Thinking Out Loud as a Community of Believers

Every Tuesday a group of local men who love Jesus get together for a lunch devotional at the Highland Heights church building. It is one of the high points of my week. We've had as few as five brothers present, and as many as 25, and average something like 11-15. We eat together, then sing a hymn, pray together and have a short period of devotional study. We've studied select passages, men's issues, particular doctrines, and so on. Right now we're doing what we call a "discussion study" of the book of Ephesians.

A "discussion study" is a study that consists of group discussion about a passage that we read together. I think today was the seventh week of it. It's been a real blessing. The last two weeks we discussed and debated what it means to be predestined by God for adoption as sons. Today we started and ended our discussion in the text of Ephesians, but while discussing what "inheritance" means we got away from Ephesians into a number of things. It was a truly interesting "rabbit chasing session."

The point of this post is to encourage you to find someone, a small group ideally, with which you can read and discuss the meaning of the Scriptures. And by all means attend Bible classes every week!!! While God has given each of us a mind and ability to understand his word, he gave us each other so that by studying as part of a community of believers, we can come to understand far more than we ever would alone.

"Just as iron sharpens iron, friends sharpen the minds of each other" (Proverbs 27:17 CEV).
---JLP