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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One winter, Philip Yancey holed up in a cabin in Colorado to read the Bible cover to cover. Snow began to fall as he started Genesis, and it was still coming down when he got to Revelation—seventy-two inches of new powder! As Yancey immersed himself in Scripture, one impression he gained was that God is different from how we commonly imagine him to be. Rather than meeting an impassive God marked primarily by power and omniscience, Yancey encountered a God of deep emotions, who feels joy, frustration, pain, and anger; a God who is affected by the behavior of his children.
Reading the Prophets helped Yancey see the Bible as the story of God “the jilted lover,” who deeply loves the people he has made and yearns to be loved by them in return. Even though God finds himself cuckolded by his created ones, God goes to great lengths to woo us back to him. In that light, even the judgments of God are not retaliations, but attempts to clear the way to romance humankind afresh.1
The image of God as a jilted lover can change how we picture our own behavior. When we sin, we are not merely violating divine rules. We are breaking the heart of one who loves us as a groom loves his bride. God wants us back, and Hosea helps us to know that.
