Godly Success: Success in Economics (Randy)

That brings us to this week’s question: How does God view success when it comes to the economic sphere?  A month ago, we studied the famous passage in Mark 12:13-17 where Jesus says we must “give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” We learned that the Kingdom of God is something entirely different from the one dimensional (or two dimensional if you heard Chris’s excellent lesson last week) view of politics.  Can we say the same about economics, and if so, how does it inform our behavior in the market?

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Godly Success: Justice, Love, and Politics (Chris)

Continuing the theme from February 26th, this session explores Biblical justice and love as they apply to politics and civil society.  What is God's perspective on social order and social engagement?  Using the work of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., how can we better understand and balance our role as citizens and our commitments as disciples of Christ?  Ultimately, what does Jesus us tell us about how we are to live in a fractured and fragmented world?

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Handout

Godly Success: Success in Politics (Randy)

How does God view success when it comes to the political sphere? We live in charged times, and it is difficult to know what God wants from us as we wrestle with the issues of our day. This is not new, though. The Pharisees and Herodians tried to trap Jesus by asking him politically charged questions 2000 year ago: Specifically, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" By studying the famous passage in Mark 12:13-17), we will try to make sense of how we should view and engage with politics today.

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Teacher's Notes

Godly Success: The Soul of Life (Chris)

Artificial Intelligence has been headline news, and new technology is imitating humans more closely than ever before.  Predictions abound about how A.I. will "disrupt" the world.  Lost in the fanfare is a simple but critical truth: computers have no soul.  There are essential characteristics of being human -- including faith, awe, and wonder -- that a machine never can replicate or replace.  As we continue our series on Godly Success, we consider what it means to be created in God's image.  Our model is Ruth, ancestor of Jesus.  How does her story of courage, sacrifice, and love reveal God and illustrate Godly Success?

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Godly Success: Seeking Guidance (Randy)

Answering the question, “What does God view as a successful life?” invariably leads to the twin topics of guidance and divine will. Specifically, our desire to serve God impels us to ask him for guidance on his will for our lives. But what does the Bible say about seeking God’s guidance, and how do we go about doing it? Using Psalm 25 and Ephesians 2:9-10 as our Scriptural references, we will focus on these questions and discuss the profound implications of God’s grace and Christ’s saving action on the direction we should go.

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Godly Success: God's Own Heart (King David) (Chris)

King David is one of the most important and fascinating figures in the Bible.  On the one hand, he is described as “a man after God’s own heart.”  (What more could be said of anyone!)  On the other hand, he was a serial sinner who violated multiple Commandments and made repeated mistakes in every area.  How can we understand this seeming contradiction?  Our lesson looks at an obscure but marvelous episode in David’s life (2 Samuel 9) showing his radical humility and generosity.  These traits made David beloved to God — “successful” — and placed him at the head of Jesus’ own family tree. 

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Handout

Godly Success: The Sermon Says It All (Randy)

We are in a series exploring how God defines success. Two weeks ago, we introduced the idea that we are so heavily influenced by our fallen state and the culture in which we live that we are prone to define success in secular terms: We want to be happy and fulfilled, and we expect to get there by achieving some purpose such as accumulating money, power, fame, beauty, comfort, relationships, and more. All of these are means by which we attempt to control our world, attain self-worth, and satisfy the void in our soul, but none of them can fully satisfy us, and all of them will disappoint us at some point or another.

God defines success very differently, and we are fortunate that Jesus lays out that definition in the Sermon on the Mount. There’s no place in the Bible where we get a better view into how God wants us to live our lives. But, reading the Sermon on the Mount can be devastating. Who can live up to such a standard

In this lesson, we go straight to the heart of the gospel to define how God views success and wants us to live our lives.

Listen to: The Sermon Says It All