Microsoft Word - 2021.07.24-25 Med Moments - Eunice.docx(Message Notes and Meditation Moments for March July 24-25, 2021 – For more, go to www.summitdurango.org)
Theme: Radical Women “Eunice – Woman of Family, Faith and Grace” Weekly Memory Verse: 5 I’m reminded of your authentic faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois
and your mother Eunice. I’m sure that this faith is also inside you. –2 Timothy 1:5 Spiritual Formation or Family Activity Ideas for the Week: Research women in the Bible to discover how
God used them to share a message of love and hope. With younger children, use a Bible story book and discover how many stories of women are told. With older kids, use a concordance or the Internet to explore the stories of women. You may also want to discover how many names of women are mentioned whose stories are not told. Read a few of the stories and describe the qualities of the women mentioned. Discuss what their stories teach us about God. Think of the women in your life today and compare Biblical women with them. Write a note to a woman who displays God-like qualities or radical faith and thank her for sharing her faith. As a family, commit to praying for the special women in your life.
Monday, July 26 – Read 2 Timothy 1:3-7. Paul the apostle was not a father, as far as we know, but he seems to have formed an almost fatherly connection with Timothy, a gifted younger protégé. (You can read about their first meeting in Acts 16:1-3.) The apostle expressed gratitude for Timothy’s godly grandmother and mother, who had shaped Timothy’s faith. Now Timothy was leading a church on his own, carrying on the faith he’d learned from his family and his apostolic mentor.
In what ways, if any, have your mother, grandmother and other adult mentors encouraged you to value and use your God-given strengths? In what ways have they shaped your life? How can you mentor and encourage those who are younger than you are? Ask God to show you someone you can encourage and uplift today.
In what ways, if any, have your mother, grandmother and other adult mentors encouraged you to value and use your God-given strengths? In what ways have they shaped your life? How can you mentor and encourage those who are younger than you are? Ask God to show you someone you can encourage and uplift today.
Prayer: Lord God, thank you for your work in the lives of Lois and Eunice, who influenced young Timothy to become your devoted servant. Help me, like them, to make a difference in younger lives. Amen.
Tuesday, July 27 – Read 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5. Remember that the apostle Paul compared his love for the Christians in Thessalonica to a nursing mother’s (1 Thessalonians 2:7) as well as a loving father’s (1 Thessalonians 2:11). Having faced first-hand the kind of violence the message of Jesus aroused, he felt concern like a good parent about whether their faith could withstand those pressures. A form of the word faithfulness appears five times in this chapter alone (1 Thessalonians 3:2, 5, 6, 7, 10).”
(Message Notes and Meditation Moments for July 24-25, 2021 – For more, go to www.summitdurango.org)
Scholar William Barclay noted a major part of Timothy’s visit: “When Paul sent Timothy to Thessalonica it was not nearly so much to inspect the Church there as it was to help it. It should be the great aim of every parent, every teacher and every preacher, not so much to criticize and condemn those in his charge for their faults and mistakes but to save them from these faults and mistakes.” We can guess that Timoth’s mother Eunice impacted his ability to offer this kind of grace, given that his earthly father was a Greek. To whom God has sent you with a mission “to strengthen and encourage”?
Don’t overlook the fact that when Paul sent Timothy to Thessalonica, that meant Paul had to “stay on in Athens by ourselves.” Paul did not have a large “entourage” of supportive friends and co- workers. Sending Timothy required the selfless choice to stay alone in a strange, potentially hostile city. In what ways can you give up some of your personal comfort or convenience (as good mothers do regularly) to bless another person or group of people?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, I want to be faithful, and I want to help others I care about be faithful. Please guide me to be effective in both of those activities. Amen.
Wednesday, July 28 – Read 2 Timothy 3:10-17. The Hebrew Scriptures shaped the life of the apostle Paul’s young friend Timothy and his mother Eunice, as they did Paul’s ( see Acts 18:1-3, 2 Timothy 1:5). In his farewell letter, Paul succinctly summarized for Timothy the purposes he saw the Bible serving in a Christian’s life. The Scriptures, he said, would continue to shape Timothy’s character and direct him to God. (He did not say they would answer all Timothy’s historical, scientific, or financial questions.) The Bible’s purpose is to tell the story of God’s dealings with humans and shape our interaction with God.
Article 5 of the United Methodist Articles of Religion, which date back to church founder John Wesley, say, “The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.” (To read article 5, or the whole document, click here.) That echoed Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 3:15. What parts of the Bible’s story played the biggest role in leading you to Christ and salvation by his grace? Have you found examples in your Bible reading that seem NOT to advance that purpose?
Paul said that when we read the Bible correctly, “the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.” Have you ever seen the Bible used in ways that provoke bad results such as tension, fear, guilt or hatred? What keys have you found that make your Bible reading a time with God that equips you to do everything that is good?
Prayer: O God, master, and guide, I need your help today and every day as I read the Bible. Equip me more and more each day to be your physical presence in my world. Amen.
Thursday, July 29 – Read Acts 14:11-22. When the apostle Paul preached about Jesus in a city called Lystra, where Eunice and Timothy lived, his enemies took extreme action. “They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing he was dead.” Luke (who wrote Acts) didn’t explain how it happened, but wrote, “When the disciples surrounded him, he got up and entered the city again.” He didn’t pack up and go home but went on to the city of Derbe to preach. Then, going home, he amazingly went back to Lystra as well as other cities, encouraging the Christian converts in each city.
Paul and his friend Barnabas didn’t tell their converts (even in Lystra, where things had gotten especially violent), “Lay low, keep quiet about your faith and stay out of trouble.” Luke wrote that their message was, “If we are to enter God’s kingdom, we must pass through many troubles.” And they were echoing Jesus' message to his followers (see John 16:1-4, 31-33). How can it increase your resilience to know that difficulties are not unexpected, but part of the journey of faith? How do you think this helped Eunice and Timothy as they lived in the middle of this Greek culture?
At first the people of Lystra were ready to worship Paul and Barnabas as Greek gods come to earth. The apostles’ reaction was, “People, what are you doing? We are humans too, just like you! We are
(Message Notes and Meditation Moments for July 24-25, 2021 – For more, go to www.summitdurango.org)
proclaiming the good news to you: turn to the living God.” Sometimes we talk about facing a temptation to “play God.” How can remembering that we are humans telling people about the living God make us more resilient than if we try to fill a role we aren’t capable of filling?
Prayer: Lord God, keep me humble about my own standing, yet full of courage to bear witness to your grace and glory. Amen.
Friday, July 30 – Read Luke 10:38-42, Galatians 3:26-29. Jesus treated women as—well, people. Most rabbis thought women couldn’t learn and wouldn’t teach them. Dorothy Sayers, the first woman to earn an Oxford degree (with highest honors), was a devoted Christ follower. She called Jesus, “a prophet and teacher who never nagged at [women]; never flattered or coaxed or patronized…who rebuked without [demeaning] and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them…who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend.” In Galatians, Paul followed Jesus. He boldly wrote that, in Christ, old divisions between male and female no longer applied.
Jesus teaching Mary may seem normal to us. In his day, it was most unusual. It was not an isolated incident, either (see Luke 8:1-3, Matthew 27:55-56, and women as the first resurrection witnesses, as in Luke 24:10-11). How does Jesus’ model speak to attitudes and actions that still undervalue (and often underpay) women in homes, workplaces, or other settings?
Paul wrote some things (see 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-15) that sound troublingly antifemale. His cultural setting likely shaped his words, but those passages seem to speak to limited church or city issues. On the other hand, Galatians 3:28 was a sweeping view of how Christ changed human relationships (see also Romans 16:1-3, 7, where Paul named women as valued ministry partners). In what ways have you seen the church live out Galatians 3:28? Where do you, or the Christian community, still need to grow in fully living this out?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, we’re “enlightened,” but we still too often hear jokes about women’s driving or emotionalism. Guide me to discern and live beyond any gender labels that my heart still harbors. Amen.
Saturday, July 31 – Read 1 Timothy 1:5-7 again. Paul likely met Timothy’s mother Eunice and grandmother Lois on his first visit to Lystra (see Acts 14:6-20) and won them to Christ. Young Timothy had a strong faith heritage from those two women. When Paul returned to Lystra a few years later, he took Timothy with him on his second missionary journey we read about in Acts 16:1-5. Unlike many converts, Timothy didn’t have to “unlearn” pagan habits of thought and worship, but he did know them as his father was a Gentile Roman. His Jewish heritage and faith instilled in him by his mother Eunice no doubt made his strong relationship learning from and following Paul easier.
How did Paul’s words in verse 3 show that he saw his Christian life as a fulfillment of the Hebrew faith in which he and Timothy began, not as a rejection of it? How did Paul link his heritage of faith with Timothy’s family heritage of following God? Who, whether a blood relative or other person, has played a role like Lois and Eunice in your spiritual life?
In Paul’s day, the Roman emperors had begun to claim to be a god. Most Romans thought anyone who followed a different Lord (like Jesus) was not only a fool. We still have documents where they called Christians, “atheists”, but an enemy of the Empire. Facing that, would you be able to answer verse 8’s call to “not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord”? How can you be unashamed of Jesus in the world of 2021?