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    Soul Keeping Bible Study Guide: Caring for the Most Important Part of You
    Soul Keeping Bible Study Guide: Caring for the Most Important Part of You
    Soul Keeping Bible Study Guide: Caring for the Most Important Part of You
    Ebook136 pages1 hour

    Soul Keeping Bible Study Guide: Caring for the Most Important Part of You

    By John Ortberg

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    About this ebook

    In Soul Keeping, John Ortberg helps Christians rediscover their soul—the best connection to God there is—and find out why it’s hurting and why neglecting it has set so many believers so far back spiritually.

    In this six-session video-based small group Bible study (DVD/digital video sold separately), Ortberg shows that caring for your soul is necessary for your Christian life. John shows participants what your soul is, why it is important, how to assess your soul’s health, and how to care for it so that we can have a meaningful and beautiful life with God and others.

    When you nurture your soul your life in this world will come to make sense again; you can find your way back to God from hopelessness, depression, relationship struggles, and a lack of fulfillment. Your soul’s resting place is in God, and John Ortberg wants to take participants to that home. 

    Sessions include:

    1. What Is the Soul?
    2. The Struggle of the Soul
    3. What the Soul Needs
    4. The Practice of Grace
    5. The Practice of Gratitude
    6. The Practice of Growth

    Designed for use with Soul Keeping Video Study (sold separately).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateApr 22, 2014
    ISBN9780310691303
    Soul Keeping Bible Study Guide: Caring for the Most Important Part of You
    Author

    John Ortberg

    John Ortberg is the senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (MPPC) in the San Francisco Bay Area. His bestselling books include Soul Keeping, Who Is This Man?, and If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. John teaches around the world at conferences and churches, writes articles for Christianity Today and Leadership Journal, and is on the board of the Dallas Willard Center and Fuller Seminary. He has preached sermons on Abraham Lincoln, The LEGO Movie, and The Gospel According to Les Miserables. John and his wife Nancy enjoy spending time with their three adult children, dog Baxter, and surfing the Pacific. You can follow John on twitter @johnortberg or check out the latest news/blogs on his website at www.johnortberg.com.

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      Book preview

      Soul Keeping Bible Study Guide - John Ortberg

      HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

      Group Size

      The Soul Keeping video study is designed to be experienced in a group setting such as a Bible study, Sunday school class, or any small group gathering. To ensure everyone has enough time to participate in discussions, it is recommended that large groups break up into smaller groups of four to six people each.

      Materials Needed

      Each participant should have his or her own study guide, which includes notes for video segments, directions for activities and discussion questions, as well as personal studies to deepen learning between sessions.

      Timing

      The time notations — for example (25 minutes) — indicate the actual time of video segments and the suggested times for each activity or discussion. For example:

      Individual Activity:

      What I Want to Remember (2 minutes)

      Adhering to the suggested times will enable you to complete each session in ninety minutes. If you have just one hour for your meeting, you will need to choose fewer questions for discussion. You may also opt to devote two meetings rather than one to each session. In addition to allowing discussions to be more spacious, this has the added advantage of allowing group members to read related chapters in the Soul Keeping book and to complete the personal study between meetings. In the second meeting, devote the time allotted for watching the video to discussing group members’ insights and questions from their reading and personal study.

      Group Practice

      Each session ends with a suggested application activity for group members to complete between sessions. Although the activity is completed outside of the group meeting, it’s a good idea to read through the group practice before concluding the meeting to clarify any questions and to make sure everyone is on board.

      Facilitation

      Each group should appoint a facilitator who is responsible for starting the video and for keeping track of time during discussions and activities. Facilitators may also read questions aloud and monitor discussions, prompting participants to respond and ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to participate.

      Personal Studies

      Maximize the impact of the curriculum with additional study between group sessions. Every personal study includes reflection questions as well as a Bible study and a guided prayer activity based on a psalm. You’ll get the most out of the study by setting aside about thirty minutes between sessions for personal study, as well as additional time to complete the group practice activity.

      Ebook Instructions

      In this ebook edition, please use your device’s note-taking function to record your thoughts wherever you see the bracketed instructions [Your Notes] or [Your Response]. Use your device’s highlighting function to record your response whenever you are asked to checkmark, circle, underline, or otherwise indicate your answer(s).

      SESSION 1

      WHAT IS THE SOUL?

      Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his kingdom, including nature; and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream. Therefore we are in harmony with God, reality, and the rest of human nature and nature at large.

      DALLAS WILLARD, RENOVATION OF THE HEART

      Welcome!

      Welcome to Session 1 of Soul Keeping. Each of the six sessions in this study is designed to be completed in ninety minutes. If you have just one hour for your meeting, you will need to choose fewer questions for your discussion. You may also opt to devote two meetings rather than one to each session.

      If this is your first time together as a group, take a moment to introduce yourselves to each other before watching the video. Then let’s begin!

      Video:

      What Is the Soul? (25 minutes)

      Play the video segment for Session 1. As you watch, use the outline provided to follow along or to take additional notes on anything that stands out to you.

      Notes

      The Parable of the Keeper of the Stream

      [Your Notes]

      Questions about the human soul:

      What is it?

      What does it consist of?

      Why does it matter, if it does matter?

      Is it doing okay?

      All of us have an outer life and an inner life.

      My outer life is the public, visible me — my accomplishments, my work, my reputation.

      My inner life is largely invisible. It’s where my secret thoughts, hopes, and wishes live.

      [Your Notes]

      What matters most, what marks your existence, the really deep reason why human life matters so much, is because of this tiny, fragile, vulnerable, precious thing about you called your soul. You are not just a self; you are a soul. You are a soul made by God, made for God, and made to need God, made to run on God. Which means that you are not made to be self-sufficient (Dallas Willard).

      [Your Notes]

      The self is not the soul.

      In the twentieth century, we replaced community, society, church, and faith with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning.

      We’ve replaced all these larger entities with the self.

      [Your Notes]

      The self is a stand-alone, do-it-yourself unit, while the soul reminds us we are not made for ourselves or by ourselves. The soul always exists before God.

      [Your Notes]

      Your soul connects your thoughts, your sensations, your emotions, your will, and integrates them into an entire being.

      [Your Notes]

      The four parts of a human being

      Each part of a human being must be healthy and working as God intended it to, and that makes a healthy soul.

      97803106913_0012_003.jpg

      Will: The innermost circle is the will — the capacity to choose. The will is what makes you a person and not a thing. It is important but it is also extremely limited.

      [Your Notes]

      Mind: The second circle is the mind, a person’s thoughts and feelings. The mind of the sinful [person] is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace (Romans 8:6 NIV 1984).

      [Your Notes]

      Body: The third circle is the body.

      Our bodies are like our little power packs — we couldn’t be us without them. . . . But they are not the whole story. We are not just the stuff that our bodies are made of (Dallas Willard).

      [Your Notes]

      Soul: The final circle is the soul. The human soul is what integrates all of our different parts into a single person.

      [Your Notes]

      A healthy soul is an integrated soul, and an unhealthy soul is a ‘dis-integrated’ one (Dallas Willard).

      [Your Notes]

      When we’re dealing with a disintegrated soul, we have to come to grips with sin.

      [Your Notes]

      What does it mean to lose one’s soul?

      What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (Matthew 16:26).

      [Your Notes]

      What Jesus is saying is a diagnostic expression. To lose my soul means I no longer have a healthy center that organizes and guides my life.

      [Your Notes]

      You have a soul, and for you to have a soul that is healed, that is healthy, that is redeemed by God, matters more than the outcome of any circumstance in your world or your life. Your eternal destiny rests on the well-being of your soul — and only God can heal the soul.

      [Your Notes]

      What does it mean to keep one’s

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