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A written companion for each video: the teaching in prose, the passages in full, the terms, and questions to sit with. Read it on the page or print the PDF.
Study guideGod does act, and most often he acts through human hands. Nobody earned a death, and the Bible holds back one answer on purpose. This guide walks that argument slowly, gives you every passage in full, and hands you three things to do while your questions are still open.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to spot how a single word choice can shape what you believe about God and about yourself, trace two places in history where that happened to the Bible, and use three free tools to hear what the biblical authors actually meant.
·Companion to the video
Study guideOpen Theism & God's Nature
By the end of this guide you will be able to read the passages where God regrets and relents as honest descriptions of a God who truly responds, and you will see why that makes your prayers count and your grief something God shares.
·Companion to the video
Study guideFaith & Culture
The water was always the miracle; this guide walks the argument of the video slowly, gives you the passages in full, and hands you the practice for the day you cannot feel any of it.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to open any letter of Paul's, know what kind of document you are holding, and read it whole, with the four layers of context that turn a confusing chapter into an argument you can actually follow.
·Companion to the video
Study guideChurch & Community
By the end of this guide you will be able to say what the New Testament means by the word church, straight from the text, and see why the stay-or-go question you have been carrying has a better answer than either side of it.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to read all six chapters of Ephesians as one argument, from the song that opens it to the armor that closes it, and see why Paul is convinced that the place where heaven and earth meet is a community you already belong to.
·Companion to the 3-part series
Study guideOpen Theism & God's Nature
By the end of this guide you will be able to set the four main pictures of how God runs the world side by side, test the verses people quote to prove God never changes against their own chapters, and see why a God who hands His creatures real say-so is the God the Bible describes from the naming of the animals all the way to the new creation.
·Companion to the video
Study guideOpen Theism & God's Nature
By the end of this guide you will be able to say what time actually is, see why "God is outside of time" says far less than it sounds like it says, and read the Bible's own language about God and the future with the confidence that the God who made the world is present in it with you right now.
·Companion to the video
Study guideThe Abundant Life
By the end of this guide you will be able to read Colossians 3 the way Paul wrote it, see why a resolution that runs on your own willpower was never the tool you were given, and make one specific agreement with the Spirit this week instead.
·Companion to the video
Study guideThe Abundant Life
By the end of this guide you will be able to trace, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, what a human was made to be and what Jesus has already made you, and you will see why real growth flows out of that identity instead of being ground out by willpower.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to open Genesis 1, hear the words "image" and "soul" the way an Israelite heard them, and see why your body, your neighbor's body, and the ground under your feet matter to God now and forever.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to say, in your own words and with your Bible open, what Jesus did for you, using the pictures the apostles and the earliest Christians actually used, and you will see why the Father who sent him can be loved without a flinch.
·Companion to the 2-part series
Study guideThe Abundant Life
By the end of this guide you will be able to tell the promise God made about your suffering apart from the one you were handed, and you will know what to do with the hard days you are actually living.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to read a verse, and a person, in the context they came from, and you will see why the two habits that keep you from twisting Scripture are the same two habits that keep you from twisting your brother.
·Companion to the video
Study guideEternity & Eschatology
By the end of this guide you will be able to open Genesis, Psalms, Romans, and Revelation and show, verse by verse, why the suffering of animals is headed for defeat inside a healed creation, and why the creature you loved was never outside God's story.
·Companion to the video
Study guideChurch & Community
By the end of this guide you will be able to read 1 Corinthians 11 as the letter about a shared meal that it actually is, see who Paul meant by "the body," and sit down to eat with other believers knowing you are standing in three moments at once: Passover behind you, the cross at the center, and the wedding feast ahead.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to read the word "faith" the way the New Testament writers used it, as trust you put your whole weight on, and see how that one word reaches every hour of your week and every inch of eternity.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to trace one story of where God lives, from a garden to a tent to a stone house to Jesus to a room full of ordinary people, and see why the holiest place you will stand in this week is wherever you happen to be standing.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to hear the word "gospel" the way a Galilean fisherman heard it, as the announcement that a King has taken his throne, and see why that turns a ticket out of this world into a job inside it.
·Companion to the video
Study guideChurch & Community
By the end of this guide you will be able to open your Bible to the word "church," see the ordinary Greek word underneath it, and understand why that one word means no denomination on earth can claim you and no denomination on earth can lose you.
·Companion to the video
Study guideChurch & Community
By the end of this guide you will be able to open 1 Corinthians 14 and see, in the words Paul actually chose, what the first Christians gathered to do, and why that frees you to find the church in a living room, around a table, among people who know your name.
·Companion to the video
Study guideOpen Theism & God's Nature
By the end of this guide you will be able to name the four ways Christians square God's knowledge of the future with your freedom, test each one against the same handful of passages, and see why a God who knows possibilities as possibilities is the only one who can be both fully in charge and innocent of the evil in the world.
·Companion to the video
Study guideOpen Theism & God's Nature
By the end of this guide you will be able to open your Bible to the places where God is said to change His mind, read them exactly as they are written, and see why a God who relents is better news for your prayers and your suffering than the God most of us were handed.
·Companion to the video
Study guideReading the Bible
By the end of this guide you will be able to open Leviticus 16 and Exodus 12 next to the Gospels and see for yourself the two separate things the cross does, why it took a lamb and two goats to picture them, and why the Father behind all of it was the one who did the sending.
·Companion to the video
Study guideEternity & Eschatology
By the end of this guide you will be able to follow the Bible's own account of what happens to people who finally refuse God, from the guarded tree in Genesis 3 to the lake of fire in Revelation 20, and see why a God who brings sin to an end is better news than a God who keeps it alive forever.
·Companion to the video
Study guideChurch & Community
By the end of this guide you will be able to trace the word behind "church" through your own Bible and see the gathering Jesus and Paul actually had in mind: a people, in homes, around a table, where everyone brings something and everyone waits for one another.
·Companion to the video
Study guideEternity & Eschatology
By the end of this guide you will be able to read the two passages everyone calls "the rapture," 1 Thessalonians 4 and the end of Matthew 24, the way their first readers did, and see why a paragraph written to comfort grieving people about resurrection turns the fear of being left behind into a hope you can stand on.
·Companion to the video
Study guideEternity & Eschatology
By the end of this guide you will be able to read Matthew 24 the way its first hearers did, as Jesus's answer to their question about the temple, and see why that reading turns a countdown of fear into a promise you can trust.
·Companion to the video
