God’s gotta change her heart before He changes her shirt Have we become so blind that we can’t see Is for us to care more about the inside than the outside This is my favorite verse (because, honestly, I need to be worried more about God changing my shirt, figuratively speaking, than hers): I love the Casting Crowns song, What This World Needs. I’m not very good at it yet, but God is still molding me. I know I’m sinful and a long way from where God would probably have me to be, but I want to learn to truly love people and introduce them to Jesus. The biggest difference between the sinners and the tax collectors and the Jewish leaders and Pharisees is that the sinners and tax collectors recognized their sins, while the Jewish leaders and Pharisees were living in denial about theirs and hiding behind their laws and traditions. (Not that I am, by any stretch of the imagination, Jesus in that scenario, but I do want to know how to best show His love to everyone with whom I come into contact, including – or especially – those outside my circle of Christian friends.) I want to look for a pattern to model my actions after. I’ve just started reading through the gospels again because we’ve been talking a lot about how Jesus ate with the “sinners and tax collectors,” but I want to know how He interacted with them. We’ve also been talking a lot about loving people and showing Christ’s love to them because that’s a precursor to making the introduction. Where the relationship goes from there is between them and Jesus, but it’s up to us to make the introduction. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing the fact that we’re to love people, cultivate relationships with them, and bring them to Jesus. Later, when Jesus met the woman at the well (John 4), she went and told all the townspeople about Him and brought them to Him. When Philip met Jesus, he went and got Nathanael and brought him to Jesus (John 1). When Andrew met Jesus, he went and got his brother, Simon, and brought him to Jesus. A common theme we’ve found ourselves discussing lately is that introducing people to Christ starts with personal relationships. I have been blown away by the insight my kids have shown, by the things that God is teaching me, and by the things He’s showing us as a family. What We’re Learning Through the SOAP Method of Bible Study For my personal journal, I write out my prayer. The kids have the option of either writing out their prayer or jotting down ideas they want to be praying about. In other words, we discuss how what we’ve learned applies to us and how we can put it into practice in our lives.įinally, we write out our prayer based on what we’ve learned. Answering the usual who, what, where, when, why, and how questions helps us figure out what God may be teaching us based on the context of the Scripture. Next, we make observations about the verse. We write that verse at the top of our journal pages. Then, we pick out a particular verse – or group of verses – that was especially meaningful to us. SOAP is an acronym to help you remember:įirst, we read a passage of Scripture. ![]() ![]() If you’ve never heard of the SOAP method, the premise is simple. If you’ve got younger kids, Jolanthe has some great printable SOAP journal pages, but we’ve just been using some composition books that we found on sale for $0.50 at Walmart.
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