How Studying the Bible Can Help You Stand Against False Teaching
Most of you are aware that I have a weekly podcast that you can sign up to receive for free on my website www.larryodonnell.com. Each week, I go through a different chapter of whatever book of the Bible we are then studying, read it to you and break it down verse by verse for listeners to better understand the rich lessons outlined, and absorb what God is teaching us through His Word.
For example, 2 Corinthians is a valuable book where the Apostle Paul is pointing the church in Corinth to God’s Truth, and warning the people to repent and turn away from false teaching. Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth is as equally timely today as it was when Paul wrote it.
I often find Christians today who have more of a second-hand faith, receiving most of their teaching and understanding of God’s Word from their pastor, friends or parents rather than a true personal relationship with God. Christians who are not as firmly rooted in God’s Truth may have a hard time discerning false teaching even within their own denomination. There is no replacement for diving into Scripture yourself and engaging directly with the Word of God.
I myself went to a church for decades whose preaching I discovered was not biblical. My relationship with the Lord back then was focused solely on what I could do to earn God’s favor and I hoped God graded on the curve so that I might make it to heaven. It is by God’s grace that the Holy Spirit slowly worked on my heart and revealed God’s true Word to me through a family friend who actually showed me verses in the Bible for the first time in my life. I learned that Salvation is by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, and there was nothing I could do to earn my salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9). I just had to receive God’s gift and accept Jesus Christ alone as my Lord and Savior! (John 3:16; Romans 10:9-10). That has brought tremendous peace to me.
As I began to study the Bible, my eyes were opened to see that the traditional religious practices I had been taught growing up in a devout “religious” family and that I had become accustomed to, as well as my flawed beliefs about God were distracting me from a real personal relationship with God. Experiencing this in my own life, I now have a strong urgency and drive to echo Paul’s message of encouraging believers to seek Truth for themselves in God’s Word and obey Christ.
The book of 2 Corinthians is meant to encourage believers to live as an example of Christ to others. As believers, God has given us the Holy Spirit to help us fight against the temptations and attacks of Satan the enemy, while modeling God’s desires of generosity and humility. I still stumble and fall, but I know the Lord is right there to pick me up and help me get back on the right track.
If you want to follow along and learn more about God’s teaching that He has given to us in His Book as I read and explain a new chapter each week, you can sign up through my website (www.larryodonnell.com) to receive the new episode that is released each Monday morning for free and delivered to you by email. You can also access all the prior episodes on my website under the “Podcast” tab.
I am aware of a bunch of different groups around the Country and even outside the U.S. who use the previously recorded lessons for their own Bible Study Groups, as I now have almost the entire New Testament recorded. They simply choose a book of the New Testament to study, read the chapter that will be covered by the lesson in advance, then gather together to listen to the recorded lesson, and then have their own discussion about what they heard and learned from the lesson.
I encourage you to start your own Bible Study Group if you are not already in one. Hopefully, having the lessons pre-recorded for you will make it very easy to host a Bible Study Group of your own! And if you have questions from your Group that you can’t answer, all you have to do is send me an email and I will help you find answers to your questions.
I hope you will join me each week as we study God’s Word together.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” - 2 Corinthians 5:17
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