Thinking Girls Bible Study

I once had a Bible teacher who said, spiritually, every choice we make is a life or death decision. He referred to the passage in Deuteronomy 30:19-20, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.” Now of course, the context for this verse was instructions for the Israelites. But we can benefit by gleaning the truth from it. What this teacher was trying to convey is that with every decision we face, our choice will either lead to further life, or will lead us to a dead end. Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to...

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...

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 ...

As mentioned in the previous study of the Shunanem woman, the first mention in the Old Testament for the word rest is found in Genesis 2:2: "And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done." The Hebrew word for rest in this verse is shabath and means "to cease, desist, rest (from labor.) It is where we get the word Sabbath. Another Hebrew word translated as rest is sha'an and means "to lean on, trust in, support, to trust in God, lean, lie, rely, rest on, stay." This word is found in Genesis 18:4: "Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree." This verse occurs after Abraham received the Covenant and was circumcised. I'm sure there are many lessons to be mined here, but for now, what I see is a pleasant picture this one verse depicts of rest: sitting in the shade of a tree after a journey, with a ...