And yet, so many of your students are starting this new year in the same place as they ended the last, wandering around in the dark of hopelessness and desperately searching for a shred of hope in all the wrong places. Only Jesus and Jesus alone can provide our souls the satisfying hope that enables us to live in and through God’s amazing grace. Relationships, success, wealth, political movements, medical advancements, sexual freedoms/explorations, etc., can’t do it either. Appeasing Roman gods or buying magic spells can’t do it. Everything else is a false hope, a mirage that can only tease but never fully satisfy one’s soul. Paul’s entire letter to the Ephesians is about hope: what it is, how to get it, and how a person, a city, a nation, or an entire generation can be transformed by it. According to this letter, there is only one true and lasting source of hope: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For Paul, hopelessness is found in anything outside of Jesus. But, for your students who are seeking to find hope in all the wrong places, hopelessness is a prison of reality. It’s a tornado of despair causing fear, depression, pain, suicide, anxiety, and so much more in its wake. One of the most negative forces a person can endure is hopelessness. But to fully appreciate hope, we need to understand its opposite: hopelessness. For Paul, hope is something that can be found in Christ and in Christ alone. For some, hope is a feeling for others, it is an expectation and still, for others, it is a desperate desire. With it, we are capable of doing just about anything, no matter the obstacles in our path. All of these are designed to help you get the most out of the passage, while encouraging life change.Overview: One of the most powerful forces that we, as human beings, can experience is hope. We pray that you will find them to be a useful aid as you dig in to the Word.Įach Bible study guide contains discussion questions, cross-references, verse by verse commentary, and applications. These simple online lessons can also provide a valuable resource in helping you lead a weekly small group Bible study. Therefore we have compiled nearly two decades of in depth and practical, free Bible study lessons to help you in your own study. Our duty is to faithfully study the Bible in order to understand its original meaning and then to diligently make application to our own lives. We believe that the Holy Spirit will use God’s Word to convict and change us. We hope to see lives transformed, communities changed, disciples reproducing, and Christ glorified. Our vision here at Study and Obey is help you make disciples in small group Bible studies and to help those disciples learn to not just head knowledge, but obedience. And He taught us to teach those disciples to obey all that He commanded us. In the Great Commission, Jesus commanded us to make disciples.
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