Woven

I feel very led today to say something that may seem so obvious. I don’t want to skip over its truth just because it’s obvious.

It’s very, very hard to remain steady and persistent in the LONG study. Woven, while I’ve loved it and feel very certain it’s what God has for us, has been long. I need you to know that’s difficult for your leaders too. If you’re having a hard time picking up the same book, looking at the same title, or just following the same basic steps, I want you to know that you probably aren’t alone!

There, we’ve said it. Now, here’s the TRUTH part. Sometimes the very thing we need to learn is just on the other said of persistence and sticking with it even when it’s hard. We have three weeks and three chapters left of Woven. I believe they could be our very best weeks yet. But, we have to commit to see it all the way through. I’m IN! Are you? Let’s personally recommit this morning.

Satan would love for us to give up now. We won’t do it. He’d like to make you believe that you’ve missed so much already and what’s the point. Don’t let him win this battle in your mind. In outright defiance of Satan’s faulty plans for your life, pick up your book, turn to page 207, and voice your own prayer of commitment over the remaining pages.

Read – Woven, chapter 12 (pages 207 through the first half of 215)

In your journal, I just want you to spend some time with your thoughts. If you’d been one of Jesus’ disciples, how would you have responded to His constant reminders that He would suffer? What emotions do you think they felt after the time they’d spent with Jesus? They’re real people, you know. I believe it helps us navigate our own real emotions in times of uncertainty and confusion when we remember that the people of our Bible also experienced the same.

Over the next few days, we are going to hit those chapters in John that Angie pointed us to. I want us to focus on Jesus’ last days with His friends. Just like we were so drawn to Moses’ last words with the Hebrews and David’s last words with Solomon, I want us to key in on exactly what Jesus was saying and doing with His students at the very end. If it was important to Him, I believe it should be important to us.

So, I’ll see you here tomorrow. We will study John’s text, and I’m praying it will transform our hearts.

God, You so loved the world that you sent your only Son so that any one of us that chooses to believe would not perish but have everlasting life. You didn’t send Jesus into the world to condemn us but that we would be saved through Him (John 3:16-17). Clearly, we need a saving each and every day. We need to be saved from our thoughts, our actions that misrepresent who we are, and our misguided vision for life and what our purpose is to be. Father, please use our study this week to teach us. Show us what we should do and how we should live. Help us to find the heart of Jesus in His interactions with the disciples in the last days and cause our hearts to beat for the same purpose. Amen.