Welcome to Kendra Graham’s Online Bible Study! This is a place where we can come together and share in our journey towards Scriptural truths and spiritual maturity. We pray this will be a safe, respectful, resourceful place to come and discuss God’s Word…to discover What it says…What it means…and What it means to you!
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Kendra Graham notes from Ephesians 6:14b
“Having girded your loins with Truth.”
THE FACTS: “Having girded your loins with Truth.”
THE LESSONS:
“My name is Katniss Everdeen… I am from district 12… I participated in the Hunger Games… twice… and survived. I was rescued. Peeta… Peeta has been captured with the other victors and is being held in the Capitol under the power of President Snow.”
This is how the movie Mockingjay 1 starts out. Katniss is hiding in a dark place with her hands over her hears whispering to herself, reminding herself of what is true and what is not. Katniss and Peeta, for the rest of their lives will, every day, ask each other if what they are believing is true or false.
Oswald Chambers said, “Believing the Truth is a sheer act of the will, because nothing in us craves the Truth.”
Frederich Nietzche said regarding the truth, “People don’t want to hear the Truth, because they do not want their illusions destroyed.”
The Truth, when spoken in society, often does not receive the welcome ooohs and awes of the crowd. The Truth… the Truth is something we work to suppress, whether it be a truth about us we don’t want surfacing, or a Truth about the company we work for, or anyone else that is dear to us.
In this verse in Ephesians 6, Paul tells us that we need to have our loins girded with Truth of God’s Word. Paul is saying that before we do anything, we need to set ourselves to wrap Truth around our most inward parts. The word “gird” here in the Greek is the word “perizonnymi” which means to “hem in,” to tuck in firmly around. I like that visual. Hem ourselves in so that everywhere we look, everywhere we go, we are faced with the Truth of God’s Word first and foremost.
If we hem ourselves in with the Truth, then the lies and deceptions society tries to feed us will become really clear. We don’t like to be hemmed in though right!? We are Americans! WE have a right to be free! We need space to roam and chase the American dream! The Truth is… all of us are hemmed in. What are we hemmed in by… now that is a question that each of us need to ask.
We were created by God to follow someone or something…. the Truth is… we were created by God with a God shaped soul to walk with Him, know Him, because we are created to need Him: Truth.
The Truth is… God loves us so much that He came Himself, not trusting us to another, so that we could know the Truth, and the Truth, though hemmed in by it, would set us free (John 8:32). The Truth is: we are set free by the Truth when we set ourselves to believe it!
In John 8, Jesus said He is the Light of the world. Jesus came to be the Light, to show us He is the Way, the Truth and LIFE (John 14:6). I love this! What is the purpose of light? The purpose of light is to show us the TRUTH of what is there, in the dark. The light doesn’t lie about what it shows, it just shows the fact of what is. Jesus came to show us that we don’t have it all together like we wish we did. The light shows us that we have been living a rat race in the dark chained up to everything on the canvas of our lives that we don’t want anyone to see… so God, came personally, not trusting you to another, to set you free by the Truth of His Word.
The world has set itself to discard, extinguish, hide and kill the Truth of who Jesus is, and the Truth of what you mean to Him. The interesting thing about the Truth is this… it will always surface. The Truth is, you are loved more than anything by the God who knit you together in your mother’s womb. The Truth is: IF you seek God with you whole heart, He promises you WILL find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). The Truth is, you will never be more satisfied, more content, more fulfilled than when you are doing that which you were created to do, which is: Walk with God on a daily basis through this thing called life…TRUTH.
HOLD on to the TRUTH. Jesus said, I AM the way, the TRUTH and the Life NO ONE comes to the Father BUT through Me.” John 14:6. Wrap yourself in Truth today.
APPLY IT: Who or what am I following? Have I set myself to believing the TRUTH? Who do I say jesus is?
LIVE IT OUT: Today…. I will set myself to believing the Truth of God’s Word, and begin the process of hemming myself in by the Truth. Today, I will walk with God.
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JOIN US FOR KENDRA’S FREE WOMEN’S BIBLE STUDY AT THE COVE, BEGINNING JANUARY 12, 2016. (Also available LIVE on Periscope…see below.)
If you can attend in-person, we’d love to see you. To register for her Tuesday evening study (January 12 – February 16, 2016), call 1-800-950-2092.
NOTE: If you are unable to attend in person, we will continue the online study as well, using lessons shared during the LIVE study. We are also streaming the study LIVE via Periscope. You can catch the replays here.