Want to learn more about Living the Advent Hope? Use these Bible Studies for personal devotion, group Bible studies, or teaching a church class. Below are links to the lessons in this 13-part series.
Introduction: This week we start a new series of studies on the topic of hope. I hope this study goes well! Seriously, what do you hope for? Do you have hopes for your life, your job, your marriage, your children, your future? How is your hope on these topi...
Introduction: Normally, we try to study God's Word in its context. This week, we are going to do things differently. We will look at "snapshots" of examples of hope (or the need for it) throughout the Old Testament. Let's get our mental cameras re...
Introduction: How can we have a series of lessons on hope without studying the hope of Jesus' return? Of course, we cannot! This week and next we turn our attention to the hope Jesus gives us and the hope of His Second Coming. Let's dive in! Last Minu...
Introduction: Last week we looked at the central role that Jesus plays in our hopes for the future. Hope looks to the future, but lives in the "now." How can our hope in Jesus help us today? This week? This month? How will hope in J...
Introduction: Is life worth living? Is everything we do essentially meaningless? If your life is important and is worth living, what makes it worthwhile? Does hope play a role in living a meaningful life? Let's jump into our study a...
Introduction: How are we to witness to others? How do we get their attention? What do we have to offer that will attract the secular person to what we have to say? Does our hope have anything to do with how we witness? Let's dive into the Bible and see what we c...
Introduction: Remember the children's story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears?" What the mother and father bears owned was either too much or too little, too hard or too soft -- it was never just right for Goldilocks. Only the possessions of the "little bear...
Introduction: In the last few years I have been reading the foundational writings of some other world religions. I was surprised by some of the similarities with Christianity. For example, Islam shares our Old Testament heroes. Buddhism parallels, in sev...
[NOTE TO THOSE WHO GET THE LESSON BY E-MAIL: We recently compared our main English e-mail list with the TAGnet list. The TAGnet list is used to mail out the weekly Bible study. TAGnet's list had 2,300 fewer addresses than our list. Many of these 2,300 ar...
Introduction: An old saying of lawyers goes something like this: "My dog didn't bite you, my dog doesn't bite, I don't own a dog." Our lesson this week sounds a little like this old saying. "Jesus' Second Coming is delayed because we are not ready. Jesus'...
Introduction: When your life is going just fine, do you long for Jesus to return and take you to heaven? Or, do you find that you only get the impulse for Jesus to come(soon)when something bad is happening in your life? If you are young, maybe you have...
Introduction: We have spent many weeks this quarter studying our hope in Jesus' Second Coming. How should that hope impact our day to day living? Should it make us dreamy? Should we forget the here and now to concentrate on what will be? Should we dig in and ge...
Introduction: This is the last of our series of lessons on hope. What, really, is your ultimate hope? We have discussed the hope given to us by Jesus' life, death and resurrection. What, exactly, does that give us? Where do we end up with that hope? What is y...