Moments of Quiet Truth

      Last time, we looked at some questions to ask when we looked at a text, in order to understand the meaning of the text. This time we'll be looking specifically for the "who" and the "what" of each of the members of the Godhead in a passage in order to understand who They are and what They do better.      For this lesson, we're going to go to Ephesians 1. There is SOOOO much in this chapter and most of it (vv. 3-14?) is one long, run-on sentence in Greek. We're going to focus in on the first 14 verses of chapter 1 and see what we can find out about this amazing God!       To set the stage, Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus, around 60-62 AD. You can read of his time there in the book of Acts, chapters 18:18-21 (Paul's second missionary journey) then in chapter 19 (his third missionary journey). The city of Ephesus was filled with idolatry, sexual immorality, and witchcraft. The epistle teaches us how to live out the gospel and our position

      In our last lesson, we talked about how to find key ideas by looking at the repeating words in a passage. This allows you to have a decent idea about the main idea of a passage at a glance (providing you mark the repeating words/phrases in the text). In this lesson, we will begin to ask the 5 "w's" and 1 "h" question (who, what, when, where, why, and how) to determine the key information of a text. We'll use the same text we did last time and dive in. Materials you will need: 1. Holy Spirit 2. Prayer 3. A copy of the text 4. A place to make notes      As always begin your time in the Word asking the Spirit for His help. It would also be a good idea to read the text several times before you begin to tackle the questions.  1 Corinthians 12:1-14 (NASB) " 1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. 2  You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols, however you were led. 3  Therefore I made kn

      Now that we have laid the foundation for understanding how to find the meaning of words, let's apply that knowledge so as to learn the meaning of a passage. One thing my father taught me to do is to mark up a text. Some do not wish to mark up their Bibles, so I would suggest printing out a copy of that passage that they can mark up. My dad and I both enjoy using color but pen or pencil work just as well. I would recommend either mechanical pencils, as they have a finer point, or Micron artist pens, as you can get them with very fine points as well. These pens work especially well when you don't have very large margins. The benefit to marking up the text in your copy of the Scriptures is that you have all of your notes right there, at a glance. You won't have to go searching for loose pieces of paper or that particular journal, should you ever want to revisit what you learned at a later point in time. The downside is, depending on how much you mark up the text, the wor