Contact: josh@joshhhunt.com

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The Great Books

I am pleased to introduce the release of a new curriculum outline. For years I have written four lessons a week, based on the suggested texts of someone else’s outlines. With this new outline, I will invite groups to join me in reading The Great Books and discussing the Bible verses in those books.

What are The Great Books? Here is a partial list. (I’d be open to your suggestions. Email me at josh@joshhunt.com )

• Knowing God, J.I. Packer (available now)
• Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritual Life, Donald Whitney (available now)
• Holiness of God, R.C. Sproul (projected release, late 2015)
• Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges (projected release, early 2016)
• Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster
• Desiring God, John Piper
• Trusting God, Jerry Bridges
• Being a Contagious Christian, Bill Hybels
• Basic Christianity, John Stott
• Ultimate Priority, John Macarthur
• Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow, Peter Wagner
• Prayer, Richard Foster
• Experiencing God,  Henry Blackaby

I plan to write these first four and then evaluate from there. If I get positive feedback, the plan would be to write about 6 a year. This way, you will always have choices. I will be writing more than you have time to complete. These studies will be suitable for Sunday morning as well as mid-week groups.

Participants will be encouraged to buy and read the corresponding book. I will be writing a study guide in the form of Good Questions Have Groups Talking. These will be available on Amazon, in both print and Kindle versions. In addition, they will be available by subscription as part of www.mybiblestudylessons.com . On this site, churches can have access to hundreds of lessons for about $10 per teacher per year. Churches would be encouraged to subsidize the cost of the books. I do not encourage churches buy the books outright, as they typically do with Sunday School curriculum. If people will not pay for the book, they are likely not going to read it. I would not pass them out for free.

Nothing has influenced my life—except for reading the Bible itself in Christian Quiet Time—like the reading of The Great Books. My dream is that this plan will encourage thousands of Christians to benefit from these books in the same way that I have.

Nearly every church I am in is struggling with the question: how do we make true disciples. Encouraging people to read The Great Books is part of the answer.

Is Christian living easy or hard?

Is it easy or hard for you to live the Christian life?

I have asked this question to thousands of Christians and consistently they will answer with resolve, “Hard!”

Then, I show them this familiar verse:

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30 (NIV2011)

I ask again, wording the question slightly differently, “Did Jesus teach that following Him would be easy or hard?”

I never get an explanation this complete, but it seems they are saying, “I don’t care what that verse says, believe me, Christian living is very, very hard.”

One word of clarification. I am not asking whether life is hard. Our experience confirms what Jesus taught about that, life is hard. “In this world you will have trouble.” John 16:33 (NIV2011)

I am asking whether Christian living is easy or hard, not whether life is easy or hard. In this world full of difficulties, it is easy or hard to live as Jesus taught?

The answer seems clear. Jesus taught that His yoke is easy. Could it be we have put on some other yoke?

Perhaps we have put on the yoke of religion.

Perhaps we have put on the yoke of duty.

Perhaps we have put on the yoke of feel-good-faith.

Perhaps we have put on the yoke of legalism.

If the yoke that we have around our neck is not easy, it is not Jesus’ yoke.

Training vss. Trying

Imagine you can’t play the piano and I asked you to play Amazing Grace. Would it be easy or hard? Would it help if you tried really, really hard to play Amazing Grace?

This is how many people try to live the Christian life. They hear a sermon on gratefulness. They try really hard to be grateful. They do this for a few hours or a few day. Then, they forget about it. Life gets in the way. Then, they are left with a nagging feeling of guilt about how they are not as grateful as they would like to be.

Next week they hear a sermon on service. They try really hard to serve, for a few hours. Then they forget about this. Again, they have a life. They don’t rebel against God or the idea of serving, they just forget about it and go on with life. But again, they are left with a nagging sense of guilt about not serving as they ought.

The next week they hear a sermon on prayer. Same thing.

There is a better way. (I owe my insight into this verse to John Ortberg. I think he got it from Dallas Willard.) Here is the key verse:

Train yourself to be godly. 1 Timothy 4:7 (NIV2011)

Let’s go back to the piano. Let’s imagine you sit down with a skilled piano teacher. He explains that your fingers can be numbered one through five. The thumb is one and the pinky is five. The middle finger is three.

He places your middle finger on the E above middle C. He asks you to play 3-2-1 starting with E above middle C with the middle finger of your right hand. These are the first three notes of “Mary had a little lamb.” He walks you through the rest of the song, pointing to the notes on the music in front of you. After about ten times, you stumble through it.

He give you ten more songs, and works you though each one till you are able to figure out how it works. He asks you to practice for an hour a day and you agree to do so. A week later, you can play the melody of all ten songs reasonably well.

He gives you ten more songs. You practice those for a few weeks. He introduces the left hand. At first, you play only the left hand. Then, you play both hands together. Then you play two notes at the same time in the right hand. This is called harmony. You practice some more. Practice, practice, practice. This is training to play the piano.

Keep this up for about five years and you will easily be able to play Amazing Grace. It won’t be hard; it will be easy.

You might object that this way sounds like a hard way to learn to play Amazing Grace. It is not the hard way, it is the only way. Here is the good news. Once you subject yourself to this training, playing Amazing Grace will be easy. In fact, nearly any song in the hymnbook will be easy. Ask anyone who can play Amazing Grace. They will tell you it is easy. What is hard is trying to do something you have not trained yourself to do.

Train yourself to be godly.

It is true with just about anything. If you want to hit a golf ball, you need to train yourself. You need a coach to show you the correct way to hold your hands. You need to learn the proper stance. You start with half-swings, trying to hit the ball just a short distance, but hitting it cleanly. Practice, practice, practice. Train yourself to hit a fastball, don’t just try really hard.

Lots of impossible looking things can be done if you can break them down into small parts, practice those until they are automatic, and build your way up to more complex tasks.

Train yourself to be godly

Let’s go back to the sermon you heard on gratitude. Instead of trying really hard to be grateful, train yourself to be grateful. Get a simple, blank, 100-page notebook. Commit to writing down three things you are grateful for every night before you go to bed. Do this for 100 days. By this time you will have formed a habit. You will not be able to keep from thinking of three things you are grateful for before you go to bed. In fact you will think of things you are grateful for all the time. Gratitude will become a habit. Gratitude will become easy.

I have experienced this. My approach is this. I often think of twenty things I am grateful for before I go to bed at night. (Writing would be better. I compensate for this by thinking of twenty things instead of three.) I think of them in four categories:

·         Family members I am grateful for. Wife, kids, grandkids, parents…

·         Other people I am grateful for. Friends. Church people. The mail man.

·         Physical things I am grateful for. Air conditioning. Indoor plumbing. The Internet.

·         Spiritual things I am grateful for. The Bible. The forgiveness of sins. Spiritual gifts. The hope of eternal life.

I have done this for several years. I don’t do it every night, but I have done it enough time that it is a habit. It has shaped my thinking. The first thoughts that come through my mind in the morning are thoughts of gratitude. I put my feet on a little rug we have in front of the sink. I think about how warm that rug feels on my feet. Thank God for a little rug.

Thank God for air-conditioning. Thank God for godly parents. Thank God for grand-kids. Thank God for apples. I love apples. Thank God for my job writing Bible Study Lessons. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Gratitude is easy. I have trained myself to be grateful.

Imagine you hear a sermon on service. Don’t try hard to serve. Train yourself to be godly. Train yourself to serve. I pick up trash when I walk every day. I think it is good for my soul.

Want to work on prayer? Try really hard to pray every day. Not. Train yourself to be godly. Train yourself to pray. I pray the Scriptures. There are a number of books on this. I recommend the one by Donald Whitney. The idea is to pray about what you read about. Open the Bible every day. Pray about what you read about. If you are new to this, I recommend starting in John and read through to the end of Revelation. Ask a trusted friend for advice from there. Go for consistency. Try to get 100 days in a row. Set a low bar. The Navigators have a classic article on this called “Seven Minutes with God.” The idea is not to limit you to seven minutes. The idea is to emphasize that this is something you can do. You can set your alarm seven minutes early. Once you get started, good things happen from there. Set a low bar. Seven minutes. Go for ruthless consistency. Get your Bible open every day. Read and pray. Train yourself to be godly. Train yourself to pray.

One more. The Bible says that physical training is of some value. Some value. It is not of ultimate value. It is not as valuable as prayer. But it is of some value. And, I think it is just wrong that in America, church people are the fattest people in the country, and pastors lead the way. http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/24/why-going-to-church-can-make-you-fat/ The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. As my friend, Steve Reynolds, author of Bod 4 God says, “Don’t trash the temple.” Feeling guilty yet? Don’t. Train yourself to be godly. My plan is to walk every day. I started with a minimum of half a mile. I now do a minimum of 7,000 steps (About 3.5 miles) and shoot for 10,000 steps (about 5 miles). I will tell you, I have never felt better. It turns out that God’s plan is a good one. When we do what God says, we feel better. Don’t feel guilty. Train yourself to be godly.

Christian living is either easy or impossible. It is impossible if you merely try really hard. If is easy if, in the power of the Holy Spirit, you train yourself to be godly.

Note: I have an idea percolating in my soul. I would like to deliver the above content as a sermon and follow it up with a 2 hour conference after lunch where we tease out the details of how to have a Quiet Time and how to stay consistent at this centrally important discipline. Email me if interested. josh@joshhunt.com