Thinking Girls Bible Study

It's been a while since posting HAVING EARS TO HEAR, Part 1. Click here to read it or if you want to refresh. As we begin part 2 of this study of “Having Ears to Hear,” I noticed that throughout the Gospels when Jesus was on the earth and face to face with the disciples, He used the phrase “he who has ears to hear,” but when He had ascended into heaven after the resurrection and wrote the letters to the seven churches found in Revelation, He said, “he who has an ear to hear.” I wonder why the difference? Could it be that by that time, we, the Church, had already turned away a bit, so that we are just listening with one ear? Ear - ous - 1. An ear, 2. metaph. The faculty of perceiving with the mind, the faculty of understanding and knowing. We will begin this continuation with Matthew 13:13. Jesus tells His disciples after He has given them the parable of the soils, “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do the...

My mother’s favorite Psalm was Psalm 139. She especially loved the last two verses, 23-24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” She also loved the hymn we sang with these words put to an old tune. As I grew, I came to love this Psalm and make it my own and it became my favorite Psalm, too. It’s interesting that the New King James Version uses the word anxieties where the KJV uses thoughts. The Hebrew word is saraph and means “disquieting thoughts, thoughts.” This word is found also, in Psalm 94:19: “In the multitude of my anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul.” The root word for saraph is caiph and means “ambivalence, division, divided opinion.” Strong’s Definition says “divided (in mind), i.e. (abstractly) a sentiment: —opinion. In other words, these are thoughts that divide and distract, thoughts that cause us to be anxious because they bring doubt and ...

If we are going to study thinking girls, we have to look at Mary, the ultimate thinking girl. The first mention of Mary, the mother of Yeshua, by her name is in Matthew 1:16: “And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ. Mary in Hebrew is Miryam and means “rebellion.” It’s from the root word meriy which means “bitterness, i.e. (figuratively) rebellion; concretely, bitter, or rebellious: —bitter, (most) rebel(-ion, -ious). It seems strange in a way that the mother of our Lord would have a name that means rebellion. But when you think about it, how appropriate that the Deliverer would be born from our rebellion. It goes back to the Garden of Eden when Adam rebelled against God and sinned, but God had a plan from eternity that He would send His son to deliver us. Now that plan was finally coming to fruition. Matthew 1:18: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they ...