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The GT Weekend ~ Gospel Week 1

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The GT Weekend!

At Gracefully Truthful, weekends aren’t for “checking out”.
Use this time to invite the Almighty’s fullness into you life in a deeper way!
Saturdays and Sundays are a chance to
reflect, rest, and re-center our lives onto Christ.
Don’t miss the opportunity to connect with other women in prayer,
rest your soul in reflective journaling,
and spend time worshiping the Creator who
longs for intimacy with each of us!

Worship Through Journaling

Worship Through Journaling

1) What are your thoughts on God? Seems to be a simple question, right? But sit with the question and it becomes difficult to put into words. Who is God? Has He always existed? How do you know? Why do you suppose it’s critical to believe what Bible says about God’s eternal nature? Wrestle with these thoughts and put down some words in your journal. Read through Genesis 1 and John 1, and ask God to reveal more of Himself in deeper ways as you read and pray.

2) Begin listing some things you love. Don’t hold anything back or scratch it from the list. After you’ve written a while, go back and consider what kind of love you have for these things or people. Is the love self-focused (like love of coffee) or other-focused (love for child). Is the love one you would die for? What limit does that love have? Write out that limit. Now consider the boundless love of God. What does it mean that God sacrificially so loved? What does that kind of love imply for the rest of His character traits? How does this love color His faithfulness, His justice, and His role as Father?

3) What are  your reactions to Bri’s statement, “God’s love is shocking.”? In what ways might you agree or disagree? When you consider the love of God, what other descriptions come to mind? Jot down a handful of these descriptions. What specific reasons can you point to for listing those? Is “familiar” one of your words? “Familiar” and “comfortable” are probably as far as you can get from “shocking”.  If God’s love were truly shocking in its depth and breadth, and who it was for, how might the way you viewed others shift? Do something visible to help remind you to love others with God’s shocking love. Maybe paint 1 fingernail bright red, scroll “shocking” with a sharpie on your hand or arm, or leave some post it notes in your car or kitchen that read “shocking”.

Praying Scripture back to the One who wrote it in the first place is a great way to jump start our prayer-life! Pray this passage from Matthew 5:43-44 back to the Lord and
let His Spirit speak to you through it!

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’

Prayer Journal
I confess to You, Lord, that I tend to wrap up in Your love like a comfy, old blanket. I’m familiar with our rhythms together. Our quiet times, our conversations, Your whispers and prompts. I love it, Lord. I’m grateful for how You become increasingly precious and priceless to me. But, Abba, I know too, how easy it is for me to put You inside of a box I’ve created with familiar edges and cozy corners. Because I like to control things, without even recognizing it, I make the box smaller and smaller.

Break down my cardboard walls, Lord. Stretch my heart to know you in ways that I’m not comfortable with.  Help me to see you with fresh eyes. Renew my view of Your boundless, shocking love. Please keep making me new, Jesus!

Worship Through Community

Can we pray for you? Reach Out! We’d love to pray for and with you!
Send us an email at prayer@gracefullytruthful.com

Build community, be transparent, and encourage others:
Share how God spoke to you today!
Comment Here or in our Facebook Community Group!

Worship Through Prayer

Worship Through Music

Sketched Day 9
Abram: Digging Deeper

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Digging Deeper Days...are a pretty big deal at GT!

We search God's Word together, ask questions as we read, dig around to find the original intentions at the time of writing, and then make some applications to our everyday lives.
Along the way, we hope you'll pick up some new tools to study Scripture and you'll see truth in a new and accessible way!
Dig In!

The Passage

Looking for yesterday’s Journey Post? Check out Abram!

Genesis 12:1-5 English Standard Version (ESV)

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.

The Questions

1) What was the country Abram left? Where was the land of Canaan?

2) What was the purpose to God making Abram a great nation?

3) How would all the families of the earth be blessed through Abram?

The Findings for Intention

1) If you look back just two verses to 11:31, we see that Abram, with his father Terah, had settled in the city of Haran. Haran was in northern Mesopotamia (modern-day Turkey). Verse 5 says they were going to the land of Caanan, which is on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea (modern-day Lebanon, Israel, and parts of Jordan and Syria). The distance from one land to the other was great without modern-day transportation, we can assume that Abram’s move was to be permanent.

2) In verse 2, God says that he will bless Abram so that “he will be a blessing.” There was a divine purpose behind God choosing Abram—it was not simply for Abram’s own benefit. God had chosen Abram to be a blessing from God, not just for Abram to use his “blessing” on himself.

3) God goes on to promise in verse 3 that all the families of the earth would be blessed through Abram. This is the beginning of God’s story of redemption that the whole Bible tells. Check out Galatians 3:8: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” God justified the Gentiles (who, not being Jewish, were not Abram’s physical offspring) through faith, and this was the fulfillment of the blessing promised to Abram. Who is the object of this faith? Jesus Christ, the descendant of Abram who brought redemption to all nations on earth.

The Everyday Application

1) God called Abram out of the land he was in, promising to make him a great nation. It took faith for Abram to leave his land and his family, which were usually the means that a person found blessing. God’s call on Abram required faith, and Abram responded in faith. Praise God for this huge example of faith! Our modern day “land” we are in can look like many comfortable things like our neighborhood, a job, or even our churches. What we often miss is that God hasn’t called us to be comfortable, but to follow Him wherever He’s calling. Has He been whispering to you to step out of your “homeland”?

2) God’s promise to Abram had the purpose of blessing others. Am I using the blessing of Christ in order to bless others? Or am I keeping it to myself? Living with open-handed generosity is something that God Himself set the precedence for and calls us to live likewise. It’s not about one area of life, but everything. Our time, our talent, and our treasure. How has God blessed you and in what ways is He calling you to live generously?

3) Lord, praise you for the big story of the Bible, for the plan you had to redeem your people from sin and for how you sent your Son to pay for our sins. Praise you for having it all figured out from the beginning, and for continuing to work out Your story in my life!

Share your thoughts from today’s Journey Study!
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I Can Do That!

1) Take this passage (or any other passage).
2) Read through it (always more than a verse or two).
3) Write down your questions as you think of them.
4) Ask specific culture related questions and be ready to dig around for your answers. Google them, use www.studylight.org, or look them up in a study Bible and read the footnotes (click on the little letters next to a word and it will show you other related verses!). (www.esvbible.org)
5) Check your applications with other trusted Christians that you are in community with and embrace the fullness of God in your everyday!

The Community!

Thanks for joining us today as we journeyed into Brave Week Two!
Don’t miss out on the discussion – we’d love to hear your thoughts!

The Tools!

We love getting help while we study and www.studylight.org is one of many excellent resources.  Just type in the verse you’re looking at and Boom! It’s right in front of you in English and Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament), which are the original languages the Bible was written in.

Want to know more about a specific word in a verse? Click on “Strong’s Interlinear Bible” then click the word you’d like to study. Find super awesome stuff like “origin”, “definition”, and even all the different ways that single word has been translated into English! If you want to be geeky, you can even click the word and hear its original pronunciation – That Is Awesome!

Want to get more background on a word or phrasing or passage? Click “Study Tools”, then pick a few commentaries to read their scholarly approach, keeping in mind that just because a commentary says it, doesn’t mean it’s true. (just like the internet :-))

The Why!

Finding the original meaning is a huge deal when we study Scripture and can make all the difference in our understanding as we apply God’s truths to our everyday lives.

In our modern-day relationships, we want people to understand our original intention as we communicate; how much more so between God and humanity?!

Here’s a little bit more on why we take Digging Deeper so seriously.

Embracing God’s fullness in our lives is rooted in scripture and memorizing His word is vital to our continued growth and depth with Jesus.
Download this week’s verse and make it your phone’s lockscreen!
Tap and hold on your mobile device to save.

Looking for other journeys from this theme?
See all past studies in Sketched!