Bible Studies, Inspired by Faith and Science

Continuing the journey through Acts - I should get lots of great stories from these, but making them into children's stories will be fun and challenging. (5) Three types of sin Last week we saw people coming together in faith, praying together, facing adversity together, and feeling the power of the Holy Spirit as they prayed. How do you suppose that made the apostles feel? Have you ever felt like things, especially spiritual things, were finally working out, as if God had finally got you onto the right track and you knew just where you were going? How do you react when that certainty fades away? If things start going wrong again, do you feel angry, guilty, scared, betrayed...? How do you think the apostles must have felt when their perfect church began falling apart? 1.        Read Acts 4:32-35 Why am I calling this a “perfect church”? Does it sound perfect to you? a.        What did this perfect church mean in practice? Read Acts 4:36-37 b.       Wh

We're coming up to our next Coffee Break Bible Study, so here is our next set of questions from Acts: (4) How to start a religion? The first Christians were viewed as just another sect of Judaism; at best they were followers of a dead Jewish prophet; at worst they were just an undisciplined mob of potential trouble-makers. As we read chapters 3 and 4 of Acts, we’ll see how they began to define themselves as something unique, as followers of Christ. 1.        Before we start, what do we know about the apostles’ behavior? Did they conduct themselves like good Jews or like rebels, or something else? Read Acts 3:1 2.        Luke tells the story of Peter healing a lame man, who proceeds to go “walking and leaping and praising God.” Before we looks at the details, do you remember where he walked and leapt to? a.        Why would a lame man be waiting at the gate to the Temple? b.       Does anyone know which gate he was begging at? How would we try to guess? Re

We went to London while we were visiting family in England. There's a wonderful living sculpture being created there, a sea of poppies flowing out from and around the Tower of London, different every day as more are added, designed to remind us of all the soldiers lost in the First World War. It's hard to look at that view and not feel impressed, and not wonder about the sea of blood that flowed on Flanders' fields, and not regret those lives lost to us all. In a world where lives are still being lost in war, where man's cruelty to man continues to revel in horror and death, where Satan still imagines he holds sway, it's good to remember, God wins in the end. And here, in the second chapter of Acts, we'll see how God's new soldiers started their task. Words and Wonders We’re all familiar with the phrase “Signs and Wonders,” describing miraculous actions of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit’s first public action, in the book of Acts, involve