Infusion Bible eStudies are downloadable small group studies that can be read online, printed, or emailed. Each study includes a leader guide and a study guide and is suitable for a one-hour group Bible study.
Listen...to the words of the Scripture, and in them discover God's message for you today.
Look...at a brief verbal snapshot from the scrapbook of contemporary life and discover its connection both to you and to the Scripture passage.
Live...inside the Scripture to discover its context and message; then allow the Scripture to come alive in you and cause you to live out your faith in new and more-effective ways.
Read an excerpt from this study below.
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A seminary professor once told me that as a pastor I occasionally would have to try to get my church “to be Christian.” I did not know what he meant. I thought churches were Christian by definition. Now, many years later, I know exactly what my professor meant.
Religious institutions can lose their way just as individuals can. What ought to be the primary focus of their attention can be lost. After all, churches are social institutions as well as religious ones. Weddings, funerals, bazaars, parties, meetings, and other events of a social nature occur at our churches that sometimes have little to do with the gospel. There are lots of churches that are well attended and popular and prospering where the preached and taught word bears only the foggiest resemblance to the gospel itself.
When religious institutions or individuals lose their way, when what was meant to be at the heart of the faith is peripheral or ignored entirely, reformation is required. Churches sometimes have to learn how to be “Christian” again.
Judah was supposed to be a nation devoted to the sole worship of the Lord and to adherence to God’s law, but the people had lost their way. When King Josiah had read to him a book recounting the Mosaic covenant and realized that his nation had completely neglected it, he knew that reform was necessary. He tried to reform the nation and to renew the ancient covenant as laid out in the book.
