Lent Bible Study

Our series this year during Lent is “From Hurt to Healing” and will address both the hurts that we have in our lives and the hurts that we have caused in others’ lives. The worship service & sermons will follow the topics listed below. In addition to our worship services, there will also be a Bible study to follow this theme. Listed below are the themes & topics we will be covering in each session. We will be using the DVD series Nooma for our sessions together which will cover passages from Scripture and the theme for the week. You are welcome to attend the sessions that you are able and do not have to commit to the entire series. I would ask that you prayerfully consider attending these sessions both for yourself and for the church. This will be a powerful series for those who are willing to engage and allow God to transform our hearts. I look forward to being on this journey with you. Please look closely at the dates for these sessions, due to some previously scheduled meetings there are some dates when the group will not meet.

Wednesday, March 4, 10:00 am Tuesday, March 10, 6:30 pm
Rain—“Things don’t always work out the way we want them to, or the way we think they will. Sometimes we don’t even see it coming. We get hit with some form of pain out of nowhere leaving us feeling desperate and helpless. That’s the way life is. Still, it makes us wonder how God can let these things happen to us. How God can just stand by and watch us suffer. Where is God when it really hurts? Maybe God is actually closer than we think. Maybe it’s when we’re in these situations, where everything seems to be falling apart, that God gets and opportunity to remind us of how much he really loves us.”

Lump—“A lot of us have done things in our lives that we’re ashamed of. Some are small thins, and some of us have really big and devastating things. Some of us even have things that people close to us don’t know about. Personal junk that we keep to ourselves so we don’t have to deal with it. Because we don’t know how to deal with it, do we? We’re afraid that if we try it’s just going to make everything worse. But no matter how big our junk is, no matter how much we’ve done has impacted the way other people feel about us or how we feel about ourselves, it hasn’t changed how God feels about us. God loves us, he always has and always will, and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”

Tuesday, March 17, 6:30 pm Wednesday, March 18, 10:00 am
Store—“We all get angry about things from time to time—some of us more often than others. For some of us, it feels like we’re constantly on the brink of losing it, where it doesn’t take much to get angry about anything. And this kind of anger can be seen everywhere we go—at work, in traffic, at the store, at home. But what is really at its root? Anger is often looked at as a bad thing, but are there things actually worth getting angry about? Maybe if we had a better understanding of our anger and where it comes from, we could learn how to channel it toward something constructive—something that’s bigger than ourselves.”

Tuesday, March 24, 6:30 pm Wednesday, March 25, 10:00 am
Matthew—“Suffering the loss of someone we love can be the most difficult thing in life to deal with. One moment we have them and the next they’re gone. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to feel? The truth is, there’s no certain way we’re ‘supposed’ to feel. Whatever we’re feeling, it’s okay. And if we don’t feel anything at all, that’s okay too. It’s okay to have no answers and no explanations. Because sometimes all the reasoning and comforting words in the world just aren’t what we need. What might help us, however is to understand how Jesus dealt with this kind of loss.”

Tuesday, March 31, 6:30 pm Wednesday, April 1, 10:00 am
Luggage—“Maybe a friend turned their back on you. Maybe someone you loved betrayed you. We all have wounds and we end up carrying around these things that people have done to us for weeks, months, and sometimes even years. It isn’t always easy to forgive these people and after awhile these hurts can get really heavy. So the only way to feel better seems to be somehow getting back at the people that hurt us, to get revenge. But does revenge ever truly satisfy? Maybe forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else to get them off the hook. Maybe forgiveness is about you. God didn’t create you to carry these wounds around, God created you to be free.”

Tuesday, April 7, 6:30 pm Wednesday, April 8, 10:00 amOpen—“Many of us have experienced situations where we’ve prayed and it felt like God wasn’t listening. And yet other times we’ve prayed or known someone that prayed and the situation changed. Does God answer prayer? Sometimes, but not all the time? Or does God always answer prayer and it’s just that sometimes God says no? Some of us are angry with God for not answering the prayers we’ve prayed for years. Why did he answer their prayer, but not ours? What if there’s more to prayer than just God listening and answering? Maybe if we understood how Jesus prayed, our concepts and expectations would change.”

Tuesday, April 14, 6:30 pm Wednesday, April 15, 10:00 am
Today—“How much time and energy do we spend wishing things were how they used to be? We often think about times in our past when things were different and want our lives to be like that again. Some of us have even come to believe that our best days may actually be behind us. But if we’re in some way hung up on the past, what does that mean for our lives now? How are we and those around us affected if we’re not fully present? If we’re longing for the way things used to be, what does that really say about our understanding and appreciation of our lives today? Maybe we need to learn to embrace our past for what it is, in order to live our lives to the fullest, right here, right now.”