This week we talked about the relief that we so often find as we return from our wandering. Ironically, it’s not always in the form of the answers we thought we needed.

This week we discussed the wanderer's return trip. And much to the wanderer's relief, though we thought we'd left Him, the Father had never left us.

A recording of Cody Andras's teaching on Lesson 1 of the book of Ruth. About our propensity to wander and God's faithfulness to draw us back. (Oct. 9, 2018)

A recording of Cody Andras's Introductory teaching of Ruth. We set up the background of why we do Bible study and the historical context of the book of Ruth.

Celebration doesn't sound like a discipline, but it is! God gave us this one life, and He called us to actually live it and to enjoy it, and to find our joy in Him in the midst of all our days.

In this lesson, we consider the woman with the alabaster jar (Luke 7), who

pours out her treasure on the feet of Christ, and the bentover woman (Luke

13), whom the Lord sees and calls to Himself in the synagogue. In each

episode, we find an invitation to worship, to bring our time and our

resources and our very lives, to the feet of Jesus. We approach to find Him

worthy, and when we do, we worship in response.

We made it to the lesson on fasting. We all knew it had to be coming! This week, we will hear Jesus' invitation to fast--not to prove anything or to earn anything but in order to intentionally empty our hands to reach more quickly for His.

This week we are talking about confession. We will look at the heart of Jesus as we see it in His encounters with the bleeding woman and with the woman at the well. We will consider His invitation not only to confess our sins but also to confess our doubts and our hurts and our hesitations--to "tell Him the whole truth" (Mark 5:33).

This week, we are talking about the gift and discipline of engaging with and living in the kind of community that God intends. We will look into the lives and friendships of Mary and Elizabeth and of Mary and Martha and consider the way that the Lord met them in the midst of their community.

This week we consider our invitation to solitude--not just during seasons when we find ourselves alone, but during every season. We are invited into an intimate relationship with the Lord, invited, as Mary the Mother of Jesus did, to ponder and to treasure moments and monuments with Him. We are invited to run to Him first and to position ourselves to encounter more intimately a God who invites us into a very personal relationship with Him.