Bible Study - God is sufficient whatever the problem

Their Problems And Ours

About these Studies

EasyEnglish Bible Studies that show that God is sufficient whatever the problem

www.easyenglish.bible

by Raymond Brown, M.A., M.Th., Ph.D.

translated into EasyEnglish by Mary Read

1 ~ Job: The Problem Of Suffering

2 ~ Moses: The Problem Of Feeling Inadequate (when someone feels the lack of necessary qualities)

3 ~ Caleb: The Problem Of Fear

4 ~ Samson: The Problem Of Being Worldly (to have the same attitudes and behaviour as the people of the world)

5 ~ David: The Problem Of Slander (when people say evil things that are false against someone)

6 ~ Jehoshaphat: The Problem Of Anxiety (to be anxious)

7 ~ Elijah: The Problem Of Depression (to feel or to be depressed)

8 ~ Jonah: The Problem Of Prejudice (when someone has strong ideas and refuses to think about anybody else's opinions)

9 ~ Isaiah: The Problem Of Guilt (to be or to feel guilty)

10 ~ Jeremiah: The Problem Of Doubt

11 ~ Ezekiel: The Problem Of Times of Trouble

12 ~ Haggai: The Problem Of Materialism (when people think that money and possessions are most important)

13 ~ Malachi: The Problem Of Indifference (when someone does not care. It may be a lack of care about life, or about other people or about the things of God)

Introduction

Paul says: ‘Everything that people wrote in the past was to teach us. They wrote those things so that we could have hope. That hope comes from the patience and strength that the Bible gives to us’ (Romans 15:4).

Here Paul suggests reasons why we should study the OT. (OT means Old Testament, the first part of the Bible, which the writers wrote before Jesus’ birth.) The OT is history. It also has stories of people's lives. These great OT stories:

Teach the mind. (Read 2 Timothy 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 10:11.)
Encourage the heart. One translation of Romans 15:4 uses this word. The OT stories encourage us. We all have times when we desire some word from God. We know that this would encourage us. It would help us in our difficulties.
Make the will strong. (Note: The will is the part of us that makes us able to choose). The Holy Spirit gives us the strength to continue when things are hard.

Jerome K. Jerome writes funny books. His most famous one is ‘Three Men in a Boat’. The man who is telling the story visits a library. He wants to know what to do about a minor illness. He finds that he seems to have 101 serious diseases! That is not the purpose of this book! Nobody will have all the problems that are in this book.

But all of us have bad times. We may have problems. We may feel sad. One trouble often leads to another too. Some of the subjects are very similar. They may go with each other. So, fear and worry may go together. But they are separate here. One situation may not be the same as the reader’s. Another one will be. There is something else important. We may not have these difficulties ourselves. But we may need to help people who do have them.

Notes

There are some Questions for Discussion or for personal thought. They are at the end of each study. The second group of questions are For More Discussion. They are for those who want to think more about the subject of the study.

There is a Word List at the end of each chapter. This gives the meanings of difficult words. These words have a * in the text.

By full permission of author

These studies were originally published by Oliphants (1969) SBN 551 00136 4 Note: It has not been possible, so far, to discover the copyright holder of this book. If this information becomes available, MissionAssist will gladly recognise the publisher fully.

EasyEnglish translation: Mary Read

Linguistic Checker: Sue Hunter

These studies are written in EasyEnglish Level B (2800 words).

May 2003

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