Women's Bible Study - January 17th, 2024 - James

In one paragraph

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...

Read together

1. James 4:8 God draws near to us when we draw near to Him
2. 2 Peter 1:20-21 no prophecy came by human wisdom but by movement of the Holy Spirit
3. Hebrews 4:12 the word is alive, powerful, sharp like a sword, exposing thoughts and motivations
4. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 scripture is God-breathed, shows truth, corrects mistakes, trains us to live in God's ways
5. John 14:6 Jesus says I am the way, the truth
6. James 4:14 this world is but a vapor and will disappear

Talk about it

1. 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?
2. 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?
3. Paul Kingsnorth wrote that he had been searching his whole life for 'a truth I could surrender to,' and tried to fill the emptiness inside him with sex, fame, power, and politics before finding Christ. What things have you seen people, or yourself, turn to in order to fill that kind of emptiness?
4. Deborah spoke to parents of prodigals and said not to give up, pointing to the promise that God's word does not return void. If you have a prodigal in your life, how do you hold on to that hope when the waiting is long? If you were once a prodigal yourself, what brought you back?
5. Kingsnorth concluded that we have arrived where we are as a culture because Christians simply do not live the teachings of Christ, and Deborah used that as the reason for studying James. What is one area of your own life where you sense the gap between what you believe and how you actually live, and what feels hardest about closing it?