God's Word

"The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our Lord stands forever!" Isaiah 40:8

Last night we had Bible study over at Matt & Conchas. We girls just started a new study, and are going to be working our way through the book Purpose Driven Life. But, before every lesson, we're going to do something kind of fun and practical at the same time (an idea that Ula actually used to do with us in class).

Basically, we have a list (8 right now) of partial verses from the Bible. We will take one, look up in our concordances and by logical reasoning, where to find that in the Bible. We then write down the reference and the rest of the verse. Finally, we "translate" that verse into common language....as if we were talking to someone at the grochery store or a friend etc. Here is the example we did last night:

" He who knoweth the good thing to do, and doeth it not......" (yes, they are in king james version)

So, we looked up the word "good", and kind of knew it was in the New Testament, so looked there first. We found it in James 4:17 "He who knoweth the good thing to do, and doeth it not sins."

Then, we discussed how to translate it best. First, we said "If you know the right things to do and don't do them, you sin." But, after more discussion, we decided "sin" was not a common word in our generation right now, unless you've been raised in church. So, we looked up the dictionary definition (in the Bible dictionary in the back of one of our Bibles), and here is our final translation:

If you know the right thing to do, and choose not to do it, you're breaking God's law. James 4:17

After translating it, we went back to our Bibles version, and doubled checked ourselves to make sure we were accurate.

It really was a neat exercise.....and very valuable in learning how to use your Bible. We glanced at the verse for next week, and it should be a challenging one.... "It was better for them to have not known righteoussness than...."

We discussed the first chapter of our book, and will read ahead for next week to discuss the next chapter.

Lastly, here is a quote I liked from Chapter One:

"God is not just the starting point of your life; he is the source of it."