God answers Job after his long speech and asks a series of questions. What is the purpose to God’s questions? When we pray should we expect God to answer back? What did Job learn from God’s response? Can we ever truly accuse God of wrong doing when things in life are not as we might want them? Job learns that God is awesome and that there is so much he doesn’t know. How might this story be a lesson for us when we go through times of hardship and we think God is unfair?
As Jewish people celebrate the feast of Sukkot, Christians should be reminded of what it meant and what it pointed to in prophecy? What if I told you it had a hidden meaning that was significant for our time today? Was the feast of Tabernacles only a commemoration of freedom from Egyptian bondage? Or was there something it pointed to in the prophetic future and the ministry of Jesus? Why did God want the people to dwell in booths? We will take a brief look at salvation history as good and evil struggle for custody of humanity in the Great Controversy.
How does God deal with Jonah after trying to hide? What might this mean for how God deals with us? What was the belly of the fish designed to teach Jonah? What can we learn from God even while at the lowest points of our lives? What does Jonah's name mean and what lessons can we learn from it about how God transforms our lives today? How could our darkest moments in life be used by God to bring us into the light of understanding?
What are the ways in which we hide from God? How does God get involved in our lives when we run from what He asks us to do? How can our choices impact the lives of others around us? How can God use situations in which we make mistakes to reach others, especially after we have been poor witnesses? Can God use unbelievers to reach backsliden believers? Can the difficulties we face in our lives sometimes be God drawing us back into relationship with Him? Can we be spiritually sleeping while others with less light than we have are more awake than we are?
Jesus mingled with people and genuinely desired their good. What message does this have for the church today? How can we genuinely desire the good of others? How does scripture contrast how Jesus cared about people compared to His disciples or prophets like Jonah? How did Jesus treat people who were sick and out-casted? Why did some healings Jesus did occur in more than one stage? What does the Bible teach about selfishness, loving others, and the needs of our neighbors? How does this compare with the deeds of many professed Christians throughout history?
This quarter we focus on the role of the church in the community. In what way was man created in the image of God? What was lost because of sin? How does the mission of Jesus seek to restore what was lost? What role does the church plan in the restoration process? How does Satan seek to prevent this? What promises did God make about restoration? What role does humanity play in the process? How does this tie-into what Jesus accomplished on the cross?
Have you ever found personalities difficult to deal with? Are there some strong personalities in your life that many find hard to adjust to? Whether in your marriage, friendships, home, church, work, or your community, sometimes people commit crimes against relationships. Why is it so hard to be kind to others? Where does God fit in with all this? Does God care about relationships? Does He have the power to fix broken ones? If so, how? Find out this week on Ever-Present.
Have you ever had a problem that you wanted to hide from everyone around you? Are there things in your life you wish no one knew about? Why is the world the way it is? Why do we see so much corruption, greed, disease, sickness, and problems as we observe the world around us? Is God still involved in the affairs of humanity? Where was God when everything started going wrong? Can we trust that God is still present today even in the midst of political and moral turmoil? Man hides from God, but God is ever-present and seeking out humanity. Where are you?
John Spellman preaches on the 7th church of Revelation. What is Jesus' message to the church of our time? How does Jesus introduce Himself to the church of our time in a unique manner that addresses the unique problems and challenges of today? Jesus: the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God calls the church to recognize its true condition. As a forest of trees would be unstable and unsafe if each of those trees was not rooted in the soil, so today God's people must be rooted in Jesus and anchored in truth.
Dr. Andy Nash joins us this week as we study the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. Why was Jesus led into the wilderness? How did Jesus fulfill prophecy as He went to different places during His ministry? What did Jesus' life reveal about the character of God in contrast to the character of Satan? What message did both Jesus and John the baptist preach, and how would that compare with the message that the world needs to hear today? How can we gain comfort and encouragement looking at the early days of Jesus' ministry according to the gospel of Matthew?
How did Paul summarize the gospel? What was his take on the reality of rebellion and the Great Controversy? How did Paul suggest that we fight in this spiritual war? What did he mean when he compared the church to members of a body, materials of a building, or crops to be grown? How did Paul answer challenges that suggested that there was no resurrection of the dead? This week we take a look at Paul's teachings and how he illuminated many of these themes. Paul spoke of Jesus as the 2nd Adam and showed how the consequences of Adam's mistake was reversed through Christ's ministry.
What challenges and obstacles did the Early Church face? How did Jesus redirect his disciples to his true purpose while they still held on to their pre-conceived ideas and biases? What exactly is the good news of the gospel and in what way were Jesus' followers witnesses? How did the Great Controversy play out in the early church? In what ways did Satan attack the church from within and without? What can we learn from the Early Church that could help us with our challenges today?