Walk Like a Christian

Pray the Way

Colossians 2:6–7 (ESV)

Alive in Christ

6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Rooted in the truth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Built up through an understanding of His true and infallible Word, the Holy Bible.

Established in the faith of His promise of salvation to those who follow Him.

Our goal is to seek biblical guidance in the challenges of life.

We will be studying suggested topics as well as going verse by verse through books of the Bible.

Class information, discussion opportunities, reminders, and lesson recordings will be posted on Facebook.

I teach out of the ESV. Other translations I reccommend are the NASB, NKJV, CSB, NIV, and NLT.

Translations to avoid: The New World Translation, The James Smith KJV, The LDS published KJV, The Passion Translation, and The Message.

The calling that led me to start Pray the Way is found in Colossians 2:6-7:

Colossians 2:6–7 ESV

6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

When we walk, we are moving, making our way to a new destination.

For Christians, this destination is heaven, our home, to spend eternity in the presence and glory of our Creator, the Lord God.

However, the Christian's way home can be difficult for our human flesh to navigate successfully as society continuously attempts to alter our path by presenting us with arguments of morality, lifestyle, doubt, and shame to compel us towards contemporary ideals.

I see the victorious Christian life summarized in Colossians 2:6-7:

striving to make our way through our temporal life on Earth with a walk that is rooted in the truth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

built up through an understanding of His true and infallible Word, the Holy Bible,

and established in the faith of His promise of salvation to those who follow Him.

I believe that, in order to be successful in our walk, we must prayerfully seek God's guidance in our lives by endeavoring to accurately understand His teachings as presented in Scripture.

As we navigate Earthly life, with the Bible as our guidance system, we must remain mindful that the wise will govern themselves by what the Lord Himself declares, and not set our ways according to our own finite and often mistaken understanding (Proverbs 3:5-6). Our trust in God's righteousness allows us to rejoice with thanksgiving for God's glory in all things.

My vision for Pray the Way is a group guided by the Holy Spirit.

I would like each of you to contribute by allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal topics that God wants you to learn about.

We all have doubts and fears, questions and confusion, misconceptions and misunderstanding.

I would like you to bring this baggage on our journey and, together, we will seek to learn and obey the biblical truth God speaks into our lives.

You are welcome to bring up something you would like to discuss in class, pull me aside at any time to discuss privately, text me, email me, or facebook messenger me.

At the top of your handout is the email address I set up for this group, so they wouldn’t get lost in my overstuffed personal email as well as the web address to the facebook page I have setup for our group.

Of course, it is not required to join the facebook page in order to be apart of the group, but I do think it is a good idea to join the facebook page.

It provides our group with a singular place to connect, discuss experiences, and submit prayer requests during the week;

it is where I will be posting updates for the group for reminders;

for those who have been in one of my previous classes, you know that I record and podcast the classes, and I will be posting those links up on the facebook group for easy access and reference.

In addition, I will often post thoughts and verses from my personal bible study and devotionals throughout the week;

I encourage each of you to do the same

and to invite your friend to the page, as you feel led.

It is my hope that this ministry will grow beyond these walls and touch as many lives as the Lord wills.

A few notes about myself as a group leader:

I reserve the right to answer “I don’t know”. I am not one to make up answers that sound good on the fly in order to pretend I know everything about God’s Word.

I ask for your patience, our goal in this group is to thoughtfully and clearly understand God’s guidance for us in the struggles and topics we explore through this class.

With that in mind, some subjects may require more research and preparation than others and so it may seem like I am skipping over your topic as I discuss ones that were suggested after yours. I promise you that is not the case.

I do want you to be aware that I record the lessons; but for any of you who are shy or anxious about being recorded, I only record the lesson that I present to the group, while I am speaking; I stop recording before we enter into the discussion portion of our time.

I have experienced in A Guide for Christians that this realizes several benefits:

It allows those who miss the lesson to catch up on their own time.

It preserves the lesson for you in case of a desire to refer back to it in the future.

And it expands our reach in ministry to those who do not attend our group or even our church.

It is my firm belief that no question or topic is too small or silly. The Holy Spirit leads us all, let Him place on your heart questions and concerns and I encourage you to present them.

There is no facet of God's Word that we should not seek to study and understand better.

I will add that I will not call out who presented a topic or question when it is presented privately.

I primarily teach out of the English Standard Version translation of the Bible. I have found that, to me, it strikes a good balance between understandability in modern english and faithfullness to the original language.

However, the New American Standard Bible,

the New King James Version,

the Christian Standard Bible,

The New International Version,

and the New Living Translation are all good translations too and you will find that I occasionally reference those translations as well.

I’d like to briefly mention several translations I don’t recommend though:

The New World Translation - Jehovah’s Witnesses. Adds words to verses in many places which completely change the meaning of Scripture.

The next two are both Mormon versions of the King james Version:

The Joseph Smith version of the King James Bible - Adds words, verses, and even entire passages of multiple verses that don’t appear anywhere in the original language.

The LDS (Latter Day Saints) version of the King James Bible - Preserves the KJV text but adds all the changes from the Joseph Smith version as commentaries.

The tricky issue with this version is that it looks just like a normal KJV, you won’t be able to tell unless you look inside the cover to see if the LDS is the publisher or not.

The Passion Tranlastion - Popular among prosperity preachers.

The last one, The Message translation, is not associated with any particular heresy, that I am aware of; however, my experience with it is that is just a very sloppy translation.

I may do a class in the future explaining the differences in translations, good and bad, if you are interested.

As for the structure of the class, our study book is going to be the Bible.

For our primary course, we will be discussing topics and struggles that are requested by the class, as well as topics and controversies presented by contemporary society, as the Spirit leads me.

As a secondary course, we will be doing series on the books of the Bible where we walk through the entire book, verse by verse, in an effort to better understand the message that God wants to convey to His children.

In other words, in the absence of a specific topic for any particular week, we will continue through our study of whichever book of the Bible we are currently in.

This will lead to some back and forth, as I may cover a topic one week, our book study for a week or two, then another topic or two, etc.

Being a member of the facebook page will help as I am going to try to post to the events section a summary of what I will be talking about on Sunday no later than the preceding Thursday so that you will have some time to study ahead, if you wish.

I also want to mention that we have a little class library.

That being said........

The Gospel According to John

John organizes his book according to theme rather than chronologically.

John focuses on Jesus’ Judean ministry.

John wrote his Gospel to evangelize non-believers as well as to strengthen the faith of believers.

John 20:30-31

Our first book series is going to be The Gospel According to John.

A thoughtful reader does not have to read the Gospel of John very long before noticing remarkable differences between the fourth Gospel and the other three (Matthew, Mark, and Luke),

which are collectively called the Synoptic Gospels because they are very similar in form and content to one another.

A few of the differences between the Synoptics and John include

John's disregard for chronology as he tends to group events and teachings together by their theme, rather than by chronological timeline.

John also includes several accounts of Jesus that the others have no record of while not including accounts that the others do have record of.

This is explained by the fact that John focuses most of his Gospel on Jesus' ministry in Judea, whereas the other three focus mainly on Jesus' ministry in Galilee.

John's particular purpose for adding his Gospel to the others also helps us to understand why he includes new material.

It is generally agreed upon by scholars that John's Gospel was written sometime between 85 - 95 AD; with two primary purposes.

First, John’s Gospel sought to confront individuals with the life and claims of Christ in order that they might surrender their lives to Christ’s rule.

Therefore the first purpose of John’s Gospel is evangelistic.

Second, it is possible to translate “may believe” in John’s purpose statement, found in John 20:30-31, as “may continue to believe,” which would infer the purpose of not only winning individuals to faith in Christ but also that of strengthening the family of faith that is already walking with Christ.

The Christian Difference

Many contemporary religions “believe” in Jesus.

Judaism believes Jesus was a real person who was Mary's son, a respected Rabbi who performed miracles, and ultimately became a heretic that was crucified.

Muslims believe Jesus was a real person who was born of a virgin, was a prophet, and a wise teacher who performed miracles.

Hindus believe Jesus was a real person who was a holy man, a wise teacher, and a 'god'.

Buddhists believe Jesus was a real person who was an enlightened man and a wise teacher.

New Age Spirituality believes Jesus was a real person who was a wise moral teacher.

Church of Scientology believes Jesus was a real person and places Him in their hierarchy of "early forms of wisdom".

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Jesus was a real person and the physical form of the Archangel Michael.

Mormon’s believe Jesus was a real person and one of many gods.

The Bible tells us that God Himself is the only one who can save us.

Isaiah 43:11 (ESV)

11 I, I am the LORD,

and besides me there is no savior.

The angel Gabriel tells us that Jesus is Immanuel = “God with us”.

Matthew 1:21-23

Jesus emphatically states that He is God.

John 8:24

Isaiah 43:10-11

In contemporary times, it may or may not surprise you to to learn that Christians are not the only religion who claim belief in Jesus.

Judaism believes Jesus was a real person who was Mary's son, a respected Rabbi who performed miracles, and ultimately became a heretic that was crucified.

Muslims believe Jesus was a real person who was born of a virgin, was a prophet, and a wise teacher who performed miracles.

Hindus believe Jesus was a real person who was a holy man, a wise teacher, and a 'god'.

Buddhists believe Jesus was a real person who was an enlightened man and a wise teacher.

New Age Spirituality believes Jesus was a real person who was a wise moral teacher.

Even the Church of Scientology believes Jesus was a real person and places Him in their hierarchy of "early forms of wisdom".

What is more concerning, though, are those groups who claim to be Christians and use our terminology, but teach a very different Christ than the Bible.

There are many of these groups in our time, but I want to just touch on the two most prominent examples:

Jehovah's Witnesses profess Jesus is the son of God; however, that term, to them, means He was a being created by God who was eventually sent to deliver a message to the rest of God's children; namely they believe Jesus' heavenly identity is the Archangel Michael.

Likewise, Mormon's profess that Jesus is the son of God, but that term, to them, means a literal birthed son. They believe that there are spiritual beings in the heavens, both male and female, having intercourse and quite literally birthing children, some of which are sent here to earth. They also believe that all gods were once mortal men here on earth who, through Mormonism, were able to achieve their final state of god-hood over their very own planet within the universe.

This is why John's Gospel seeks to emphatically make clear to us that Jesus IS God; because this is not only the truth, but it is also the crux of our salvation.

The Bible clearly teaches us that God is the only one who can save us in Isaiah 43:11:

Isaiah 43:11 ESV

11 I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.

Take note that “LORD” here is in all caps, it is not a generic title, it is Yahweh in the Hebrew, the proper name of God.

This is reinforced in Matthew 1:21-23, when the angel Gabriel tells Joseph:

Matthew 1:21–23 ESV

21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

The requirement of salvation through Jesus Christ is not to simply believe He was a real person and make up the details as you see fit.

It is to trust Him as Lord of your life and acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Immanuel, God with us, the only one who has authority to grant us salvation.

Jesus Himself makes this clear in John 8:24:

John 8:24 ESV

I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

In casual reading, this phrase seems to be a general reference that we must believe in Jesus. But in full understanding it is actually a very specific stipulation that we must believe Jesus is God.

We gain this understanding by looking at Isaiah 43:10:

Isaiah 43:10 ESV

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.

We’ve already touched on Isaiah 43:11, but I would like us to put the two verses together now:

Isaiah 43:10–11 ESV

“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.

It weighs heavy on my heart that many who feel they are Christians and saved have been going to church their whole lives, listening to a fake gospel and never hearing the truth of Jesus Christ.

I once heard a quote made by an agent of the Secret Service's counterfeiting division. He said "We don't spend our time trying to keep up with all the counterfeits being produced, that would be an impossible task. Instead we spend all of our time learning every minute detail of the genuine article. This knowledge makes recognizing even the most elaborate fake possible."

That is why I chose to start Pray the Way with John's Gospel, because John strives to make clear any ambiguities about the truth of Christ.

He presents us with an understanding of authentic belief in Christ as Lord and Savior and provides us with the guidance system necessary to successfully make our way home.

Prayer