Digging Deep in God’s Word

On Tuesday, August 21st, from Polishing the Pulpit, we will kick off our 8th yearly Digging Deep Women’s Bible study. We are excited that we expect, by that date, to have upwards of  6000 women in our Facebook group. We know, of course, that not all of those women are studying along, but indications are that a healthy percentage of them are plugged in. What an encouragement comes from groups which are meeting to study all over this country and in several other parts of the world! We have many who tune in for the live monthly video podcasts and others who prefer the shorter weekly audio podcasts we call “Dig-A-Bit.” Some women download the free study while others prefer the notebook. We are excited to be preparing that spiral bound study guide again this year. The topic for 2018-2019 will be reserved for the kick-off day, but you can join us on that day for the live podcast as we begin a new study. It’s a great time to jump in. We have three more months of our study on “Great Escapes”. This month (June) is a study of the one escape that was not in the plan. Our Lord could have escaped from the shame and pain of Calvary, but He chose to stay on that cross before that mocking crowd. You can still download that study here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/282349391779769/ You’ll be richer if you give the study a go, even if just for one month. Make this month your trial month and you will appreciate Calvary more by the end of June.

Below is a tiny preview of one little part of next year’s study. We’d love to have you become part of Digging Deep. You don’t have to be a part of this group to go to heaven. But you have to be in the Word. It’s the roadmap, of course.

This snippet is part of one of the monthly intros for next year. Following the introduction, we delve into the Word, following an outlined plan,  searching for key phrases, examining meaning, and taking life lessons for ourselves and our families. I hope you’ll think about joining us. You can be part of a local group if there’s one in your area. But hundreds of women study along with us all by themselves, having no others in their area who are involved. Here’s the sneak peek:

Perhaps the sexual revolution of the 1960s was the result of a national pride before God…an attitude that acknowledged our “own” achievements in fields of science and technology, our recent victories in world wars and our place of dignity as a world power. I know that this oversimplification doesn’t explain fully something so complicated as a moral revolution, but, the middle of the 20th century found school children being told, even in schools where God’s existence was still not yet being denied, that “You can do anything you want to do and you can do it your way.” We were told that each individual decides what is right and wrong for his/her life. We were told that human achievement was in an evolving state…and that we should question the time-honored values that our grandmothers had taught us. We were told, especially, that successful women of the future would not be interested in being at home with their children. “There are far more interesting things to do with your life and there are far more important contributions you can make to society than those your grandmothers have made by raising children.” I know. I was there. The books they had us read and the projects they had us complete were pulling us along to intellectual “freedom” which spawned a feministic, sexual and moral revolution. It was a revolution in which walls were being battered and collapsing under a revolt that was a rejection of the moral code of the Bible. 

The first recognizable wall that was obliterated was the time-honored moral law that sex should be reserved for marriage. This happened quickly. I can remember when my classmates, in a progressive college-preparatory high school in Birmingham, Alabama, went on a senior trip following graduation. It was shocking for me to hear about all of the unfettered sexual activity that had occurred on the beaches of Gulf Shores that spring by kids whose parents were church-going, community leaders in suburbs of Birmingham. These children came to middle and even high school with moral codes that had been eradicated by the time of graduation. It was 1977 when we graduated and many in my class had read and reported on enough Vonnegut and Knowles, Steinbeck and Woolf, to have become “enlightened” with the help of popular television that had begun to make us laugh at sexual humor, (as in Happy Days, which seems innocent compared to today’s fare) and to make us believe that people who saved sex for marriage were languishing behind the times in a pitiful minority of the sheltered. High school teachers in this academically advanced school were big proponents of “finding your own way” by challenging the norms of formerly accepted moral codes. And then, it was also during my high school years that we stopped reading the Bible and saying the model prayer in the mornings at school. Further, some really funny and popular guy had actually grown a little marijuana garden out beside the sidewalk in back of the school building; so they made their own little smoking area at the school, to further dull the moral senses. (I mean besides the big smoking area at the main building where all the kids could go to smoke cigarettes with the full sanction of the administration.) Life had changed while I walked those halls. Let’s examine how God would have weighed in on the sexual revolution, and its attendant revolts in the mid-seventies had His voice been heard at all. (Remember, in 1977, we had never heard of AIDS, but God already knew about it, for sure. In 1977, we had heard rumblings about abortion and some court case in 1973, but most of us had not heard of anyone who had considered it and we certainly had not heard of a clinic that provided abortions all day long. We did not know what “transgender” even meant, but God was ahead of that game, of course.)

And here’s a sample from the questions for that particular month.

1. Read and search I Corinthians 5 for the two-fold purpose of the “deliverance to Satan.” Write this purpose here:
2. What Old Testament observance was referenced to encourage the Corinthians to get rid of the leaven of sin (in this case, fornication) that was occurring (and being celebrated, to an extent) in the church? Read Exodus 12 and look for the verse that pronounced the punishment on the one who ate the leaven during the time of the first passover. (In reading about this, I noted that commentators stressed that Jews used candles to actually search their homes in subsequent Passover feasts to be certain that there was no leaven in their houses.) How might this affect our thinking about the sin we may be ignoring in our own lives?

There you have a small portion of one of the monthly lessons for the upcoming study. We’ll begin this study on September 1st. Why not go ahead and give the study a trial preview for the month of June? (https://www.facebook.com/groups/282349391779769/) If it’s a growing experience, you might want to begin the 2018-2019 study with the worldwide group in September.  You may find it fits your walk with the Lord. Every woman studies at her own pace. It’s okay to do as much or as little as you can during any given month. But whatever part of the study you do will change you for the better…because it is the powerful Word of God, that’s sharper than any two-edged sword.