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Notes and Meditation Moments for March July 24-25, 2021 – For more,
go to www.summitdurango.org)
Theme: Radical Women “Eunice – Woman of Family, Faith and Grace”
Weekly Memory Verse: 5 I’m reminded of your authentic faith, which
first lived in your grandmother Lois
and your mother Eunice. I’m sure that this faith is also inside
you. –2 Timothy 1:5 Spiritual Formation or Family Activity Ideas
for the Week: Research women in the Bible to discover how
God used them to share a message of love and hope. With younger
children, use a Bible story book and discover how many stories of
women are told. With older kids, use a concordance or the Internet
to explore the stories of women. You may also want to discover how
many names of women are mentioned whose stories are not told. Read
a few of the stories and describe the qualities of the women
mentioned. Discuss what their stories teach us about God. Think of
the women in your life today and compare Biblical women with them.
Write a note to a woman who displays God-like qualities or radical
faith and thank her for sharing her faith. As a family, commit to
praying for the special women in your life.
Monday, July 26 – Read 2 Timothy 1:3-7. Paul the apostle was not a
father, as far as we know, but he seems to have formed an almost
fatherly connection with Timothy, a gifted younger protégé. (You
can read about their first meeting in Acts 16:1-3.) The apostle
expressed gratitude for Timothy’s godly grandmother and mother, who
had shaped Timothy’s faith. Now Timothy was leading a church on his
own, carrying on the faith he’d learned from his family and his
apostolic mentor.
In what ways, if any, have your mother, grandmother and other adult
mentors encouraged you to value and use your God-given strengths?
In what ways have they shaped your life? How can you mentor and
encourage those who are younger than you are? Ask God to show you
someone you can encourage and uplift today.
In what ways, if any, have your mother, grandmother and other adult
mentors encouraged you to value and use your God-given strengths?
In what ways have they shaped your life? How can you mentor and
encourage those who are younger than you are? Ask God to show you
someone you can encourage and uplift today.
Prayer: Lord God, thank you for your work in the lives of Lois and
Eunice, who influenced young Timothy to become your devoted
servant. Help me, like them, to make a difference in younger lives.
Amen.
Tuesday, July 27 – Read 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5. Remember that the
apostle Paul compared his love for the Christians in Thessalonica
to a nursing mother’s (1 Thessalonians 2:7) as well as a loving
father’s (1 Thessalonians 2:11). Having faced first-hand the kind
of violence the message of Jesus aroused, he felt concern like a
good parent about whether their faith could withstand those
pressures. A form of the word faithfulness appears five times in
this chapter alone (1 Thessalonians 3:2, 5, 6, 7, 10).”
(Message Notes and Meditation Moments for July 24-25, 2021 – For
more, go to www.summitdurango.org)
Scholar William Barclay noted a major part of Timothy’s visit:
“When Paul sent Timothy to Thessalonica it was not nearly so much
to inspect the Church there as it was to help it. It should be the
great aim of every parent, every teacher and every preacher, not so
much to criticize and condemn those in his charge for their faults
and mistakes but to save them from these faults and mistakes.” We
can guess that Timoth’s mother Eunice impacted his ability to offer
this kind of grace, given that his earthly father was a Greek. To
whom God has sent you with a mission “to strengthen and
encourage”?
Don’t overlook the fact that when Paul sent Timothy to
Thessalonica, that meant Paul had to “stay on in Athens by
ourselves.” Paul did not have a large “entourage” of supportive
friends and co- workers. Sending Timothy required the selfless
choice to stay alone in a strange, potentially hostile city. In
what ways can you give up some of your personal comfort or
convenience (as good mothers do regularly) to bless another person
or group of people?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, I want to be faithful, and I want to help
others I care about be faithful. Please guide me to be effective in
both of those activities. Amen.
Wednesday, July 28 – Read 2 Timothy 3:10-17. The Hebrew Scriptures
shaped the life of the apostle Paul’s young friend Timothy and his
mother Eunice, as they did Paul’s ( see Acts 18:1-3, 2 Timothy
1:5). In his farewell letter, Paul succinctly summarized for
Timothy the purposes he saw the Bible serving in a Christian’s
life. The Scriptures, he said, would continue to shape Timothy’s
character and direct him to God. (He did not say they would answer
all Timothy’s historical, scientific, or financial questions.) The
Bible’s purpose is to tell the story of God’s dealings with humans
and shape our interaction with God.
Article 5 of the United Methodist Articles of Religion, which date
back to church founder John Wesley, say, “The Holy Scripture
containeth all things necessary to salvation.” (To read article 5,
or the whole document, click here.) That echoed Paul’s words in 2
Timothy 3:15. What parts of the Bible’s story played the biggest
role in leading you to Christ and salvation by his grace? Have you
found examples in your Bible reading that seem NOT to advance that
purpose?
Paul said that when we read the Bible correctly, “the person who
belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.” Have
you ever seen the Bible used in ways that provoke bad results such
as tension, fear, guilt or hatred? What keys have you found that
make your Bible reading a time with God that equips you to do
everything that is good?
Prayer: O God, master, and guide, I need your help today and every
day as I read the Bible. Equip me more and more each day to be your
physical presence in my world. Amen.
Thursday, July 29 – Read Acts 14:11-22. When the apostle Paul
preached about Jesus in a city called Lystra, where Eunice and
Timothy lived, his enemies took extreme action. “They stoned Paul
and dragged him out of the city, supposing he was dead.” Luke (who
wrote Acts) didn’t explain how it happened, but wrote, “When the
disciples surrounded him, he got up and entered the city again.” He
didn’t pack up and go home but went on to the city of Derbe to
preach. Then, going home, he amazingly went back to Lystra as well
as other cities, encouraging the Christian converts in each
city.
Paul and his friend Barnabas didn’t tell their converts (even in
Lystra, where things had gotten especially violent), “Lay low, keep
quiet about your faith and stay out of trouble.” Luke wrote that
their message was, “If we are to enter God’s kingdom, we must pass
through many troubles.” And they were echoing Jesus' message to his
followers (see John 16:1-4, 31-33). How can it increase your
resilience to know that difficulties are not unexpected, but part
of the journey of faith? How do you think this helped Eunice and
Timothy as they lived in the middle of this Greek culture?
At first the people of Lystra were ready to worship Paul and
Barnabas as Greek gods come to earth. The apostles’ reaction was,
“People, what are you doing? We are humans too, just like you! We
are
(Message Notes and Meditation Moments for July 24-25, 2021 – For
more, go to www.summitdurango.org)
proclaiming the good news to you: turn to the living God.”
Sometimes we talk about facing a temptation to “play God.” How can
remembering that we are humans telling people about the living God
make us more resilient than if we try to fill a role we aren’t
capable of filling?
Prayer: Lord God, keep me humble about my own standing, yet full of
courage to bear witness to your grace and glory. Amen.
Friday, July 30 – Read Luke 10:38-42, Galatians 3:26-29. Jesus
treated women as—well, people. Most rabbis thought women couldn’t
learn and wouldn’t teach them. Dorothy Sayers, the first woman to
earn an Oxford degree (with highest honors), was a devoted Christ
follower. She called Jesus, “a prophet and teacher who never nagged
at [women]; never flattered or coaxed or patronized…who rebuked
without [demeaning] and praised without condescension; who took
their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their
sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at
them…who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend.”
In Galatians, Paul followed Jesus. He boldly wrote that, in Christ,
old divisions between male and female no longer applied.
Jesus teaching Mary may seem normal to us. In his day, it was most
unusual. It was not an isolated incident, either (see Luke 8:1-3,
Matthew 27:55-56, and women as the first resurrection witnesses, as
in Luke 24:10-11). How does Jesus’ model speak to attitudes and
actions that still undervalue (and often underpay) women in homes,
workplaces, or other settings?
Paul wrote some things (see 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Timothy
2:11-15) that sound troublingly antifemale. His cultural setting
likely shaped his words, but those passages seem to speak to
limited church or city issues. On the other hand, Galatians 3:28
was a sweeping view of how Christ changed human relationships (see
also Romans 16:1-3, 7, where Paul named women as valued ministry
partners). In what ways have you seen the church live out Galatians
3:28? Where do you, or the Christian community, still need to grow
in fully living this out?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, we’re “enlightened,” but we still too often
hear jokes about women’s driving or emotionalism. Guide me to
discern and live beyond any gender labels that my heart still
harbors. Amen.
Saturday, July 31 – Read 1 Timothy 1:5-7 again. Paul likely met
Timothy’s mother Eunice and grandmother Lois on his first visit to
Lystra (see Acts 14:6-20) and won them to Christ. Young Timothy had
a strong faith heritage from those two women. When Paul returned to
Lystra a few years later, he took Timothy with him on his second
missionary journey we read about in Acts 16:1-5. Unlike many
converts, Timothy didn’t have to “unlearn” pagan habits of thought
and worship, but he did know them as his father was a Gentile
Roman. His Jewish heritage and faith instilled in him by his mother
Eunice no doubt made his strong relationship learning from and
following Paul easier.
How did Paul’s words in verse 3 show that he saw his Christian life
as a fulfillment of the Hebrew faith in which he and Timothy began,
not as a rejection of it? How did Paul link his heritage of faith
with Timothy’s family heritage of following God? Who, whether a
blood relative or other person, has played a role like Lois and
Eunice in your spiritual life?
In Paul’s day, the Roman emperors had begun to claim to be a god.
Most Romans thought anyone who followed a different Lord (like
Jesus) was not only a fool. We still have documents where they
called Christians, “atheists”, but an enemy of the Empire. Facing
that, would you be able to answer verse 8’s call to “not be ashamed
of the testimony about our Lord”? How can you be unashamed of Jesus
in the world of 2021?