Below are the notes and summaries from our weekly studies. So far, they have been much more than we anticipated each week…much more in depth!!
9/21/21 – Can you be rich and have a lot of money and still be following God/Jesus?
Short answer…yes. You can be rich/wealthy (financially) BUT you have to have the right heart. You aren’t to hoard your money. You are to freely give…even if you give everything. As long as your heart is right and you are not putting money first, you can have a lot of money. This means you don’t put a lot of value or work into ‘getting rich’. You are happy to give as much as you have whenever you are asked. God looks at your heart - money cannot be a priority. We are to give generously and in turn, God keeps the money flowing into you. As long as you are giving, he’ll replenish your money. If you hoard your money…the flow stops.
The Candy Bar example: However, another item was brought up at the study. Think about this….we are suppose to be trying to be just like Jesus. That is our goal, right? So the question came up, “did Jesus ever do anything for himself?”. The Candy Bar example: would Jesus buy a candy bar for himself? Something to think about…
Nowhere in the Bible does it show any example of a time that Jesus did ANYTHING for himself. There is no example of Him doing or buying anything for himself!
Therefore…how should we be living? We may think (as I did) that we are doing a lot, or all we can, to be like Jesus. But think about the example that Jesus NEVER did anything for himself…are we really doing that much? My resolution is that I have a lot more to do and a lot more to do differently!
9/27/21 – Why does God allow bad things to happen? (the prophet Job, illness & death, worldwide, etc)
Since the “apple” (fruit) was eaten in the garden, bad things were present in this world. Before that, and if it was never eaten, bad things would never happen…everything would be perfect and work perfectly well together. But, it was eaten. So we are looking at the results of bad things happening and why they happen…especially to people who are ‘good’.
A few different reasons we found on this:
1. We determined that bad things happen when someone is not on God’s path for them. Either the ‘victim’ or the victimizer. God may have been working to get the person to go a different way or do something different (either take a different route to avoid an accident, or talk to a specific person to keep them from doing a crime, etc) and they didn’t heed or didn’t know how to hear from God, so they stayed on the path that was leading to destruction. So we learned that it’s important to listen to what God is trying to tell us..either through other people, or through our spirit, to get or stay on the path He has for us. However, even though we stay on the right path and listen to God’s instructions, something bad may happen if another person does not do the same. We may fall victim to someone else not listening to God.
2. We do not see the big picture. We don’t see that what is happening to us right now may be what is necessary for a good thing, or to prevent a terrible thing later. God sees our future. He knows what’s coming for us in every situation. So what may seem like a bad thing to us right now because we can’t see our future, may be the one thing that prevents a devastation down the road.
3. Death of a loved one…especially a child. This is a tough one to figure out. All we know is that God never intended death to be in the world. Again, the eating of the fruit brought death to us and now we have to learn to live with death…for now!
Sometimes, maybe God allows a death of a person because that death causes someone else to be saved, brings them to Jesus. As for a child dying of cancer…could be that last reason, but we don’t really know. All we can rely on is that Romans 8:28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
It could be that God is taking that person to keep them from the evil of the world - for example, God may know that the person/child will take the wrong path and end up in hell if they stay here on earth. But again, we don’t have the real answer for this, but must trust that God loves us and would never do something bad for or to us.
Consider this statement by C.S. Lewis: … if we make mental pictures to illustrate quantum physics we are moving further away from reality, not nearer to it. We have clearly even less right to demand that the highest spiritual realities should be picturable, or even explicable in terms of our abstract thought.
When we ask why God permits the death of children, we are not wondering why some imaginary god, invented in a human mind and entirely explainable and predictable, might allow children to die. We are talking about the real one—the Trinity, the one who is the origin of quantum physics, of beauty, of flawless purity, of the universe, and of every other created thing. It would be absurd to expect to understand the mind of God when we struggle to even explain the Trinity.
Good articles that discuss this:
https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/loss
https://hopemommies.org/q-why-did-god-allow-my-baby-to-die
10/5/21 – Where do ‘hearing voices’, ghosts, hearing from the other side, etc., come from?
This turned into Are ghosts or spirits real? Do we get visited from dead relatives?
What we learned is that once dead, we leave this world and do not return. Whether your spirit/soul goes to heaven or to hell…we are not allowed to return to this world. So the ghosts or spirits or messages we get or see that seem to be from someone we love who has passed, are not our loved ones and not from God.
more coming….
10/11/21 – Continued from last week
10/19/21 – (Tuesday) What about Tithing?
10/25/21 – (Monday) (Virtual through zoom) What is Heaven & Hell
11/2/21 – (Tuesday) Satan, Demons and Angels
11/16/21 - Anger & Depression & other mental disturbances
11/23/21 – What are the rules and commandments
11/30/21 – Prayer - Who to pray to, how and when? When not to?
12/14/21 – How are you saved? Is Baptism required? Dunking or dripping? Can you lose your salvation?
12/21/21 – God’s promises, blessings & curses…how to do you get them or avoid them?
12/28/21 – Trust vs. Faith
1/3/22 – Go to Church?
1/10/22 – End Times & the Rapture
1/17/22 – Predestination & Free Will?
1/24/22 - The Trinity – what it means