With the arrival of the new year, I especially felt that I need to help our church members build their Bible reading and prayer lives. After seeing our church members struggling physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and thinking that these problems are difficult to fix through our own strength and efforts, I couldn’t help but feel this way.
In order to live a life with God’s grace and power, not just refraining from evil but transforming the world, we need to completely conform to God’s word. Although, thus far, I feel I have made effort to share and teach the Bible correctly, we can’t truly know God’s will through this teaching alone. This has made me feel that it would be difficult to live according to God’s word which has caused me to feel impatient. If we want to experience God’s miracles in our lives, we must turn back from the sinful path and only tread on the path of obedience to God’s word.
“For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” (1 Tim. 4:5)
Like the Bible verse above, the way to become holy is only through the word and prayer. So, in the new year, I considered and prayed about how I could help our church members in this way. First, with regards to the Bible, in order to become more acquainted with it, I plan on studying the Bible together not just with a simple summary but with application to our lives within the whole context of the Bible. Like the existing B2 disciple course helps participants understand different topics of Christian doctrine, the goal of the study I would like us to do would be to help us understand the Bible.
A few years ago, I made some educational materials and all the cells studied the whole context of the Bible, but this time I would like to edit those materials so that we could read the Bible with them in parallel. The Bible study I am thinking about would not be with the whole church, but, like the B2 course, we would take applications and build up people who could become teachers. That way, later these people could teach a similar Bible study to others. Because it would study the context of the whole Bible, it wouldn’t be possible to do it quickly, but I also don’t want it to go on too long, maybe 12-15 weeks. Later I plan to put out a notice and accept people on a first-come first-served basis.
We also need to increase the time we spend in prayer, and I will continue to encourage church members to carry faith and call out to God in prayer. In the new year, as our church goes out into the world, Satan will not sit still and attacks the church in various ways. But as fierce and grand is the battle, the victory will also be bountiful. Christian life isn’t lived because we are bored and need a hobby and it’s not a game. Noah walked with God and received his mercies and salvation but all the rest of the world was destroyed in the flood. Receiving the grace of God through his word and prayer is not the difference between can and cannot but is the difference between life and death. Like Jesus said “For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away,” in this new year, let’s all conquer our trials through the word and prayer.
