Our main responsibility as parents is to train up our children to love the Lord. This has always been a job for parents, as the Lord told the Jewish people to diligently teach their children this truth “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-7) That command of teaching our children how to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and might should still be followed today. When they asked Jesus what the greatest command was, he said it was this one (Matthew 22:36-37).

Most Christian parents agree this is important, but yet many of us don’t know how to do this. The good news is this passage gives us instructions on how to do it: Talk about it. A LOT! Every chance you get bring up the Bible; talk about what you are reading and learning. Ask them about their favorite Bible stories or what they learned in church. I will often quiz my boys with Bible trivia and when they don’t know an answer I will take time to explain the story to them. There is nothing better than simply allowing these conversations to permeate every part of your life with your children.
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Nevertheless, even with all the best intentions in the world, I will often forget or not be as intentional as I like. This is where a good tool or resource can come in handy to help facilitate these conversations.  

My family uses the New City Catechism by The Gospel Coalition. For many of us the idea of a catechism is foreign or seems like it belongs to the Roman Catholics, but that should not be the case, a catechism is simply “a summary of the principles of Christian religion in the form of questions and answers, used for the instruction of Christians.”
In this particular catechism, there are 52 questions and answers, one a week for a year.

They then give a passage to support the answer: Romans 14:7-8 “For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” There is additional commentary and instruction as well, and if you use the “children’s mode” they also include a song to help little ones remember the answer.
 
When we eat together as a family, I will pull up the app on my phone read the question, answer, and Bible verse and talk about what it means. Since we have young children we will sing the song together and try to make up hand motions to help us remember the words. We will repeat this each night at dinner over the week until we memorize then move onto the next question.
 
Is this the only way to do family devotions? No, not at all, but I have found it to be a helpful and practical tool for my family and it might be for your family as well. As a parent, don’t fall into the trap thinking it’s the church’s responsibility to train your children and not yours. Our goal is to help encourage you to train up your children to follow the Lord with all heart, soul, and might as only parents can do!​

With the Halloween discussion, I encourage Christians to ask themselves, can I help redeem this situation? Can you live unto the Lord, as Romans 14 says, by bringing light to the darkness? Some Christians will reject Halloween so much that they will turn off all the lights to their home so everyone knows not to come near their home to trick or treat. Others will fully embrace and think there is nothing wrong with being associated with the dark and sinful parts. I don't believe either of these options are best. Instead, let's ask how we can redeem the day. 

Here is how my family and I do this: Unbeknownst to us, after we bought our house and moved in we were told that we live on the most popular street for trick or treating in all of Hernando County. And it is the truth! We literally have hundreds and hundreds of people stop by our house every October 31st.  Instead of turning off the lights, we literally crank up the lights. We bring out bright flashing lights, carnival games, and invite people over from the church and have a mini carnival right in my front yard! We give out flyers for church, offer to pray for people, and try to engage them with the gospel. We aren’t running or hiding from the darkness, we are trying to confront it with the light of Christ. What an absolute gift that we have that literally hundreds of my neighbors come to my house! I would be foolish to not use this opportunity to be the light that God has called me to be.   You might not live on a trick or treat street like me, but I am confident there will be many opportunities on Halloween to share the love of Christ to your friends and neighbors. 

So this Halloween, don’t settle and celebrate the dark sinful parts of Halloween, also don’t run from it; but rather ask yourself how can we redeem Halloween and share the love of Jesus on this day like every other day.

Hello. My name is Joel Hastings. I'm the pastor here at community church in Brooksville, Florida, if you're anywhere in the local area. I, when I invite you out to a wonderful church here in Brooksville, Florida, but we are in a series about how to study your Bible and so today's going to be part two of that series before we get started.

Let me just encourage you to hit that subscribe button if you're watching us on, on YouTube. Um, and even that little bell button will give you a notification whenever a new video. Comes out there. So you won't miss anything, but make sure you subscribe like, and comment that way we can just know that you actually like these videos and we will keep making these sorts of videos.

If we know that people are watching it and enjoying it and learning from it. And so we want to do that for you as well, but so just let us know, but we are now starting our second video in this series. The first video was all about prayer and about how important is just this. Start before you even opened up your Bible just to start with prayer.

And that's the supernatural connection that we have with God. And he is the one that's ultimately going to help illuminate his Holy spirit is going to be the one that illuminates,  that scripture for us. And so if you haven't watched it, you can find it on our YouTube page or@seebible.org under our blog page as well.

But today we're going to actually discuss. Cover or look at what do we do whenever we finally open up the Bible? Because for so many of us, we have, some point whether it's when we're brand new Christian, or even later in life, we just said, man, I really need to read my Bible. You just open it up, you read a random passage and you're saying like, okay, I didn't really get anything out of it.

And that's just. It's such a shame because scripture promises and it tells us that everything that we need to live a godly life has already been written down for us. There, there isn't anything that you need as far as with your connection with God that isn't already written down. Okay. In scripture. And so I want to just encourage you in this, the number one, just make it a habit.

Go ahead. Because number one, if you're going to get discouraged sometimes and say, well, I didn't get anything out of it. Is it really even any yeah. Points, um, and trying any more, yes, there is. And just make it that habit, even if it's just a little bit of time each day, that you make sure that you are spending time with your word, just like with the exercising and you got to work yourself into that.

Um, oftentimes that is what it is with scripture that we got to just make time for it and put in the effort there. But now let's go ahead and talk about how to actually study our Bible now. Generally speaking, there would be three major steps in studying your Bible three major steps here, and they are to observe, interpret and apply.

We need to observe what the Bible says. To interpret what the Bible means and then apply what it's trying to teach us, observe it, interpret it and apply it. Those three steps are the three key, major steps. Now I say that and you're probably, you're like, okay, well, how do I do that? And that is. A good question.

So what we're going to do now for this video and at least the next one as well, um, is really talk about that first point up there, which is to observe what the text is saying here. Because so many times we get in trouble or churches get in trouble. Pastors get in trouble because we go ahead and we just try to sell.

Skip down to that last point of applying the text. But if you try to apply the text before you actually even observed what it says or interpret what it means, then you're always going to apply it in the wrong way. And you're going to try to put things in scripture that shouldn't be there and you're going to really mess up your life because you're applying something then which God never actually said.

And so we first need to start with how to observe the text and then we can learn how to interpret it. And then we can. Finally get to the point of applying it to our life. And that's where really life transformation happens. But the observing is just the foundation for everything. So let's talk about what that means here.

And so. Quick, a quick story here. Whenever I was in Bible college, even before I went to seminary, it got my doctors or anything. Um, I went to a class called inductive Bible study, and this is where a lot of the stuff that I'll be, um, talking about in these videos kind of came out of that college level course here.

And I remember going down there and then it was one of the. First classes. I sat down and the professor came in Dr. O'Brien and he pulled out a Bible and he gave us a passage. And I don't even remember what specific passage it was anymore, but he gave us like, I think about five verses there. And he said, all right, here's what I want you to do the very first assignment of the class.

As he said, read through these first five verses and come up with 20 questions by in two more days when our next. His classes. And I looked at that and I was like, what in the world? How in the world am I going to come up with 20 questions? Are you kidding me? But then, so what I did is I went home and I started to like a couple of them were easy and I was like, okay.

But then it got harder and harder and harder. And by the end of it, I was just like, you know, what is paper? Like? I was like, I'll just try to throw something on there just to focus. Fill that requirement there. So I finally came in, I was pretty proud of myself because I was able to get all 20 questions and I was thinking, there's just no way, like I've asked every single question I can possibly think of.

And you know, what happened on the next time that I went in, I went in, turned the paper in and he's like, all right, how many of you were able to come up with 20 questions? About half of us raised our hand, half of us. So he came up a little bit short. He's like, all right, well, this time I want you to read through that same five verses and ask another 20 questions about it.

And I was like, are you kidding me? I can't imagine, like, I, I already exhausted it, but the point of the. Exercise was this is that to study the Bible. The very first thing we must do is to ask questions and they don't even have to be good questions. Honestly, we just need to start asking questions because we can't understand what's happening without asking good questions.

First, whenever an investigator goes to a murder crime scene or some type of crime scene there, they're going to go ahead and. I start to ask those questions. All right. Where did it happen? How did it happen? Are there any, um, murder weapons laying around here? What are the clues? And they start to ask questions so that they can piece all of that together in the same way.

Whenever we come to the Bible, we're reading a portion of scripture that was written by somebody inspired by God 2000 years ago. But we're going to have to ask questions to really start, to try to understand what is actually written down. For us here. And so what I'm going to do now, um, is. I do that kind of the same thing that when my professor did for me, several years ago but we're going to go ahead and turn over to the book of Jude, the book of Jude.

Now you might say, I didn't even know there was a book of Jude. I knew about the Beatles song. I don't know about the book there, but it's actually the second to last book in the Bible. So if you can find the last one. Book, which is revelation. And then just turn over a, you have to be careful. It's only about one page long.

It's a very short little book there, and we're going to spend a little bit of time in that book of Jude. Now you might say why Jude out of all the little books there, out of all the things that we could say, well, I'm guessing you probably aren't as familiar with the book of Jude as you are with other books.

And so I don't want you just to, um, just to come at it with. Things that you've already heard. Some other preachers say or some other Bible study that you've ever done. Like, I want to get into a portion of scripture that many of you probably haven't actually spent a lot of time studying so we can actually put these principles into practice and that whenever you come to a portion of scripture, you're not going to be relying on what I say or in any other pastor says, but you can actually dig deep into the word of God.

For yourself and find those life transforming truths. And so let's go ahead now and go over to Jude one, Jude one. Now notice two. I'm going to say Jude one and not Jude one, one, because there's no chapter breaks. That's how short the book of Jude is. There's only verses there's no chapters here. And so that's why I'm going to just say Jude one, Jude one.

So if you don't have your Bible, go ahead. Pause the video, go grab it and then come back here because you're going to want to either grab a Bible with a big enough margin. Also actions. Like I have a Bible here that kind of has big margins on the side. I haven't written this one. This is a new Bible here, but, you can write, yeah.

In the side of it is a great resource there. Or you can just always grab a notebook and write in that notebook. And. State as well, but we are going to go ahead and try to start marking up and start to write out questions here. And so if you have your Bible, go ahead and open up Jude one. Let's go ahead and get started here.

I want us to start to read through, I want us to start to read through and start to ask questions, but I'll go ahead and show you a verse one. Here you might say, let's go ahead and read it first. Actually, that's always a good place to start. So is Jude a servant of Jesus Christ in brother James, to those who are called beloved and God, the father and kept for Jesus Christ.

Now you might say that seems pretty simple. It's from a guy named Jude and it's a two people who are called whatever that means. Like yeah, like I got this, normally I just skip over those first few verses anyway but an actuality, I think there's a lot of questions in here whether you know, the answer to or not.

I want us to go ahead. Here's your homework assignment before our next video next Wednesday. Are you ready for it? I want you to come up with 20 questions from versus one. Through verse four, come up with as many as you possibly can. Okay. This is your Bible college experience. All right, this is how we're going to study the Bible.

This is how we're going to learn. Come up with as many questions. Hopefully you can come up with 20. If he can't come up with 20, come up with as many as he can from verses one through verse. Four of the book of Jude. And then next week we're going to come back here and we are going to answer some of those questions.

So do me a favor, write down some of these questions and either in your Bible and a notebook. And then also if you would be so kind about comment below here on our YouTube page. And so then I can see what questions I'm going to see. Who's actually doing it. And then I can also see some of those questions that you have, and then the next.

Time will actually answer some of those questions here as well. So make sure you do that. Yes, but let's go ahead and do verse one together. Do verse one to gather here. So it starts out with Jude. Jude know who's Jude that's question number one, who is Jude? Because you might not know, even if you do, you can go ahead and list off because that's a good question here.

And we're going to talk a little bit more about him and, and coming videos and about, the author of each individual book and how important it is to know those sorts of things. But the very first question that you need to ask is the very first word is. Who is Jude, who is the guy that actually wrote it.

All right. So there's question number one, in my opinion. Um, as we go on there, it says, and a servant of Jesus Christ, a servant of Jesus Christ. And we say, why did he call himself a servant? Why did he do that? There's all sorts of terms that he could have called himself. Why did he call himself a servant and next week, I'm going to reveal why that is actually extremely important, extremely interesting, and extremely insightful.

So you're going to have to come back next week to see exactly why that is important. But right now that's a good question to ask there. So I've already gotten you the first one. Two questions that you can put down in their list here. So who's June. Why did he call himself a servant and Jesus Christ?

Because we know Jesus didn't actually have any servants, but then it says of Jesus Christ of Jesus Christ. Now, here's a question then I got, why did he say Jesus Christ and not just Jesus. Why do you think he did that? Surely we all know who Jesus is. Why didn't he just go ahead and say of Jesus?

Why did he add that term Christ there further all? Maybe you're actually wondering too.  what is Christ even mean? Is that just Jesus' last name? It's not. So what does Christ mean? Why did he include that in his title there? Why does he, why does he say Jesus Christ at all? All right. So there's a, we got one, two, three, four questions already, and we're only like a few words into it.

You can ask these questions, there's all sorts of things. And as you're going to see here, we're starting to think pretty deeply about this verse. We're starting to get a little bit deeper than you probably realized that the first siting here. So as we continue on, it says, brother of James, brother of James.

Who's James like there's actually, you might say, well, there's lots of chains. Aren't there and you're right. There are several Jane's. And so who actually is this particular, James? Why is he so important that he had to be mentioned in the Bible? Right? So this guy must be important. He must be one of the guns that people, everybody seemed to have known, but why did he mention his brother?

James here. All right. So that kind of is the very first section here of the book of Jude. All right. You see this little section, that part at the top is all the things that it says who it's from and in the, how they wrote in and that time is that they would often. And this is a smart thing to do.

They would introduce themselves at the top of the letter. We don't say our name until the very bottom of the letter when we say sincerely or best wishes, Joel Hastings, but in that, in that time, they'd put it at the top of the letter because you'd want to know who actually wrote you the letter. So you don't have to skim down to the bottom.

Right? And so this is where it starts. It starts out with him just introducing himself and he gave himself his name. And then he said the two most important things about him is that he's. The servant of Jesus Christ and that he's a brother of James and there's a lot of information packed in there. And so keep asking those questions.

So as we go on in verse one, still, it says to those who are called to those who are called, and we say, all right, who are the people that are called. That's another good question. Who are those people? This is to those who are called who, who is he writing to? Um, second of all, why did he use that phrase?

This is another good question. Why did he say called? Why didn't he just say to the people in Orlando? Like to the people in Miami, he didn't just like say somebody specific or to the Davis family or whatever. But he said a kind of, this, this title here to those who are called, so what is called mean? Who are these people?

Why did he say that? Three more questions right there. And you're saying I'm not even gonna get to verse four because there's so much in verse one who even knew. Right. Um, and so it says to those who are called beloved the beloved. Alright. What does beloved mean? That's not a term that we often use very often in art vernacular.

Right. And so what does it mean to be beloved? If it says beloved. In God in God, maybe even another question right there is not that you are beloved by God, but you are beloved in God. You actually in God. Why does he say in God and not by God beloved in God, God, the father and kept for Jesus Christ. All right.

So then here we go. What does it mean to be. Kept for Jesus Christ. How is it? That is it. Is it? God is God. The one that's keeping us kept for Jesus Christ. Are we keeping ourselves kept for Jesus Christ? What does it mean there? That we are being kept for Jesus Christ. Now there's a list of many different questions.

And honestly, you could find a lot more in here to tell you the truth. This is just me going off of it right now. I didn't preplan any of this. These are just questions that start to pop off the page as we start to just simply read it over here. And this is how I come across. For your if you're in my congregation or you with another pastor, but this is like how pastor we start to dig deep inside of the Bible.

And you might say, how in the world does this guy know so much? Or it can find out all of this? Well, this is what I do. This is how I dig deep. I just read it and I start to ask these questions and then I go out and about. Find the answers, which will be something that we'll discuss even in later videos here.

But today here is the homework assignment for you. All right to, Oh, go ahead. Go look at Jude verses one through four and try to come up with 20 questions. I gave you about 10 of them already in verse one. So you should be able hopefully to fill in some extra here but go ahead. Okay. Oh, read through that.

Try to write down some of those in your own pen and paper. And then also do me the favor of just commenting below, right? And then some of those questions that you might have come up with. There's no bad questions there. There really isn't. So if even you want to say, who is Jesus, that's probably the most important question that you could ever ask.

And so there's no bad questions. Go ahead and start to fill in as many questions if he can come up with 20. Great. If he can't, that's fine. If he come up with even more, even better. All right. And so that is what I'm going to ask you to do. This is so foundational and just trying to dig deep into God's word.

And so that's what I have here for you guys today. Thank you for watching. I'll see you again. Next Wednesday. As we pick up where we left off.

Transcript: 
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Hello. My name is Joel Hastings and the pastor here at community Bible church in Brooksville, Florida. And, I wanted to start a little series an online series today, that I'll just have a few extra videos in, specifically about how to study our Bible, because I know it's just one of those questions that of course every Christian wants to be able to study their Bible, study their Bible more.

For so many of us, we open up our Bible, we take a look at it, we read a few verses. We read that chapter a day and then we close it. And we were like, I didn't really get anything out of that. And I think that's a shame because whenever we have access to this, whenever we read this, it should be as Hebrews chapter four says, a piercing sword that cuts down to our soul and Spirit. And, and so that is the thing that should be happening. So whenever it's not happening, what we just should look out and say, why isn't that happening? And how can we get better at studying our Bible? How can we get better at just understanding it? And so we don't feel like it's just a check mark, a check box, just to a check-off and feel like you you've done your good deed for the day, but it's actually something that is spiritually enriching towards us. And so we're going to be starting today and then I'll be putting out a few extra videos as the weeks go on here with this specific topic in mind. And so the very first thing that we need to take a look at is whenever we open up our Bible, It cannot be underestimated the value of prayer.

Pray, pray, pray.

Now you might be saying, okay, okay. I know this, I got this. Of course you're supposed to pray and read your Bible and they go, yeah. Tell me something. I don't know already, Joel,  but listen, this is something that's so quickly we discredit or we say. Quick prayer. And usually that prayer, if we do pray, is often still centered on us instead of centered on God and trying to get to know God and our prayers, just to, for us to understand God better.

We are in my church here at Community Bible Church. We've been going through the book. Ephesians. And we just finished up a beautiful prayer, by the apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter one, a great reference here. It reminded me of another wonderful prayer in Colossians chapter one, that Paul also prayed. Let me read a few verses out of Colossians chapter one for us one verse nine, it says.

And so from the day we heard we have heard, we have not cease to pray for you. All right. So Paul was a man of prayer, everywhere that he went, every person that he knew, it seems like he was always praying for them giving thanks for them, being happy for them, but also praying something for them. And he goes on. He says, I have not ceased to pray for you asking that you may be.

Filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him and bearing fruit as it goes on from there. So he says, I have this prayer for you and that you would be. Full of the knowledge of him and his will. Now, how do we get full of the wisdom of God?

Well, it's simply by reading the Bible. God, we don't have to search. We don't have to go find some old man on top of a mountain to figure out what the will of God is for our life. He is already written us a letter that's that lays out everything that we need to know to live a godly life is what scripture says.

And so we don't have to look anywhere else, but instead we need to look at Scripture, but notice here. Paul's prayer was that they would be filled with the knowledge of as well. And so there is still strong connection between reading your Bible and trying to get deeper knowledge and deeper understanding of God and his will both for your life specifically and also for this world.

And, and for everybody that we comes across, there's such a connection between that and the prayer, because every time that it. It seems like Paul prays and all these pixels, he's always asking for similar things. He's always asking for that the recipients receive a deeper faith, that they would know God better, that they would be able to live out their faith and walking them in are worthy.

All of that is only gonna happen through actually studying and reading the scripture and studied and looking at Jesus Christ. But Paul, didn't just say to them, like, may make sure you stay on your Bible, but he's praying over them that their walk and their understanding would grow deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.

And I truly believe that if Paul was around today, he would have the same prayer for you, that your faith would become deeper. And you would look at it and say, okay, well I need to read my Bible. Yes, but you can't fully understand it without. Praying over it as well, because this is a supernatural book. Of course, an atheist can read it and they have, and they can learn about historical events because it's accurate.

And all of those stories are a hundred percent accurate. They can read and understand it at an intellectual level, but they'll never be able to read it and understand it at a heart level. If you do not first pray over it and seek the Holy spirit to aluminate. Because that is one of his jobs is to illuminate the scripture.

So as you are reading it, it starts to become alive. And I don't know about you, but if you there's been so many times in my life where I have read over a passage, I write over a story that I have read over a hundred times before and something just jumps off my page. And I say, I never noticed that before that, that, that just is so illuminated that that's just really mind changing mind blowing here.

Well, that's the Holy grail. Spirit, that's drawing certain things out, join certain words or certain phrases that, that he knows that you need in that moment, because the scripture is clear that the word of God is never going to return back void. All right. And so if it's feeling like it's void in your life, that's not scripture's fault.

That is something that's wrong with our heart right there and how we overcome this is to pray. And so what does that practically look like? Well I encourage every single one of us, every, every Christian to have a time set aside every single day, to be able to read and study your Bible, just consistency, just making that a goal, whether you feel like it, or whether you don't always have that time set aside and we'll get into more of that in later videos.

But before we even open up your Bible, if you want to open it up and then have it open on your lap or whatever, but before we start reading it, take time and just say, Lord. Please reveal this word to me, Lord. I know it. It's true. I know it is Holy and I know it is. You have something in it for me. And so Lord, please give me the eyes to see open up the eyes of my heart, that I would be able to.

See and believe and understand your word and a more clear and better way than I ever have before, and then helped me be able to trust it and help me be able to do it. If you just pray this prayer and it doesn't have to be that exact prayer or that exact words. In fact, I hope it isn't. I hope it's something that you put in, in your own voice and in a way that you would naturally say it, but that you are praying right.

For number one, that you would be able to understand it that you would be able to recognize what it's saying and just have a clear understanding about the message that's being portrayed, but then as well, that you would also have the ability to obey it and the ability to go out and do it because God doesn't want us just to understand it.

And then it not impact anything, but in the collagen's the verses that I just read, he's like, I want them to know. The the, the deep knowledge of God's will so that they might walk in a manner worthy of that calling because everything that we understand intellectually should impact us. And that's another way that shows, if you are fully comprehending scripture is if your.

Reading it, but your life doesn't match up to what it's reading is. There's some type of disconnect there. And so we need to be praying that we understand it. And then that God also gives us the ability and that we would have the obedience to also follow it, that we would live it out. And then I always like to just say things.

Lord because it is something he did not have to do, do it because he good and loving. And so I always want to say, God, please reveal yourself to me. God, help me obey your word. And then Lord, just thank you so much, Saint you so much for giving me this because without it, I would be so lost without you Lord.

And that is the prayer. Those are the things. Key components I believe. And once you start to pray that I think even that small little adjustment will start to change your quiet time, start to change your devotions and start to really change your life. As the scripture just becomes, starts to be alive.

Now that's just step number one. There's many more steps. If you really want to take a deep look and try to understand the Bible, like never before. But you cannot, cannot underestimate the value of prayer. All right. That's what I have for you here today. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel. And even if you hit that little bell icon there, it will give you a notification.

Whenever we put out one of these videos as well. So you can just make sure that you don't miss anything. Have a blessed day.


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