The Multiplication Challenge by Steve Murrell & William Murrell

Author:Steve Murrell & William Murrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charisma House
Published: 2016-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

3. Personal study. The best classroom instruction and the most meaningful Sunday sermons inspire us to personal study. And that is where real life change happens. Many times, after listening to a Nomer Bernardino Genesis lecture or a Larry Caldwell Ethno-Hermeneutics class discussion, I couldn’t wait to get home to do more personal study. I wanted to be like those famous “more noble” Berean believers who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

I know it doesn’t always happen, but one of my goals as a teacher is to present lectures and to create classroom environments that provoke my students to personal study. My prayer is for classrooms to be filled with Bereans who receive “the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily.”

Almost twenty years ago, in the spirit of that eighteen-month New Covenant Church sermon series on the book of Romans, I decided to teach through the book of Mark. At the time, Victory had two Manila locations—U-Belt and Makati. I had just handed off the U-Belt congregation to my friend, Luther Mancao, so I was only responsible for the two services at Makati Sports Club. My book of Mark Sunday sermon series lasted two years. I hope it helped the congregation. I know it helped me.

Because I publicly committed to teach the whole book of Mark, I was forced to study passages that I usually skimmed over. Those two years in Mark were life-changing for me. I couldn’t wait to dig deep into Mark each week, and my personal study of the Bible went to a new level.

A few years later, our leadership team made a decision that had an even greater impact on my personal study of God’s Word. We decided that all our Victory Manila locations would synchronize their Sunday sermon series. This forced us to plan sermons months in advance and to write our sermons together in teams. Studying a topic or text with a team of serious Bible teachers forced my personal study to go even deeper.

Last week, Deborah and I were in Hawaii speaking at the International Apostolic Leadership Conference for my mentor and old friend, Emanuele Cannistraci. As always Deborah grabbed our favorite seats on the back row, where we got to meet another back-row leader, Pastor Charles Green. I had heard the legend of Charles for many years, but this was our first face-to-face meeting. As soon as I realized that he had been an avid biker most of his life, we instantly hit if off (even though he rides an American Harley and I ride a German 1200GS).

Over the three days of the conference, I noticed that Pastor Green not only had an engaging sense of humor, but he also constantly quoted Scripture. I don’t mean his speech was sprinkled with paraphrased Bible verses. I mean he quoted huge chunks of the Bible, word for word, straight from the King James Version.

During one conversation, as Pastor Green narrated

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.