deborah opened by noting that American self-identification as Christian has dropped from around 80% to roughly 63%, with the Intermountain States among the lowest, and that those same states also lead in depression, anxiety, and suicide rates. Wyoming came in at 37% identifying as having no religious affiliation at all. Her point was simple: walking away from what God says is best for us has visible consequences, and those consequences are on display in the communities around us right now.
She then laid out why the Bible deserves to be taken seriously as a source of answers. She described it as written across three continents over fifteen hundred years by forty different authors, and yet consistent from beginning to end, something she called humanly impossible. Quoting doctor Tony Evans, she said the word of God is the voice of God in print, and leaned on Hebrews to say that the words in it are alive, sharp enough to expose not just behavior but thoughts, attitudes, and motivations.
The heart of the message was a condensed retelling of Paul Kingsnorth's essay, in which he described growing up in secular England, spending years in environmental activism, Buddhism, and eventually practicing witchcraft, all while feeling a growing emptiness he described as an abyss inside him. He kept visiting empty churches without telling anyone why. A vivid dream about Jesus and a sudden flood of Christians entering his life eventually brought him to faith, and he wrote that the abyss went silent because someone was now inhabiting it.
Deborah used Kingsnorth's account to trace the narrative he had absorbed growing up, that Christianity is a tool of control, that it represses women and minorities, that it is hostile to science and reason. She called that narrative a lie and spent time on how it has taken root not just in Europe but in American culture, pointing to the rewriting of history, the redefinition of natural law, and what she described as the building of a machine to replace God.
She connected Kingsnorth's conclusion to the reason the group is studying James specifically. His challenge at the end of his essay was to ask what would happen if the people who call themselves Christians actually did what God says to do, and Deborah said James is precisely the book that addresses that question. It is practical, she said, the how-to book for getting out and acting on belief rather than just holding it.
She closed by being direct about the cost. Dying to yourself is the hardest thing in the world, she said. Forgiving someone who has hurt you is genuinely hard. Loving someone who has slandered you is hard. She was not willing to make it sound easy, but she said there is no other path that leads home, and she asked the room whether any of the alternatives they had seen described in Kingsnorth's journey had filled the abyss any better than the cross.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
- Deborah shared statistics about people in the Intermountain West walking away from faith, and connected that to rising rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. Have you seen that connection in your own community or relationships, and what do you make of it?
- Deborah described the Bible as 'the voice of God in print' and said the words in it expose our thoughts, our attitudes, and our motivations. Has there been a time when you opened Scripture and felt it was speaking directly to something in you that you had not expected?
and 3 more questions in the guide
Read the full transcript 7,092 words
Alright. Good morning, ladies. We're gonna go ahead and stand to our feet and get started. We're so glad that we get to worship together, that we get to spend time in the word, and, just have a wonderful winter Bible study, and I'm glad everyone can make it despite, you know, crazy roads and snow and whatever else was going on. You know, there's always something.
So my name is Allie, and this is Charlene. And, yeah, we're just we're let's just, if we could all stand to our feet, and spend some time just taking a deep breath this morning. Let everything go from earlier today. We're just gonna give it to the Lord. And we don't have words for you this morning, but sing what you know, sing what you want, and what you don't know and what you're unfamiliar with.
You know, I just encourage you to close your eyes and commune with God because he has so much to say to you this morning, so much to speak to your heart, and that can be a really powerful time of worship as well.
Let's sing it
to him this morning. Your name.
Your name is the highest. Your name is the greatest your name stands above them all
in dominions all powers And when we're singing the word holy, that means that he is like no other. We could gaze upon him for generations and for time and time again, and we could never it would never grow old of what we could see of the Lord. So when we sing that, let's just think about that, that he really is set apart. There's no one like him. And all the heavens are on the earth.
We serve a majestic God. He is so good. He is so powerful. So let's sing all the angels. All the angels cry.
I think it's important that we realize when we're singing this song, we're not asking God to bring things that are gonna crush us or, you know, bring things that are hard for us. Because that happens enough, right, in the world. What we're asking him to do is to mold us into his image in the middle of it. That in the middle, we can get better or we can, you know, not get better. So we could fall apart or we could become more like Christ.
And in the middle of that, we're just asking God to form us into his image. And isn't that true? That where there's new wine, there's new power, there's new freedom, and the kingdom of God can come. When he comes in in a situation, his kingdom can come when we yield to him. So let's sing that again.
God, thank you that your word promises that when we draw near to you, you draw near to us as it says in the book of James actually. So we just draw near to you this morning in faith that you're gonna show yourself to us in a greater way today. God, thank you that you are drawing near to us this morning. Lord, we can feel your presence. And we just pray that as Deborah teaches this morning, Lord, that you would give her the words to say, and you open our hearts, Lord, to receive what you have for us.
And so with that, we just we break into I'm just gonna give it over to Deborah. Thank
you. Can you just give a hand to these amazing girls? Wow. Allie and Charlene, thank you so much. You all can have a seat, and we just wanna welcome you to our winter study.
And I have to say, I'm really impressed with you Wyoming women because I told my husband when I woke up, I don't think I can get out. So he we live in the wilderness. He jumps in the bobcat, plows away from me, and he's like, you're getting there. And so I know it wasn't easy for some of you, especially you Star Valley girls. Woo hoo.
Extra kudos to you. Okay. So I know that we have a lot of new ladies today, and we just want to welcome you. We just pray that you find your place here. We welcome you with wide open arms, and you're going to love it because our format every week is we open with praise and worship, then I do a teaching, and then you get to go into a fabulous small group.
And I'm not biased or anything, but your small group leaders are the most amazing leaders I've ever known, and you're going to love them. And I just know that you're going to form some very special bonds and friendships through this journey. And just to let you know, in our fall study, what we normally do is go through a study guide. But this winter, we're going through the book of James. So there is no study guide for you.
Your homework each week will be one chapter of James. So if you could show up next week reading just the first chapter, and your small group leader today in your small group is going to give you four questions, If you could come prepared for those. And now I understand weeks blow up and you may not be able to do that. You still come. You're still welcome.
It's still Okay. But we encourage you to do that, to get the very most out of the study. All right. So why even study this ancient old book anyways? I mean, is it even relevant to today, the year 2024?
I would say yes. Yes. It is more relevant and alive than ever. I have been teaching Bible study for twenty nine years. And the more I study this, the more I want to study it.
The more I study it, the more answers I get. It is the most amazing book ever written. And I think that you would agree with me, something's up in our world, isn't it? And, you know, over those twenty nine years of teaching, every year Americans hovered around 80% of us saying that we're Christians. And then just a few short years ago, that number just boom, for the first time dropped to the low 60s.
And now it's hovering around 63%. And interestingly enough, the coast, which isn't too surprising, California, the Northeastern states like New York, their numbers are much lower. And you know who else is much lower? The Intermountain States. Now what I find interesting about that is those are also the states with the highest depression rate, highest anxiety rates, highest suicide rates, children in the most trouble because we have walked away from what God says is best for us.
In fact, I just read an article that just came out maybe six months ago that in the Intermountain States, they did a survey of people who identified as nuns, not the Catholic version with those white and black uniforms, but N O N E S. We want none. We want no religion. And it was shocking. In Colorado, 45% of people said we are nuns.
So almost half of Colorado as a state has no faith. Our neighbor above us, Montana, is 51%. And I thought, Okay, Wyoming, where are you? Because we're pretty conservative here. We came in at 37%, which seemed really high to me.
37% want nothing to do with this. Wow. So I'm so happy you're here because I know what this book does to us, and it's really incredible. You know, Moses wrote the first five books, the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy some three thousand five hundred years ago. And the exact same principles that God gave him then apply to us now.
Why is that? Because the Bible tells us our human heart never really changes. I mean, we have the exact same issues that Abraham and Sarah and Rachel and Rebecca had. We have relational issues. How do we navigate that?
We have health issues. We have young moms who can't get pregnant just like they did. We get sick. We die. We have financial issues.
God addresses all these things in his word. Yes, technology has advanced, communication has advanced, but the human heart is exactly the same as it was back with Adam and Eve. We haven't changed. So this book is like no other book ever written. No human could I just wanna just lay down a little foundation about how incredible this book is.
No human could possibly write this book. Did you know it was written on three different continents over a period of fifteen hundred years by 40 different authors? And yet it syncs up perfectly from Genesis to Revelation. My Bible has almost 3,000 pages, and all those pages just intertwine with one another. That is humanly impossible.
In fact, in Peter, Peter wrote, you have to realize that no prophecy in here came about by human wisdom or even human initiative, that it was written by a movement of the Holy Spirit, and these are the words of God. I love what doctor Tony Evans says. He says, the word of God is the voice of God in print. The word of God is the voice of God in print. If I can talk to God, I wanna do that.
Don't you? I mean, I'm not getting my answers anywhere else. Is government giving us our answers? Our school systems, they're not giving us our answers. Where are we getting our answers?
We can go directly to the Lord. Hebrews tells us the words in here are alive, and they're powerful. Do you know how powerful they are? Hebrews tells us they're so sharp. They're the sharpest sword, and they will cut to the core of who you are.
They will expose your thoughts. They will expose your attitude. Sometimes I get a bad attitude. And then I open the word and I think, oh, that was a word for my friend. And the Lord's like, that was a word for you, girl.
And then it also exposes my motivations. Why do I do what I do? God shows me why. And I love the message translation of second Timothy three fifteen through 17. Check this out.
There's nothing like the written word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of scripture is God breathed and is useful, showing us truth. There is truth, ladies. We're gonna talk about that. Shows us truth.
It exposes our rebellion, corrects our mistakes, and trains us to live in God's ways. And this is my favorite part. Through the word, we are put together and shaped for the task God has for us. Do you know when I was praying for you, the Lord impressed this upon me. He's like, the world is changing, but I am going to be more powerful among you, and I'm tapping people on the shoulder.
I have jobs for them. I have words for them. I am raising up influencers within families, within communities, within schools, and within the government. He says you are a masterpiece, and he created you long ago. He created you with works, very specific works that only you can do.
I can't do them because I don't know your husband and I don't know your kids and your family, but you do. And God has a very specific job for each one of us, and he's tapping people on the shoulder. And those who are saying yes to him are being used by him in a very powerful way. I read a story this Christmas that just penetrated my heart, and I want to share this story with you. I'm kind of going off the grid from my normal.
Normally what we do is you have a handout, and I give you like three or four points, and this is what we'll do next week. We'll unpack chapter one, and that's what we'll do. But today, I just want to set the scene, kind of the overall arching theme of being together. And I'm going to share this story from Barry Weiss's blog called The Free Press. It's a very condensed version because it's long and we don't have that much time.
I'd love to keep you all day, but I know I can't, so I'm not. So this is a condensed version of a story of how a man found his way to Jesus. And I think we're all gonna relate to this. It's titled After Years of Atheism, I Went Searching for the Truth. I Found Buddhism, and then I found witchcraft, and then I found Christianity.
This man's name is Paul Kings North, and he's an Englishman. He's an influencer in England, an author, a writer, a journalist. And he starts off his story by saying, I grew up believing that all modern people what all modern people are taught, that freedom means lack of constraint. But Orthodox Christianity taught me this freedom was really no freedom at all. It was no freedom at all.
He says, We must have been 15 or 16 when we discovered the church's visitor book. It was an old church, maybe medieval, and I would pass it with my school friends on our way to our town center. I'm not sure what possessed us to go in. I think it was my idea. I've always loved old churches.
For a long time, would tell myself that I liked the sense of history or the architecture. But like the narrative in Philip Larkin's poem Churchgoing, I would venture into any church, maybe you can relate to this, and I would just stand there in awkward silence wondering what to look for but knowing I was looking for something. And there was some sense of seriousness in this serious house on serious earth. And then Kings North writes, obviously, my friends and I knew there was no God, but still the silence of that small church in England had something that drew us in. Fast forward thirty years.
It's the early spring of twenty twenty. Will any of us ever forget the early spring of twenty twenty? Had a lot of time to read, and I was reading the autobiography of the Irish philosopher John Moriarty, his book called Nostros, which means homecoming. One of the threads is how Moriarty gave up the simple, unconvincing Christianity of his Irish youth. He was way too smart for that.
So he left for Canada to become an academic, only to become equally disillusioned with the empty can rationalism that characterizes our intellectual culture. He said something was missing. It must be Ireland. So he went back to Ireland, to the mountains of Ireland because he had lost faith in science. Science didn't have the answers for him.
But even back in Ireland, there was still something missing. Then one day when he was hiking in the mountains, he describes it as a devastating personal crisis. He had a vision that he was able to look into this great abyss. And he said, I had not been led through to see heaven but a void that was empty and dark and starless and fatherless. For years, Moriarty wrote, I was in search of genuine truth, not just a speakable truth but a truth I could surrender to.
I would submit to you that Jesus says in John, I am that way. I am the truth. I am the truth. That's who I am. Moriarty realized there was only one story that could hold the abyss that he had seen.
And he said he then turned to that truth and became a Christian. Kings North writes, At this point, I put down the book and paused because he said a truth I would surrender to? I have been searching for that truth my whole life as well, Kings North wrote. The story of Christianity in the book that he was reading by Moriarty said is the story of humanity's rebellion against God. King Snorr said, I never thought of that ancient, tired religion in that way.
I never had reason to, but I knew there was some truth to what he said, a truth I would surrender to. And he said at that point, I knew what that abyss was because it was deep within me. There was a space within me that had been empty for years, and I tried to fill it with everything from sex to fame to power to politics. And yet, here I was, still empty. He writes, Growing up in urban England in the eighties, you wouldn't exactly say it was a spiritually rich environment.
My family never set foot in church, and I was quite fine with that. But growing up in England, I didn't know this, the English school system does teach children hymns. And he said, We do do Christmas nativity plays and I was the guy, the little one with the tea towel tied around my head. And all of my friends and I knew the Lord's Prayer by heart. And whether I liked it or not, I was taught the outline of the Christian story because that story shaped my nation of England for over a thousand years.
I just didn't realize that my nation was surviving on spiritual credit, and I could see that credit was about to run out. Do you see that in America today? He said, And even if my parents would have offered me a Christian foundation, the truth is the loud narrative of the culture would have probably drowned it out. And I just want to share something with you. If you are a parent with young children, raise them in this word.
It doesn't matter if they rebel against it because you know what God says? My word does not return void. And you know what he says? If you raise them up, it will come back to them. They may not come back, but his word will constantly come back to them.
You can't get away from this truth. I was raised in this truth. I walked away for the whole decade in my 20s, and I couldn't let it go. When I came back in my 30s, I knew it was the truth. And I talk to parents all the time who have raised their children in the truth, and they're prodigals, and they're frustrated.
They've been praying for two years, five years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years. Don't give up. God will bring them back. His promise is, I go after the one. If there are 99 with me and the one goes away, I will go after that one.
So I want to encourage you. The narrative out there is a lie and his truth is more powerful. They will come back. Our children are coming back to the Lord. They are coming back.
Here's the narrative that Kingsworth shared that he heard. And I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with millennials especially that tell me this exact same narrative. This is the narrative he believed. He said, the narrative I grew up with is Christianity is the theft of our precious free will by authorities who want to control us with fairy tales. I had someone that I invited to the Bible study who said, yeah, I would go, but it's a fairy tale.
And I was like, okay. Interestingly enough, I just took a hike with this gal, and all of a sudden she paused and said, I'm just so bored. And I said, oh, okay, I can change the conversation. And she was like, not with our conversation, Deborah. I'm just bored.
And I said, well, maybe the fairy tale isn't such a fairy tale, and God's tapping you on the shoulder. So pray for my friend. She's not here today, but I'm I'm gonna keep praying. But that it's a fairy tale. We were taught the narrative is that Christianity represses women.
Big fat lie. I did a whole Christmas luncheon teaching on that. How Jesus Christ more than anyone elevated women to a whole new status. And the spiritual gifts, well, guess what? He doesn't say they're just for men, they're for us too.
Equally, how Christianity represses gay people, atheists, anyone who disobeys. Of course, Christianity hates science and denies reasons and burns witches and heretics by the million. That's the narrative, and that's a big fat lie. He said, and because of this narrative, it's taking root in Europe, and the churches are sitting empty, and the exodus is happening. He goes on to write, I didn't know back then that the Christian story is the story of our rebellion against God, and I didn't know that by taking part in that rebellion, I had become part of the story whether I liked it or admitted it or not.
And I didn't know either, he said, why Christians see pride as the greatest sin. I only knew at that point that I had a good case for injustices in this world by this God of miracles and resurrections and virgin births. I knew I was smarter than anyone who believed in that. And I could argue a good case. But he wrote, I kept visiting those empty churches.
I just didn't tell anyone. And his journey, he shares that he became very involved with environmental activism. And this too is a conversation I have with a lot of people because he wrote, our goal in our activism was to remake earth down to the last nanoparticle to suit our desires, which, of course, we identify as our needs. He said, and how does this resonate with what we see today? This new world that we're making is going to be globalized, uniform, interconnected, digitized, monitored, and always on, always on.
We are building a machine to replace God. Wow. I don't know what possessed me this summer, but I pulled out 1984. I had never read it, but my kids read it. And I was like, oh, I'm just gonna read this.
You should read it. It's a very easy read. And it's like, how did Orwell have the foresight so many years ago to pretty much define exactly what we're going through today? It's interesting. This machine to replace God, He said, following the rabbit hole down, I realized that a crisis of limits and boundaries is really a crisis of culture, and a crisis of culture is really a crisis of spirit.
Every culture that lasts understands that living within boundaries, limits set by natural law, by cultural tradition is a cultural necessity and a spiritual imperative. That decline in any civilization always begins with moral and spiritual decline. Do you see that happening today? How our school systems are pushing out the history of America, tearing down monuments, taking out history books, and rewriting them? How what just ten years ago would have been common sense natural law is now being completely redefined down to our children's sex.
That's insane and crazy. We think that we can make our own boundaries and redefine what God says is truth. And this is what he says next. He says, There seems to be only one culture in history that has held none of this to be true, and it happens to be the one we're living in. I mean, who do we think we are that we can just redefine everything?
And can I ask you, how is it working out for us? It's not working out very well. He said, I started to dimly see what I ought to have seen years before, that the great spiritual pathways, the teachings of the saints might have been telling us something urgent about our human nature and what happens when we step outside of the God given boundaries. GK Chesterton declared, contrary to Marx, that irreligion, the nuns, is really the opium of the masses. That wherever the people do not believe in something beyond this world, they will worship this world.
And you know what happens every time we do that? We worship the strongest in this world. And the strongest in this world are not always the best, not at all. And here we are. He says, and I want to share this with you because I have a lot of conversations in this valley about this.
He said, I continued my search for truth, but where to find it? So I became a Buddhist for a while. And yet, as the years went on, Zen was not enough for me. Yes, it had compassion, but you know what it lacked? It lacked love.
I have been in several Buddhist countries, and my first question is, where are the people helping their neighbors that are starving? In Thailand, where are the people helping their neighbors' kids that are being trafficked? You know who those people are? Those people are Christians showing up to help those people. Where is the love?
And he said, I didn't want to admit this when I was a Buddhist, but I had a desire that Buddhism didn't offer to worship. This is why we open in praise and worship because it settles our heart and opens us up to receive the word. He said, I knew something was calling me, but what was it? He said, I knew what it was at that point. It was nature because I love nature.
Do we love nature? We all love nature living in this glorious majestic valley. And he said, so I found God in nature, and I ended up a priest of the witch gods. And I discovered that magic is real. It works.
Who it works for is a whole other question. I tell you, we have a serious influx of witches in our valley. My kids and I, over Christmas break, were snowshoeing up in the wilderness. And we came up on this bizarre altar, and my daughter-in-law jumped back. And she's like, this feels really ugly.
And there were stones everywhere, and my son and I just started tearing down the stones. And my daughter-in-law just took off. She's like, I'm out of here. And I'm like, no. Help us tear it down.
Because as Christians with the Holy Spirit, there was a reaction against what we saw. And this is not abnormal in our valley. Who it works for is another question, this magic. So there is power there. He said that even though he experienced that power, the abyss, the emptiness inside him was only getting greater.
And then one night, he had a dream about Jesus. And he said that dream was so vivid when I woke up. I wrote down everything he said and what he looked like. And I want to encourage you, Acts tells us in the last days, God will pour out his spirit and give our children dreams and visions. Pray that over your children.
I pray every day, Lord, give them a dream about you. Give them a vision about you. Make yourself known to them. And in whatever way you do, I will be so happy, but I'm going to ask for what Acts said, dreams and visions. He said suddenly and maybe this is happening to some of you because this was my husband's story.
My husband was not a believer until his early 40s. And he would say, oh my gosh, what are you praying? Because everywhere I go, I'm meeting a Christian man that I kind of like. And this is what happened to Kings North. He said, suddenly, I started meeting Christians everywhere.
They were coming out of the woodwork. Strangers were emailing me. Even priests were asking me to help them with their writings. This went on for months, and I knew there was no escape. I had found the truth.
C. S. Lewis says, we cannot ignore the steady, unrelenting approach of him who so earnestly desires us even if we don't want to meet him. Said that King Snorr said he became a Christian and he said, I can't rationally explain it to you, but there's no point in arguing with me about it. And do you know why?
Because the abyss is silent, because the abyss is gone. It's gone because someone is inhabiting that abyss and that space inside of me. That someone is the Holy Spirit of God. He ends his article with a challenge that I would like to challenge us with. He says, what if, what if all these people who claim to be Christians, what if the 63% in America actually started doing what God says to do?
This is why we're getting into James because it is the most practical how to get out there and do it book. Instead of just saying you're a Christian and having people go, I don't know, is she a Christian? I'm not sure. I think she's a Christian. Acting like a Christian.
What if we all did that? What if we started sacrificing instead of self indulging? What if we opened our hands and our heart and our wallet to people in great need instead of taking another vacation? Or what if we learned how to love like God says to love? He says, Love your neighbor, but what if we loved our enemies too?
What if we gave people a break and just said, maybe you were having a bad day. It's okay. What if we learned how to forgive, how Jesus forgives us? He says, just wipe it clean. You just confess it to me wiped clean by the blood of Jesus.
And he says, and he doesn't even bring it up to us again. What if we didn't bring up a record of wrongs with our husbands or our kids or ourself? What if we just said, thank you, Lord. You forgave that. I don't need to rehearse that again.
I don't need to go over that again. Kings North wrote, I saw that the teachings of Christ really are the most radical teachings in history and that we have arrived where we are today because we just don't live them. We just don't. He said, I grew up believing that what all modern people are taught, that freedom means lack of constraint, but that is not freedom at all. And I remember when I first came back to Bible study, the teacher said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free and Christ died.
He came to set you free. It is for freedom that he came to set you free. And I would hike around my neighborhood in California and go, that is so stupid. I'm an American. I am free.
Like, did she mean by that? What did she mean by that? She meant that true freedom is giving up my will and my way and saying, Your will today, Lord. Your way today. I'm going to deny myself, and I'm going to walk in Your path.
And I don't always get it right. I fail a lot, but at least I know the path now, and I get back on the path. I mean, this is what King Zorroth wrote. He said, Look at our world, the kingdom of man that we live in. We have seas with mountains of plastic.
Have you seen those pictures of the pollution? Of islands of plastic. We have billionaires that give nothing living in cities with homeless people. We just don't care. But what if this ancient word that God gave those 40 different authors from all different walks of life is the path out of this mess?
What if it is? I say it is. I know it is. And you know what? We all have to choose.
Just like he said, I was part of the rebellion story whether I liked it or not. We all have to make that choice, surrender and obedience or rebellion, sacrifice or selfishness, God's way or my way, The cross or the machine? I'm going for the cross. You and I have been offered the same choice that's been offered throughout time. Yes.
God says that gate is small, and that path is narrow, and it's hard. It is really hard. I want you to know that. I'm not gonna sugarcoat this with you. It's stinking hard.
The hardest thing in the world is to die to yourself. The hardest thing in the world is to forgive someone who hurt you so much. It is really hard. It's hard for me to love that girl who gossiped about me and slandered me. I don't want to love her.
And God says, Deborah, I'll take care of her. You, your job is to love her. It's hard, and we're going to fail to walk it. But I just want to ask you a question. Is there any other path?
Is there any other path to walk? Is there any other path that leads us home? Because we're all on our way somewhere And I know I am going to be sitting at the great feasting table of my Lord someday, and I pray to God that every single one of you are going to be sitting there with me. Dear heavenly father, I love you and I love your word because it is alive and powerful, and it's done a mighty change in my heart, Lord. And I thank you for that.
And I see the change that you've made in the people who open your word and who say, I'm gonna walk that path with you, Lord. And as Allie said before, it is hard, but it is so rewarding at the same time. And that empty space, that abyss within all of us is replaced with a sense of purpose, a sense of contentment, a sense of hope, a sense that this world, as James four says, is but a vapor, and it's gonna disappear someday. We're gonna disappear someday. But our souls are eternal, and they're going one of two places, heaven or hell.
That is what you say tell us, Jesus and that is the truth. And Lord today, I just pray that not one single soul in this room will leave not saying Jesus, you come into my heart and you fill that abyss. I am done doing it my way. I don't wanna rebel against you anymore. I invite you in.
Jesus, you did all the work on the cross and you say to us, all we have to do is say, I repent, I believe, I have a lot you can have a lot of questions and doubts, but just say I believe you Jesus, and I invite you in, and I'm gonna live for you the rest of my days. May you leave here with the assurance that God has called you, he loves you, he wants you, he wants you. Say yes. Say yes and get on this new path to really living life. Lord, we can't wait to jump into James one next week and hear what you have to say for us.
Bless these women, Lord, for their commitment to be here today through the storm, through the rough roads. I just pray you bless them and multiply their time in Jesus' holy name. Amen.
Amen.
Let's just close our eyes and take a minute to just listen to the Holy Spirit. Because odds are there's something that he wants to show us, something that he's telling us to do to change. We could hear something right now or guarantee we'll hear something later throughout our day. He's gonna correct us of our attitude, of something we're holding back from him or something he's calling us to do. Holy Spirit, we just ask you to speak to us, show us on a practical do do it it perfectly, but to allow you to be Lord over our lives, over our thoughts, over our attitudes, over our family.
Thank you, God, for this time that we get to gather in freedom just to have a Bible study like this and just be listening to anointed teaching and have the fellowship of one another. We pray that you continue to just teach us as we read your word this week and as we have that fellowship in our small groups, and just that you would continue to speak to us throughout this day and throughout our week, and that we would have ears to hear. In Jesus' name, amen. So I think Julia is gonna come up and dismiss us to small groups.
Thank you, Allie. Was beautiful. Thank you, Deborah. That's a great message. So welcome, everyone.
Thank you for coming to our winter study. I, know that a lot of you are new, and we're so excited to have you here. The overall goal by the end of each of our Bible studies is that you feel your heart changed, that you actually have actively changed your ways little baby steps at a time. We all have a goal to be better. And, so while you're here, we ask you to live in the present, open your hearts, and get to know one another.
We'd like to thank First Bee and the support we get here for allowing them to use our their wonderful church for our gathering place. We're beyond grateful for this as a gift. And out of respect, we ask that each of you, be mindful when you leave that you push your chairs in, that you throw your coffee cups and trash away, and that we leave it as we found it. We're so, so privileged to have this opportunity. We're a community Bible study led by volunteers.
There's no financial support for our group. Therefore, we take a love offering every week. If anybody feels moved to donate, there's a box out on the front table each week where you make your name tag. And this covers printing costs, babysitters, refreshments, and things that we do. So it's up to you.
If you have, that in your heart, we'd we'd love it. As mentioned, we'll meet for six weeks. Our last study will be held on February 21. We love to begin promptly at ten, in the morning. So Ali and company are gonna strike a chord at ten, and those doors close.
So if you could be in before that, that would be great. And then Deborah will start her message as she did today after, some worship and praise music. After Deborah's message, we dismiss everyone into their small groups. And we tend to lose some time in this transition because we're women and we like to chat. So I'm gonna ask that if you want to chat, you meet your friends here maybe, you know, 20 early with a cup of coffee.
It's set up. Or you stay after and and visit, But it's really important that you grab your things and go to your small group because we only get an hour, and we've got a lot to say because we're women. And for those of you that are moms, the babysitters are paid until noon, and so moms really need to be done at noon to pick up their kids. So moms, you're all together in one group. We're gonna build a a mom group, and that's gonna be with me right here in the sanctuary even to save more time.
So Yes. We'll be right here. Allie, you don't have to move. If you're going if you know you're going to miss a lesson, they are live streaming this through the first b website. So ourselves who could not be here this morning was my little guinea pig, and she texted me that it's working.
So that was great. And you can watch Deborah's message via livestream. Or if you miss and you couldn't do that, it'll be on the JH Women's Bible Study website by the next day. I will be sending out an email in the next day or two with the links for both of those and just kind of a update on all of this. So you'll have the link should you not be able to attend and not miss a thing.
We'd like to welcome all of our new attendees. Would those of you that are new that haven't participated with us before, stand up for a minute so we can love on you and welcome you. Welcome. Welcome. We're so glad you're here.
So glad you're here. This is the Holy Spirit moving through our valley. And now I'm going to introduce our small group leaders. They're each going to stand so that you know which group you're in. So, Casey, would you stand, please?
Casey and I, team team lead, we're gonna be right here with the moms in the sanctuary. Thank you, Casey. Thank you. And, Susie Baldock, would you please stand? Susie is group a.
She co leads with Janet Whitmire who couldn't be here today. So those of you that were told either you're with Susie, Janet, or in group a. This is Susie. And Susie, where are you meeting? Okay.
Alright. Thank you. Alright. And Heidi and Heidi Summers and Jen Wolff are co leading, and this would be group b. So if you were told that you were with Heidi or Jen or in group b, you'll be with them.
And? We're downstairs. If you go down those first stairs, can go down the. Okay. Alright.
Look for these two down there as well. And then Christine is where's Christine? Christine is here. Alright. And that would be if you were told group d, that's with Christine.
Sammy Robinson. Sammy is here. Thank you, Sammy. Sammy was group e if you heard an e. And Arlen, Erastorza.
Erastorza is group f, and you're meeting where? Thank you. Alright, ladies. I hope, you have a wonderful week. Read the first chapter of James, and we'll see you next week after.
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