Berean Community Church Wednesday Bible Study Galatians Overview & 1:1-5

Session of Bible study underway, all right? Thank you, and then just enjoy yourselves, prepare your hearts. There are a lot of new people, so if you guys don't really know everybody, go ahead and just say hello. Obviously, you can't introduce yourself thoroughly or fully, but just say hi, and then we'll get started in about six minutes, all right?

>> All right, well, good evening, everybody. Welcome to a new session of Bible study. I just wanted to just go over just a very quick scheduling announcement, and then I'm gonna break you off into your groups. Can I actually get control of the monitor here?

All right, I'm gonna walk you through some of the group discussions. So the rest of the evening, it really is for you to just share and pray with your group. The first question that I have up here is if you were to base this answer on your desires and the choices you regularly make. Does God exist for you or do you exist for God? And that's a very important question for you to think through, okay? Not what you feel like right here, but just thinking through what is the evidence in my life? Have I been created by God and for God and love God and serve God? Or am I trying to manipulate God to serve me? That's a question that I would encourage you to just answer. The second question is, first, what is the gospel?

And then a more important applicational question, how has the gospel of Jesus Christ impacted your life?

Okay, and then question number three, are there any specific applications that come to mind when you think about questions one and two?

And then number four, what is one thing about the study of Galatians that you maybe are anxious about? What are the things that the group members can help you in, keep you accountable in, and then pray for you on your behalf? Okay, so my encouragement is just vulnerability breeds vulnerability. When you just share, this is where I'm at, these are the things that I'm struggling with, and these are the areas that God's really been challenging me and blessing me. And I need your help to kind of remind me of these truths. Then there's a domino effect in your small group. If someone comes in and is like, You know when people are giving you kind of fake answers. Then the rest of the group, it just kind of you share just whatever you think, gets you off the hook for today, okay?

Let's not do that. So these questions are mostly so that we can start thinking about the areas of our heart that we can really pray over and the choices that we make that we can recalibrate some of those things so that we can grow, okay? Let me pray for us. But before we, I'm gonna just do a couple quick things for next week. Chapter 1, verses 6 through 10. And I'm gonna post these online, but what would make up a different gospel, okay? What would entail a different gospel? What is it about different gospels that make them so appealing? And then based on the context, what exactly is the favor of men, okay? So prep those, like I said, I'm gonna post them up online. And let me pray for us, and then I'll free you up to do these questions.

Father, help us to not just treat this like an academic study. Help us really to just be fed off your word and to be challenged by it and to give you worship. And so I pray that you would cause all of us just to be humble before you and humble before one another and really leave here just so thankful, God, for just your kindness and your favor in our lives. Lord, we know that it's your kindness that leads us to repentance. And so help us not to overlook that, help us not to take that for granted. Help us not to scoff at that, but to appreciate you and to submit ourselves wholeheartedly to you because of that kindness. And so we pray for just your help in our small groups that we really would be just genuine fellowshippers as we talk about some of these things.

We pray this in Jesus' name.