This week we have completed Lesson 1 of the bible study. Lesson 1 covered 1 Peter 1:1-12. Since it is the first week I am going to give a little background of how the Bible Study is set up.
Sue Edwards, the author of this study, has set the study up very nicely. There are 3 different tracks of questions in the study depending on how much time you have/want to put into it. I think this is a wonderful idea for any kind of study. Many times I have heard from people who are working moms, students, and other busy people who feel they are too busy to do a bible study. But Sue has made it so you can do the study no matter your lifestyle.
Each Lesson has a certain number of “Cores” which focuses on certain bible verses. Lesson 1 has 6 different Cores
Core 1 – 1 Peter 1:1-2
Core 2: 1 Peter 1:3-5, etc.
Lesson 1 talks about preparing for the opposition. Before I started the study I read the “Intro” in my bible about 1 Peter. It was very interesting that they really aren’t sure if Peter actually wrote it or a later disciple.
The first Core’s questions talked about the greeting and the audience of 1 Peter. It asked many questions about who Peter was writing to and where they lived. Many of Peter’s audience lived in a country where they weren’t citizens and how this caused many of their struggles. I never thought about how that may affect someone. I think many of my struggles have been caused from moving to a new place and having to “adapt” to an unknown area but it was never THAT DIFFERENT from my previous home. Everyone still spoke English. I always felt bad for students that were exchange students and came to the United States not knowing a single soul and barely speaking the language.
In verses 3-5 he talks about many blessings that God has given to us. One of the blessings that stood out for me was the blessing of “new birth.” Having the Christmas season just finish I found this very enlightening. As every Christmas Jesus is almost “reborn” in a “rebirth.” One of the questions asked how this phrase helped us in a troubled time. I think rebirth reminds me that no matter how bad things get you can always start a new when your ready to change.
This lesson had many questions but one question that REALLY stood out, especially in this online world we live in, was they asked for you to analyze a news source (newspaper, TV news, or online report) and write what is positive, negative , urgent, and important. Now analyze the same “news” in one week. Will the same news be urgent? important? positive/negative? Probably not. How about in 6 months? or 1 year? 10 years? These days after 2 days its old news and no one cares about it anymore. I thought this assessment of “news” was very interesting. It shows just how un-important most of the news we read about is.
What do you think about preparing for the opposition or “Bad news”? What do you think about how seriously we take certain “news” and how fast we forget it even happened?
Stay tuned for next week as we go into Lesson 2 – 1 Peter 1:13-2:3
It’s amazing how sometimes we put so much energy into one little thing believing it’s earth-shattering and that our world is going to fall apart. How the smallest bit of news sets us into a tizzy but a day, a week, a month later, once we’ve been able to get through the event we realize it really wasn’t some event that should of worked us up so much, and looking back its almost laughable how we reacted.
Elle recently posted…Renewing our Minds and focusing on the Positive: Week 2 Graduated Blog Tour