For the New Year: Bible Study Methods — ACTS

Why not start the new year by jazzing up your Bible study/devotional time? We can all use a tune-up where we integrate new ideas or techniques, and reevaluate methods we use that no longer make sense because we’ve matured a bit.

A search of the internet reveals a variety of Bible study methods we can use to further our understanding of God’s Word. I’m starting a series where I test a limited number of these methods, one by one. Today we will cover the ACTS Bible study method. It’s not enough to read the Bible—we want to get the most out of it so we allow it to change us. That will take place as we study the Bible and apply it to our lives.

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A New Website

The Doubt Busters site has drifted from its original mission as a question-and-answer format designed to help Christians address questions relative to their faith. But articles on the Christians’ faith journey have taken over the site.

As a result, I have created an offshoot of this website to house the latter type of articles. The site is called “Alive to God,” making reference to Romans 6:11, “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” What does it mean to be alive to God and no longer a slave to the old life?

Doubt Busters will retain all of its current content to keep the links intact. The new site is a direct copy of Doubt Busters, but with all the early Q&A content removed. If you prefer the later content you’ve been reading in Doubt Busters, please head on over to Alive to God and bookmark the new site.

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Your Kingdom Come

When we consider the Our Father prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) from the standpoint of God’s promise to Abraham, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3), it adds a new dimension to this prayer. This prayer furthers a vision that the Lord has today, to bless all nations.

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Four Protective Practices

In his brief letter, positioned just before the last book of the Bible, Jude writes a lot about apostates (those who fall away from the Lord Jesus) in the past (vv. 4-11) and in the present (vv. 12-16). Jude writes of “ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness…” (v. 4). These ungodly people mischaracterized God’s grace as approval for doing immoral things. There are many ways we can be drawn away from the Lord. In this epistle, Jude focuses on straying because of listening to misleading ministers.

Jude gives us a four-dosage prescription (vv. 20-21) to keep our spiritual lives healthy and strong, so that we may not be led astray and meet the same doom as the errant instructors.

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Four Long Words

“Christ died for my sins on the cross.” These words roll off our lips with ease. Did you ever think about what salvation means, and how extensive it really is? I want to introduce four long Bible words that are packed with meaning, and that help us appreciate more powerfully what Christ accomplished when He died on the cross. Most of this material comes from the book, The Cross of Christ, by John R. Stott.

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Immanuel + Jesus

In the Old Testament through Isaiah the prophet, the Lord had given a sign to king Ahaz, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matthew 1:23, referencing Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel means “God with us.”

Hundreds of years later, an angel visited Joseph and told him that Mary, his betrothed, “will bear a son, and you shall call his name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus means “God Saves.”

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Come to Me

To us who are still loaded down with the cares of life, with its many distractions, with the endless to-do’s driving us with no end in sight, Jesus’ offer still stands: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NKJV).

Perhaps we cannot come to Him because our goal in life is quite different from “rest.” We want to achieve. We want the best. We need money. We need a friendly face. We have some place we want to be and rest won’t get us there.

Actually, it will.

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The Two Laws: Decoding Paul’s Mysterious Gap in Romans 7 (part 2 of 2)

Strand 2: The Inward Law from Adam

Our new strand begins with Romans 5:10, “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” The life of Christ will offer more than a resumption of the fellowship with God that we lost through sin. It will be the cause for keeping us living the righteous life in faith. More on this later.

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The Two Laws: Decoding Paul’s Mysterious Gap in Romans 7 (part 1 of 2)

Many of us at one time or another have scratched our heads over the two verses in Rom. 7:24–25, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! ” From “who will deliver me?” to “I thank God—through Jesus” presents a maddening gap in logic that has frustrated believers who knew the battle Paul faced: “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do” (Rom. 7:15). What exactly was the solution that set Paul free?

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The Faith of Hebrews 11 for Today

When we consider the men and women of faith in Hebrews 11–Abel and his excellent sacrifice, Enoch who walked with God, Noah who built the ark, Abraham who left for the unknown, elderly Sarah who received strength to bear a child, Moses who passed through the Red Sea–we find it hard to see ourselves walking in their shoes, having a faith like theirs.

Yet this is exactly what God intended with the offering of His Son. The communion they spent with God is ours with Christ. The faith stirred in hearing His voice is the same faith of the word that burns in our hearts today. The direction and calling they received is offered to us by the same Spirit in us who call Jesus Christ our Lord.

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