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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Indiana Acevedo, at the time I met her, was the coordinadora of her Base Christian Community in Barrio San Judas, Managua, Nicaragua. In addition to being a single mother with six children, ages six to twenty-three, Indiana served mornings as a volunteer social worker at a school for street children, making house visits all over the city. In the afternoons and evenings, she worked in her Base Community, supervising programs in health care, nutrition, cholera prevention, preparation of soy meals for children and mothers, preschool education, youth activities, sex education, sewing instruction, Bible study, and church membership training. When I asked Indiana what motivated her investment in these forms of service, she replied, "My commitment of faith. I learned in the Bible that faith without action is dead. God calls me to serve, and I do so with happiness and dedication. I find the presence of God among the people. In the midst of difficulties God is there. Jesus is the center of our life, and we meet Jesus in the Bible."
One night each week Indiana met with members of her Base Community to pray, sing, study the Bible, and discuss its relevance for daily life and to plan and coordinate service activities. Most members were uneducated; all were poor; the majority were women. A priest attended occasionally, but the leadership was firmly in lay hands. Each Monday Indiana participated ina training, coordinating, and planning meeting with leaders from more than twenty Base Communities. Together they studied, prayed, and planned ways to apply their Christian faith to the growing problems of poverty, unemployment, illness, conflict, malnutrition, and despair in postwar Nicaragua.
When I visited these communities, I was profoundly impressed with their similarity to the early house churches in Rome; that is, with the people’s deep faith, hope, commitment, and love for one another under conditions of severe poverty, oppression, and marginalization. They had not conformed to the world of suspicion, retaliation, greed, and violence around them but instead were being transformed by the love and power of the living Christ in their midst (Romans 12:1-2). They were showing genuine love and mutual affection for one another, opposing injustice and carrying out good works, devotedly serving God and their neighbors, manifesting patience and hope in the face of adversity and deprivation, persevering in prayer, giving of themselves sacrificially to meet the needs of others, and showing hospitality to outsiders (12:9-13). They were not being overcome by evil but were making every effort to overcome evil with good (12:21).
