I’ve discovered that the guys in my high school small group love to unpack scripture. It’s one of my favorite things to do, I always want to know more and know about what circumstances were going on at the time scripture was written. It helps you to understand Paul’s letters and get more out of them when you realize most of them were written when he was in prison. For instance this week we talked about finding joy in your life and we unpacked Philippians chapter 1 and 2. Paul was in prison when he wrote Philippians and even though he was being imprisoned for spreading the gospel, he was writing about finding joy.

Once I started talking about Paul writing from prison my group had as many questions about Paul as they did scripture. It hit me that I’ve spent a lot of time on scripture but not a lot of time talking about the authors of the Bible and how God inspired them to write. So tonight I shifted gears a little and lucky for me I had just read some great commentary on Paul so I had some information to pass on and we had a great discussion about Paul. I really want my guys to leave this small group at the end of their senior year this summer and take with them a desire to dig deep into scripture, not just during hard times but all the time. When you spend time with the Bible each and every day it makes resisting temptation easier.

Tonight we reinforced that you can find joy in any circumstance when you trust God, and use whatever situation you’re in to encourage others and not get discouraged yourself. I think tonight’s lesson was as much for me as it was for my high school guys.