Last week we talked about the idea of letting God break our hearts with what breaks His. The first step we talked about is to read the Bible more often so that we can start working toward better understanding the Heart of God.
As we discussed last week, no matter what your politics are, it is important right now to try to soften our hearts and embrace others. There are always people behind the scenes on both sides of the political aisle that are doing more to hurt the situation than help but the vast, vast majority of people are just trying to live a good life and find joy wherever they can. Since every one of those people are children of God, He wants us to understand them better so that we can genuinely love them.
It is undeniable that there are many so-called leaders who are making things worse but don’t let that distract you. Try to envision Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump embracing each other in true friendship. While that is difficult (and somewhat humorous) to imagine, this is what God wants from the two of them in the same way that we want our own children to embrace and love each other. The Pelosi/Trump embrace will likely never occur but, if it does, it will only be possible if they soften their hearts and understand that God wants them to look at each other as individuals who need and deserve love. They both need to start by trying to better understand God’s heart.
The biggest single thing we can do to better understand the heart of God is to study the Bible – not just read it but dig in and study it. I try to read at least one chapter each day but I have to admit that I have not done a very good job recently of really digging in to study & analyze what I’m reading. If I’m being real honest, my motivation is probably to say that I read the Bible instead of thinking of it as a way to better understand the heart of God.
That recent realization made me want to make some changes for the better. It made me want to approach my Bible time with a pure heart and with the goal of getting a lot out of it. That led to the idea of a Bible challenge. This week, let’s each pair up with someone else from the group to go a little deeper in the Bible. You and your partner can pick any verse or passage you want and the goal is to get together in-person or virtually this week for at least 15 minutes to do two things: 1) try to go deep about what you took away from that verse/passage and 2) talk about some strategies for more consistently reading the Bible with the intent of better understanding the heart of God.
Questions:
- Do you agree that the biggest single thing we can do to better understand God is to read the Bible? Why or why not?
- If each of us really committed to studying (not just reading) the Bible daily, what affect would it have on us – not just in softening our hearts for others but overall?
- What are some of the barriers that keep us from reading and studying the Bible more consistently?
- Other than this week’s challenge, what are some things we can do to make studying the Bible a more consistent practice in the future?
Men's Small Group Blog 