Hi everyone- welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God.
This week, I provide a summary of a number of Bible studies that I participated in and facilitated during the past six months. The last time that I did a recording, similar to this was in May of 2021.
At that time, in episode number 49, I briefly reviewed four Bible studies, including one on the book of Hebrews. Another titled “Discerning the Voice of God”. A study that I participated in that was led out of Dubuque, Iowa. And finally, one that came from one of my seminary classes titled “My Neighbor is Muslim”.
Since that time, I moved to Massachusetts, continued to facilitate Bible studies and also taught four social work courses to undergraduate students that I'll tell you a little bit about at the end. Today's verses include the word behold, but I'm not going to read all 586 of them in the New King James version, according to Bible gateway.com.
Just a select few. I'm generally not someone who has a word of the year or who actively seeks that. I can certainly see the merits of doing so. I have had a word of the year from time to time, and I couldn't tell you what any of them were. I feel like the common expression really applies in my life: when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. That has happened a number of times. And I get a bunch of email blog posts and see things on Facebook and things like that. Right around the new year, the word behold jumped out at me.
And I knew immediately that that needed to be my word of the year for a number of different reasons. I will have three examples for you today of the use of the word behold. I would encourage you to look it up. Now the word behold is typically used in perhaps older translations.
I'm not sure if that's the right word to use, but some of the more contemporary translations don't use it. And I'll give some examples of that later on also. But the first one that I wanted to share with you today is in Genesis chapter nine, verse nine, which is the story of Noah. Genesis is the first book of the Bible.
If you want to look it up: it goes like this out of the New King James version. “And as for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you.” And this is precious to me because it's a reminder of the covenant that God has with us after the story of the flood. And there were so many different verses to select from, but we'll get to a few more, a little bit later, but I would really encourage you, if you think of a word, look it up, type it into either Bible gateway or any other website and see where it comes up in the Bible. And some paper Bibles also have listings in the back, like a directory if you're looking for a bunch of verses about forgiveness, say for example, this is where you can look. And the reason I picked the word forgiveness is because the first study I wanted to tell you about is titled Forgiving What You Can't Forget. And the author is Lysa TerKeurst.
There was so much good information in this Bible study that I am certainly not going to be able to share all of it, and that wouldn't be appropriate anyway, but I would really recommend this book.
And even just the table of contents of this book could give you a little sneak preview. Session one is what am I supposed to do with all the hurt? Session two is your mind, your mouth, your master. And it goes on, it was really a terrific study. And one thing that I enjoy doing, I've been in leadership positions before where groups have decided, okay, what studies are we going to offer this fall?
And this particular group of women that are meeting, we just select our studies by voting on which one we want to do next. So we do a poll and sometimes I'm really enthusiastic about a study and I highly recommend it. For example, I had wanted to do the study, Discerning the Voice of God for years and was glad that at some point it came up as number one in our poll of what study to do next.
And we are always amazed that the studies that we select ended up being so relevant in our lives for reasons that we might not have even anticipated. So I've done many studies by Lysa TerKeurst and they're all really good.
And then sometimes I think, okay, let's do a study, from somebody different. But we always end up coming back to another one of her studies. And this one was an example of just so on time in my life, really helpful. There is an example of a worksheet that I want to tell you about that's on Proverbs 31.org/forgiveness. The author has a chart with a Bible verse and helping us think about the verse and its applicability in our lives.
So what is the theme of the verse and what does God want for us with this? One thing that we talked about in seminary is that it's kind of easy to think about everything in the Bible like how does this apply to me? The verse from Genesis that I just read, talked about God establishing a covenant with us.
So yes, the Bible is applicable to all of humanity, but sometimes the Bible is also telling us an important story where we can learn a lesson, but we don't always have to immediately think of for every single verse, how does this apply to me? But I thought that this was a helpful exercise because sometimes for me, it's easy to skim through long Bible passages. And it helps me to listen on Sunday morning when someone else is reading. And if I don't have the chance, or even in addition to listening on Sunday mornings, some Bible apps will read it to me.
I pay much attention to a Bible passage when I'm listening to it, because I can't skim through it more quickly when I'm reading it. And so the reason I mentioned that as an example with this worksheet is that you're invited to really spend some time with the passage and think about what are the themes and write them down because for some people writing down helps to settle it in our minds, but it'll help us to remember later what it was about. And so one question is, what does God want from me in this verse? And another question that this author also brings up is the opposite. So what is the opposite of what could happen in a situation? The example in the book is the use of our language, how we can hurt people or how we can help people with what we say.
So God wants us to exercise control over our tongues and to support other people and not tear other people down. So I would highly recommend this study and take a look at the website. There's a number of resources accessible to everyone, whether or not you choose to purchase the book.
And another study that I wanted to tell you about is called The Dream of You by Jo Saxon. And one concept that I've become more familiar with recently is that companies offer online Bible studies.
And some of the online Bible studies release videos for free. So this was one of the reasons we picked this study. I really loved the subtitle after the dream of you. It says, let go of broken identities and live the life you were made for. And the whole book is in a faith-based context. So I have one quote to read for you today and just the whole book is underlined and dog-eared very powerful.
On page 57, the author writes "when we trade our identity for a perfectionistic alternative, even when it's for survival, it comes at a heavy cost. We lose our true selves and we lose our voices. We lose our spiritual authority because perfectionism relies on our skills rather than God's power. It costs us our purpose because perfectionism has a different purpose than the one God has given us. We lose our courage because at the root of perfectionism is fear." This book included lots of questions to journal about and to really consider our God-given identity, which is in contrast to social expectations or societal identity preferences. I invite your consideration of what is our calling in life? And how do we discern our identity based on God, not necessarily societal expectations.
The next verse that I wanted to read for you with the word behold in it is from Isaiah chapter 40 verse nine, and Isaiah is near the middle of your Bible. And if you know me at all, you know how much I love the Messiah. It's a piece of choral music that I've sung many times, and it helps me to memorize scripture through music. So I can quote you many, not only from the Messiah, but many Bible verses from hymns or anthems or praise songs. So this one for me, came to mind immediately when I saw the word behold that I had mentioned near new years and thought that this is going to be my word of the year. So here it is from the New King James version, Isaiah chapter 40 verse nine.
“O Zion,
You who bring good tidings,
Get up into the high mountain;
O Jerusalem,
You who bring good tidings,
Lift up your voice with strength,
Lift it up, be not afraid;
Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
I would much rather sing it for you, but if you want to listen to it, song, go look up the Messiah. It's a really long piece of music, but it's all good stuff. If that's your thing, which it is for me.
The next study that I wanted to tell you about is called Finding God Faithful by Kelly Minter. And this study comes from a publisher that I sometimes have some disagreements with, but this particular study was really excellent and I highly recommend it. Although the content was a study on the life of Joseph, the author did a fabulous job, really sharing applicability in our own lives, in finding God faithful in our many different circumstances. And this is the Bible study that transitioned me during my move from New York state to Massachusetts.
So it was just so relevant because many Bible characters travel many miles, and I drove in a car, not exactly under biblical conditions of walking miles and miles and miles through desert conditions and things like that. But I was so grateful again for the timing of the study. And I wanted to read a quote for you from page 84.
"Dwelling with the God of promise is far superior to dwelling in the place of promise."
And there are many helpful questions in this book to journal about or to prayerfully consider. Where are you physically? Are you where you thought you would be? Are you where you want to be? I sometimes think, oh, I'm supposed to be here or, oh, I don't want to be here. Or maybe I'm not supposed to be here or where am I going next? And what does all of this mean? And what's going on? So the theme of God's faithfulness through generations, through centuries, through millennia really was very powerful.
I also learned as I was researching verses for behold, is that some translations use other words instead of behold, for example, listen, look, watch. So I wanted to read you an excerpt from The Message, and often in this translation verses are grouped together in sort of a paragraph. So in this case, it's Isaiah chapter 43 verses 16 to 21. Not every single verse has its own number because the thoughts are combined or rephrased. So here's Isaiah 43 from The Message. "Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand new. It's bursting out. Don't you see it? There it is. I'm making a road through the desert rivers in the badlands."
And I like the word behold, just fine. So I can understand behold, but I can really, really understand, be alert and be present. And maybe that's more accessible for people to have an understanding of what that means. And I took a class on Isaiah and I talked about Isaiah more in a previous episode.
The final book that I wanted to mention to you today was used in a grief support group this fall, and the group read a book called The Grief Recovery Handbook by John James and Russell Friedman. And I would highly recommend this book.
And one thing that I really appreciated was that this grief support group was facilitated by leadership at an organization whose website is thehiveapiary.com. And what that ended up meaning for me is that the leader from the hiveapiary are, many of them are clergy people. They may have other leaders who are not ordained ministers. But what that meant for me with this group support group was that it had a faith-based focus. And that was very helpful for me. The book I believe is entirely secular, although it references, certainly if you have either faith or maybe you're having some difficulty with your faith in a grief situation.
But for me, the support group was a really nice combination of this book, as well as faith-based emphasis during the sessions. And I wanted to read a quote to you from page 41 of this book, and I do very highly recommend the entire book. " Recovery means discovering and completing what was unfinished for you in your unique relationship."
So, one of the reasons I had joined again, this is a classic example. When I was looking for something, it literally just came to me. I participate in a couple of different groups that do journaling and other types of writing exercises with prompts. And I thought about asking those instructors, if they would ever consider doing a group about grief in particular.
And then I thought, well, if I need to write about grief, I can write about grief any time. I don't need to change the focus of these people who are leading groups on various different topics. Practically the next day, I got an email announcing this grief support group. So I thought, okay, I need to do this grief support group.
And it did include some writing assignments, some worksheet activities that were incredibly helpful and impactful and yes, sad, but I feel very supported through that journey. And one of the things that had prompted that was that September was the one-year anniversary of my mom passing away. And as I was moving, I kept thinking, oh, she would be interested to know about this or whatever that was appropriate, just sadness and remembering.
So I'm really glad that I participated in that group and read the book. And then the final study that I participated in and also helped co-facilitate last summer was on the book of Ecclesiastes. And there's a future episode in the works just about the book of Ecclesiastes. So I'm not going to go into that today, but just a little FYI that will be coming up later. I really appreciated that because I haven't spent a lot of time in the book of Ecclesiastes. So that was really helpful. And finally, I wanted to tell you about the social work classes that I taught last fall, because even though they were primarily secular in nature, I believe that the content, especially of two of them are relevant to everyone.
So I taught social work 101, which was just a joy and a privilege to introduce the field to students who probably already have this as their major or perhaps they were just exploring it as an elective from a different major and the course covered lots of different things that social workers do that maybe new students weren't aware of, lots of different kinds of fields of social work from working with little kids.
Maybe people think about that more often than not, to senior citizens or teenagers. Of course, people of all ages, families, groups. And then in different settings. So social workers can be in healthcare settings, in prisons, in schools. The list just really goes on and on. So that was really neat.
I also was invited to teach a course about cultural competence and I learned a great deal in that class. It was absolutely fantastic. Although heartbreaking because we have so much work to do when it comes to cultural competence. Even if we already think that we know a lot about a lot of different things, I can guarantee you there's a lot of stuff that we don't know.
And one of the things that we talked about in this class when it comes to privilege and oppression is that sometimes we don't even know that we're in a position of privilege.
And the information that I wanted to share with you first was called a Christian privilege checklist because we're to take a look at how are some people's ways of life kind of in sync in an unspoken way or an overt way with society? Leaving other people perhaps to the side. And one example, I'll just read a few of you from this Christian privilege checklist: is I can expect to have time off from work to celebrate religious holidays. That as a Christian, my religious holidays are typically in alignment with American holidays.
Say for example, Christmas day or some states have other religious holidays, that kind of linesup say, for example, in Massachusetts, typically the Monday after Easter is off, but not for overtly religious reasons.
Living in a place with some Christian based holidays, although it was much more living in Germany, there are significantly more religious holidays that are part of the state calendar. So say for example, Ascension day in some states in Germany is a holiday and I happen to know what Ascension day is, but I couldn't really imagine having it off from work in the United States. I don't think I ever necessarily went to a special Ascension day service if one was offered in the middle of the week, for example
One that might seem fairly obvious on a Christian privilege checklist, at least in the United States is that I can worship freely without fear of violence or threats. And we do know that unfortunately, not everyone in the United States is free to worship freely without fear of violence or threats, because there is fear and discrimination towards people of different faiths that may not seem mainstream or really even if they are mainstream statistically, many other faiths are growing in great numbers and many Christian churches are becoming smaller. Although worldwide, there are still Christians living in many countries who are persecuted and who are not able to worship freely.
Most Christians also can practice their religious customs without being questioned mocked or inhibited, for example, in the United States. I took a fantastic workshop that was offered by the National Association of Social Workers in New York state. And it was for social workers to understand a little bit more about the Muslim faith and practices - how can social workers support people who either work in their agencies or in any way, just in the world, doesn't even have to be as part of their agencies when it comes to prayer and fasting. Some of which is done regularly, some of which is done more at certain times of the year, say for example, Ramadan and foot washing practices.
So one example that the presenters had mentioned in that particular presentation was that in some workplaces, there are lack of places to go to pray. And one person's boss said, well, can you just go pray in the bathroom? And you know, yeah. I can pray in the bathroom. I really don't feel like that's an appropriate invitation to someone, but to a person of faith who is praying at certain times of day, just as an example.
The last thing I want to read for you on the Christian privilege checklist is if I am being tried in court, I can assume that the jury of my peers will share my faith. And that's something that the jury of my peers, there's many different ways that people may or may not be peers.
And that one had actually not really occurred to me previously. So that's a great example of something that I learned of even my Christian faith, or even being asked to swear on a Bible or something like that. How it's so easy to take that for granted. So that was really eye-opening. And we talked in this class about our own experiences, both growing up, being socialized, what we were taught about other people, what we were taught about our own family or our own heritage.
So students were welcomed and hopefully felt safe to share their own experiences. During the semester long course on a whole bunch of different topics. And I was really heartbroken by some of the stories that people shared about experiences that they had had around faith. And I just really want to encourage listeners if you're ever in a position to speak with someone who you believe may not be Christian, or may not be say, going to church regularly is to prayerfully speak with welcome and be aware that speaking with judgment can cause tremendous pain to a listener. And I know that many people feel that we should educate people about what's in the Bible. We should help people try to live good lives and things like that. But what I heard from some students in my class is just pain.
Just being judged really, truly overtly- based on what they said in this class, there was just no doubt about it. And so my belief truly is how are we welcoming people to a faith or telling them that God loves them at the same time that they are feeling judged and excluded and frankly condemned. So how do we balance. You know what? I take that back. I don't like how I'm saying that because I would rather make everybody happy. And I know that that's not possible. I don't really know that there's a balance. Maybe this is a whole going to be a whole other conversation.
What I'm trying to say is it's more important to me to tell people that God loves them than to say I believe that what you're doing is wrong and I'm judging you on behalf of my understanding of God judging you, because I disagree. So we can have a conversation about this. There are places to leave comments on the podcast website, as well as on the Facebook page for 40 minutes of faith, this is a really complicated issue.
And I feel like I need to honor the privacy of the students in the class by not telling stories about what they said without their permission, but I'm sure you can imagine people feeling judged for lots of different issues. We also talked about something from a really, really long time ago and I would tend to think why is 1493 important? Why does it matter? I mean, yes, of course history is important. Why do I need to know about something that happened in 1493, but still impacts people today? And one of the things that we talked in this class about throughout the semester was how oppression is still alive and well these days, and yes, there has been some progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done around righting wrongs from the past. So in this particular session about faith-based privilege and oppression, we talked about the doctrine of discovery, which was issued by Pope Alexander the sixth in 1493, essentially stating that explorers could take over land in the name of the church.
Specifically around Columbus's “discovery”, but that this document was looking to ensure the exclusive rights to the land. And this document has since been repudiated by many people, but not by all, to say that it's really not appropriate under any circumstances to say we're claiming this land and the heck with whoever was here before, that we're claiming this land with no regard whatsoever to the people who were already on that land. We also talked a little bit about land acknowledgements.
Another course that I think can be meaningful for anyone, not just social work students was policy advocacy, and that has to do with how we lift up our neighbors who are in need, who may have legislative or other practices that end up not treating them with the same kind of dignity when it comes to race or wealth or even age, any aspect of who people are. So the students in the class did a great job doing research around different groups and policies and what needs improving and funding.
And how do we advocate for change? And where are there gaps in service where further advocacy could really benefit people? So just wanting to encourage that anyone can help advocate for change. You don't have to have a social work degree or any college degree at all.
You can become informed about what's going on in the local legislature at the state level, even something like the board of education for your community, and then certainly at the national level as well. And there are petitions that can be signed. Phone calls in person visits are probably happening a little bit less, but there are many different ways to advocate for care for our neighbors.
And obviously most programs cost money, especially if there’s staffing or services to be delivered. So that's part of the conversation as well as how is our money being spent to care for our neighbors. Actually, that reminds me in social work 101, the students did a paper about a program that used to be called food stamps.
It's now called SNAP, supplemental nutrition assistance program. And at the time that the paper was assigned in September, students had $4 a day to eat. And we talked together that there may be times when completing this assignment is not either necessary or appropriate if somebody has health concerns, but it was to learn what is it like to have $4 a day to live on, which was the SNAP benefit at the time.
And you can't use stuff that you bought before that's sitting in your cupboards. You can buy everything the first day of the week with all your money and then not buy anything else the rest of the week, or you can go day by day. And the struggles that students experienced, they did a great job writing their papers, and there was no consequence to stopping it early or doing an alternate assignment if they had a health situation where it was just not a good idea, but the students were horrified at $4 a day being provided to people as the SNAP benefit, because sometimes you hear oh, people are taking advantage of government handouts and things like that. But none of them thought that $4 a day was enough.
And a very few students bought everything at the beginning of the week and did relatively okay. But the students doing the day by day purchasing had a much harder time. By the end of that class, the benefit had increased to $4.40 per day per person. And obviously in the aggregate that's millions and millions of dollars, but in this day and age 40 cents increase is absolutely not enough.
So thank you for your time today. I invite you to behold. Behold God's goodness, behold our neighbors in need and prayerfully discern how we can learn more, both about God and God's word as well as serving our neighbors.
Forgiving What You Can't Forget by Lysa TerKeurst.
https://Proverbs31.org/forgiveness
The Dream of You by Jo Saxon
Finding God Faithful by Kelly Minter
The Grief Recovery Handbook by John James and Russell Friedman