Teaching Notes are Bible studies we taught before GraceLife Ministries began publishing articles online in 1995. Some were presented as sermons, others as group studies.
Our hope is that these older studies will be a blessing to you in your life and ministry. Please use them in any way God leads you.
These teaching notes are from a study in Genesis.
Continue reading “Teaching Notes: On The Person And Meaning”
Excellence in ministry begins by serving others in the same way Christ served us.
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” Ephesians 2:4-5
Eternal Salvation is God’s Service to His children. He saved us ‘because’ of His Great Love and ‘by’ His Grace.
Unfortunately, many Christians believe that when they read the word ‘minister’ and ‘ministry’ in the New Testament it’s speaking to someone who is paid to serve God. However, Jesus made it clear that His command to minister is to all believers (e.g. Matthew 28:19-20; Luke 24:46-49; Acts 1:8). Paul wrote that Jesus gave the Church apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers ‘for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the editing of the body of Christ … but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.’ (Ephesians 4:11, 15-16).
For the purpose of this article about ‘excellence in ministry,’ we will consider that Jesus has called all Christians to be ‘ministers.’
God created the heavens and the earth and proclaimed them as “good.” However, He had planted a tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden known as “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” How did evil show up on an earth He created and called good?
In our last study we saw that an angel named Satan brought evil into existence through his pride – “lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil.” (1 Timothy 3:6) We also saw Satan enter the Garden of Eden and approach the first humans with a statement that contradicted what God had told them.
Why did God allow this to happen?
Continue reading “The Great Reveal: Our Epic Journey Through Time, Space and Eternity – Part 12”
Teaching Notes are Bible studies we taught before GraceLife Ministries began publishing articles online in 1995. Some were presented as sermons, others as group studies.
Our hope is that these older studies will be a blessing to you in your life and ministry. Please use them in any way God leads you.
These teaching notes are from a study about success in life.
Continue reading “Teaching Notes: On The Secret To Success In The Christian Life”
“What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, And whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.” Roman 4:1-8
The Old Testament has many heroes. Paul pointed to two of those heroes who played a vital role in the history of Israel: Abraham and David.
Keep in mind that the original text of Romans did not have chapter and verse divisions. Those were added more than a thousand years after the writing of the New Testament. We are reading one continuous letter the Apostle Paul wrote to people in Rome almost two-thousand years ago.
Paul continued the theme from chapter three into chapter four: righteousness through faith alone.
In the last part of our study we learned about the “work” of God in creating “the heavens and the earth.” That work included God creating human beings in His “image” and “likeness.” When God finished creating He looked at what He had done and saw that it “was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)
If we stopped reading the Bible at the end of Genesis 1 and looked around at our neighborhood and community and watched an hour of the evening news, would we say that God’s creation “was very good?” I don’t think so.
What happened? If God is Almighty and All-Knowing, how could His eternal plan have gone so terribly wrong? It didn’t.
What we see in the world today is part of God’s eternal plan – a plan He chose “before time began, before the foundation of the world.”
Let’s go deeper into this plan to see what He chose to do and why.
Continue reading “The Great Reveal: Our Epic Journey Through Time, Space and Eternity – Part 11”
Teaching Notes are Bible studies we taught before GraceLife Ministries began publishing articles online in 1995. Some were presented as sermons, others as group studies.
Our hope is that these older studies will be a blessing to you in your life and ministry. Please use them in any way God leads you.
These teaching notes are from a study in John 10 and Ephesians 5.
Continue reading “Teaching Notes: On Eight Steps To Abundant Living”
