I’m so excited about teaching this series for the next 4 weeks. There is so much confusion inside and outside the church about God speaking. Does God still speak? How can we know it’s really Him? How can I recognize God’s voice from my own? All of these questions and more will be answered starting this Sunday!

I color code my message notes and the color I use for scriptures that I’m going to read is yellow (I don’t know why I picked yellow, I just did).

One of the things I look at each week before getting up in front of the church is, “How much yellow am I sharing?”

I love sharing stories and I feel storytelling is one of my giftings, but I want to always have plenty of yellow on my pages as I communicate.

One of the things that I so enjoy about teaching the Scriptures is the time I get to spend in God’s Word, thus giving God more opportunity to work in my life.

One of the things I’m talking about this weekend is forgiveness, and as I asked God to search my heart this week I realized there’s someone I hadn’t forgiven.

I had to forgive, give the situation over to God, and experience the freedom that comes from obey God’s Word. I’m so glad I get to teach the Bible week after week. It makes me keep short accounts

One of the things we’ve built our church on is the systematic teaching of the Bible. We’re a verse by verse Bible teaching church for the most part. We do topical stuff as well (some topics are best covered in a topical manner), but the majority of Sundays, we’re working our way through a book of the Bible.

I’ve been thinking about this since we just finished the Gospel of Mark this past weekend (We started on Easter of last year). I looked and realized that we’ve taught through 19 books of the Bible since we started Calvary Fellowship 7 years ago. (I have a personal goal of teaching through the entire Bible before I leave planet earth) I’m excited about starting the Song of Solomon this Sunday!

I know a lot of guys aren’t into that, citing the need to do shorter series to keep momentum going. I understand that. But I would encourage you to think about teaching through a book of the Bible and see what happens.

Here’s what I have found:

1. It disciples people - we have 3 vehicles for discipleship at CF and that’s Sunday and those are Sunday, Small Groups, and service. We don’t spend a lot of time focusing of “side item” type ministries because they aren’t as powerful as these 3.

2. It’s what unchurched people expect - This might sound odd, but unchurched people expect Christians to study the Bible. So when they walk into a church service and the Pastor is teaching the text and applying it, there’s a comfortability there. I live in an area where 9 out of 10 people are unchurched (this doesn’t mean they aren’t attending a church right now, it means they’re really far from God), so people have no base of knowledge about God to start from. Teaching expositionally has helped us greatly in grounding people.

3. It balances our teaching - We all have tendencies in our teaching. Some are wired more for evangelism, some for discipleship, some for service. But teaching a book of the Bible can give us a balance and allows us to hit topics we’d never think of talking about normally.

4. It teaches people the importance of the Bible - People who see us working through a book of the Bible on Sunday will see the pattern for reading the Bible on their own. Obviously, this isn’t foolproof, but I want to model what I want everyone in my church doing daily.

Mileage may vary, but this decision has been one of the core values of our church.

Note: If you do teach expositionally, this doesn’t exempt you from needing to use creative elements to illustrate God’s heart and will. Boredom doesn’t produce godliness Both God’s Word and our God given creativity working together can reach the heart.

“Keep this in mind: The Teacher was considered wise, and he taught the people everything he knew. He listened carefully to many proverbs, studying and classifying them. The Teacher sought to find just the right words to express truths clearly.” (Ecclesiastes 12:9-10)

It’s all about the text!

I love creativity and I love thinking of new ways of sharing old truths, but you have to start with the text. I’m concerned whenever I talk to a leader who tells me he’s doing a series of teachings on _________, but hasn’t figured out what Bible verses he’s going to teach. It’s the classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

We start with the text because when you break it all down, that’s all that matters.

The lights don’t matter…

The staging doesn’t matter…

The bumper video doesn’t matter…

The graphics don’t matter…

None of it matters unless it’s there to give us insight into God’s Word. I love all of those things and we incorporate those things into our weekly services, but it’s the Scriptures that God has promised to bless. It’s the Scriptures that God has said He would magnify above His Own Name.

May we be people of the book. And may we then use all the other mediums God has given to us to illustrate it and inspire others…