The soul is nourished by people.
Published: Thu, 01/29/26
Updated: Thu, 01/29/26
Sessions Include:Lesson #1 Lesson #2 Lesson #3 Lesson #4 Lesson #5 Lesson #6 Lesson #7 Lesson #8 Lesson #9 Lesson #10 Lesson #11 Lesson #12 Lesson #13 Lesson #14 Lesson #15 Lesson #16 Lesson #17 Lesson #18 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #19 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #20 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #20 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #21 The Me I Want to Be / Lesson #22
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When I turned fifty, my sister Barbara brought two stacks of boxes that were four feet high. When I opened them, I found they were filled with the foods of our youth. She had brought for me all kinds of food that I had loved, that were part of life growing up in Rockford, Illinois, and that I hadn’t eaten in thirty-plus years. There was a bag of “Mrs. Fisher’s Potato Chips,” which you can only get in Rockford. These chips are just grease and fat and salt and vinegar. Fabulous! Barbara brought almond tarts with white frosting that we used to get at a Swedish bakery that, sadly, went out of business years ago. Barbara had to track down a baker and get him to teach her how to make those tarts. She also brought a box of homemade popcorn, because our grandmother used to pop popcorn in bacon grease. She would fry up bacon, pop popcorn in the bacon grease, and then throw the bacon into the popcorn. Nobody in my grandmother’s family lived to be very old—but we ate well. When I grew up, we had “Sara Lee Banana Cake,” so another box from Barbara had banana cake in it. I was a frosting guy, and Barbara was a cake girl. I would give her my cake, and she would give me her frosting. They don’t make it anymore, but there is a group of “Sara Lee junkies” online who track down these recipes and swap them. My sister went online, found the recipe, and practiced it for months. Only my sister could have gotten me those gifts. Love in a box. Our life together in food. I was struck by how much a part of my life Barbara is. For fifty years I have been loved, believed in, and called to my best self by this remarkable, slightly older woman. My sister Barbara was my first and best friend. We played “spies” together, shared secrets, and went through school, church, piano lessons, plays, college, adult life, and therapy. When she gave me that birthday food, it struck me that as the body is nourished by food, so the soul is nourished by people. John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 12–13. If you would like to explore this new study, it is available on Amazon, as well as part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking Why Study Books?My church recently transitioned to using books as curriculum in our Sunday School. The reason is simple. My life has been profoundly influenced by the reading of books. I don’t think my life has ever been changed by any curriculum piece I have ever read. Ever. I have actually surveyed a number of groups I have taught over the years, asking: Has your life ever been changed by any curriculum? The most common response is for people to laugh out loud. Our first study was the Bless book by Dave and Jon Ferguson. It is a great study on relational lifestyle evangelism. About half-way through the the study, we did a survey to help determine what we would study next. No one wanted to go back to the curriculum. Not. One. Person. The #1 choice for what to study next was a tie:
We will be studying these two books over the next year and a half or so. Here is what Amazon says about Ortberg’s book: The Me I Want to Be will help you discover spiritual vitality like never before as you learn to "live in the flow of the spirit." Why does spiritual growth seem so difficult? God's vision for your life is not just that you are saved by grace, but that you also learn to live by grace, flourishing with the Spirit flowing through you. And this book will show how God's perfect vision for you starts with a powerful promise: All those who trust in God "will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit" (Jeremiah 17:7-8). Pastor and best-selling author John Ortberg first helps gauge your spiritual health and measure the gap between where you are now and where God intends you to be. Then he provides detailed tasks and exercises to help you live in the flow of the Spirit, circumventing real-world barriers - pain and sorrow, temptations, self-doubt, sin - to flourish even in a dark and broken world. As you start living in the flow, you will feel:
God invites you to join him in crafting an abundant and joy-filled life. The Me I Want to Be shows you how to graciously accept his invitation. I have just completed a new, 22-week study of John Ortberg’s book, The Me I Want to Be that we will be using in my church. (I had previously done a 7-week study.) I have always thought that using books as a curriculum would be a good idea, and I have written a lot of book studies over the years. One of the things that actually using books as curriculum caused me to realize has to do with cost. By writing a study on every chapter of this book, instead of my previous study that had a lesson for every section, the cost drops to below what we were paying for curriculum. Better curriculum. Cheaper cost. Win. Win.
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