The Schelbs

Last night we had our first Girls Bible Study for the summer. It was great to be back in the role of teaching girls and helping them discover truths for themselves! We had 3 girls there, which considering one of our girls is in Colorado all summer, another one is taking summer classes to get a jump on college, and attendance has been low the past week and a half, 3 is really great!

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I would put the lesson notes up here, and so here is an overview of lesson 1.

The topic was "Princess or a Slave?" and it was relating to who we are. Have we received salvation through Jesus, and thus received the adoption to be called a child of God? Or are we a slave to sin, never breaking free and allowing us to become a new creation? We looked at Romans to see what it means to be a slave to sin - that sin controls us and we become like a puppet. But, we see that Jesus died for our sin, so that if we receive that salvation gift, we become a new creation, the old has gone! (2 Cor. 5:17) Going back to Romans we see that this salvation gives us the spirit of adoption whereby we can call on our Abba Father. It continues in Romans 8 to say that we are the children of God, and if children then heirs to God and joint-heirs with Christ.

(It was so exciting to watch the girls as I asked questions and let them piece together what this all means. I pointed out that Jesus is called the Prince of Peace, and that God is the King of Kings. I asked them "So if we are no longer slaves to sin, and we are children of God and joint-heirs with Christ and Jesus is the Prince of Peace and God is the King of Kings, what does that make you? They all looked really sheepish and finally one said is a small, questioning voice, "a princess?" and then a big smile spilled over all of the girls' faces.)

Upon realizing that if they are Christians, then they are princesses, we discussed how royalty acts and thus, how they should carry themselves. I talked about Michelle Obama and how her fashion choice on the D-Day ceremony in France has reflected poorly on her husband and this country. We talked about, how we should dress and be conscientious of our speech (Ephesians 4:29). We are reflecting the God of Creation in everything we say and do, just like a princess reflects her king and country in everything she says and does.

Finally we closed with how easy it is to be a daughter of the King, yet still act like the slave to sin we once were. We talked about habits, and how its easy to slip back into our old nature, but we must be diligent to seek to live out Romans 12:1...to be holy and acceptable to God. To live every day in a state of worship.

I was blessed to see how excited they were to learn a new "nugget" of truth about who they are in Christ. Next week we'll talk about Mary, Jesus' mom and particularly about her purity.