ADVENT: December 2017

Dear Class:

It’s been a wonderful Autumn, full of lessons on the Supremacy of Christ.

Now, in the church calendar, is the “Season of Waiting..”The season of Advent. I’ve often, in many church settings over 30 years, made the observation (not original to me!) that those who recognized the Christ child in the Christmas Story “were looking for Him!”

Anna, in the Luke account ~ chapter 2, is denoted as someone “who was longing and looking for the redemption of Jerusalem..” (As I age, it also isn’t lost on me that the two who recognized the baby in Luke 2 were the oldest two in the entire story! )

So let’s not let the Season slip away looking around us, at the wrong things, with the wrong focus. Temporal pleasures will soon fade, but the Eternal Gifts of the Child-King will last forever.

Class resumes Jan 15, Monday evening, at 6:30, and PLEASE JOIN US for Hebrews chapter 8!

Warmly in Him

Dr Alison Littauer Brown

Teaching Director, Women of the WORD, CLT

WELCOME TO FALL~ A SEASON OF Fruitbearing

Hi Ladies

WELCOME to the study of HEBREWS..my favorite book to teach, in the 35 years I’ve been doing that! This book is centered on “Christ is Better,” and tells us ALL the way HE IS Superior to the Old Covenant, its High Priests & regulations.

He offers us a Better Hope, Covenant, and Mediator.

What about the 21st century lives we’re living in fast-paced Charlotte? What if the ANCIENT Things are the most important, & the most relevant, and the most to be valued? We’re counting on it, and the voices of “great dead guys” in the past centuries will underline our study. As A W Pink said, “in Hebrews, Christ is to be held up supreme, so that everything/one else assumes their proper place in orbit around Him.” How practical! Fall is the season of Fruit-Bearing, and we know if we “sow to the Spirit,” we will reap of harvest of righteousness, if we don’t get discouraged and give up (Galatians 6).

We meet from 6:30-8:15pm for almost 9 months of the year, beginning Sept 18 and continuing til May 7 of next year. Please join us, and let’s DIVE IN where the riches are!

SUMMER 2017 ~ “As you pass through the Dry lands, he will make it a pool of water..” Psalm 84

What a promise for this dry, hot season! The Israelites were way ahead of us, even southerners, with their desert climate. how wonderful that Adonai promised endless refreshment.

Let’s not be “out of the habit” of the WORD,  & nourishing ourselves with feeding from saints of the past~ through great reading all summer!

Below is a booklist a lot of us are working our way through!

Meanwhile STAY TUNED for a WOW MEET N’ GREET, to relaunch our FALL 2017 year (Probably 8/28 Monday Evening~ food & fellowship)

Then CLASS BEGINS 9/18/17 for HEBREWS, Mondays 6:30-8:15,  Until Mid-May, 2018. What a Journey! CHRIST IS BETTER, is the theme of this awesome book, with the best of both Old and New covenants explained and unpacked.

Also, it’s a book about RESTING IN HIM, and all of us need that message!

I pray a summer of rich refreshment in Him, no matter the “season” of your life~

Warmly

DR A

Dr Alison Littauer Brown

Teaching Director

Women of the WORD, Charlotte 

SUMMER BOOKLIST  2017

Dr Al & Women of the WORD

Tim Keller:

The Meaning of Marriage

The Reason for God

Making Sense of God (prequel?)

The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness

Best CLASSICS you might not have read:
            The Cross of Christ, John Stott.
             Humility, Andrew Murray.
              A Path Through Suffering, Elisabeth Eliot.

IF by Amy Carmichael.

The Pursuit of God, by A W Tozer.

The Cost of Discipleship, by Bonhoeffer.

The Joy of Fearing God, Jerry Bridges.

New by amazing authors:

STAND, A Call for Endurance of the Saints, Piper & Taylor

Counter Culture;  Following Him  in an Anti-Christian Age, by Platt.

You Are What you Love, by Jamie Smith.

Rejoicing in Christ, by Michael Reeves.

Onward; Engaging the Culture w/out Losing the Gospel. Al Mohler.

CLASSICS:

A W Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy.
Mere Christianity, by C S Lewis (& anything else he writes !)

The Pleasures of God, by John Piper

My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers.

Union with God, Madame Guyon.

A Seeking Heart.  By Fenelon

***After You Believe., N T Wright.

The Holiness of God, by R C Sproul.

Church History:
The Monk & the Mallet (in honor of Luther’s 500^th! 10/31) Stephen Nichols

7 men/7 women by Eric Metaxas (or Bonhoeffer****)

**Religious Affections, by Jonathan Edwards}
God’s Passion for His Glory (Piper does Edwards) J

The Life of God in the Soul of Man, by Henry Scougal (1700)

David Brainerd’s Diary. By Jonathan Edwards.

***”Textbook, Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language

**Workbooks for summer ~ Navigators, Intervarsity Press, Beth Moore ,John Stott

2017 ~ A NEW YEAR OF GRACE

We are trusting God for the new year that lies ahead of us, a “blank slate,” as it were for the unknown year, known fully to Him.

Kierkegaard (among others) said: “what we call the Journey, God calls the goal…to be more like Him, to release more to Him, to see Him more clearly in every life event.”

2016 was a year of change and growth for Women of the WORD, and we are so grateful for our new home at Good Shepherd, a to be studying the PSALMS this spring term~  the “prayer book of the Bible…”

It will be a rich time together on Monday evenings. Our texts are from Bonhoeffer and Spurgeon’s treasury about King David (3 vols!)

My prayer for the group in the year ahead is that we become more disciplined in our Prayer Life and more like HIM in our communion with the Father.

The promises to the One who meditates on the Law, day and night~ are many: “they shall be like a tree planted by streams of living water…and in whatever they do, they prosper.” Psalm 1 

Dr A 

Dr Alison Littauer Brown

Teaching Director, Women of the WORD

Charlotte