Bottom Line: Dating is good but we don’t want to put all of our attention on dating alone.

1 Corinthians 6:12 (NIV) – “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.

Proverbs 25:6 (NIV) – Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among great men;

Bottom Line: When we become obsessed with relationships, we lose sight of who we are.

Judges 13:2-5 (NIV) – A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was sterile and remained childless. The angel of the LORD appeared to her and said, “You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son. Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean, because you will conceive and give birth to a son. No razor may be used on his head, because the boy is to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”

Judges 13:24-25 (NIV) – The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him, and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him.

Judges 14:1-3a (NIV) – Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. When he returned, he said to his father and mother, “I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.” His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?”

Judges 14:3b (NIV) – “Get her for me. She’s the right one for me.”

Judges 16:4-5 (NIV) – Some time later, he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah. The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, “See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver.”

Judges 16:15-16 (NIV) – “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.” With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death.

Bottom Line: Sometimes the issue isn’t what we are doing, but why we are doing it.

Galatians 2:16 (The Message) – We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

Galatians 5:6 (NIV) – For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Galatians 5:14-15 (NIV) – The entire Law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

Bottom Line: The only measure of someone’s faith in Christ is Jesus Christ.

Galatians 6:15 (NIV) – Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.

Galatians 3:26-28 (NIV) – You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Bottom Line: What Jesus did on the cross was enough to make us “in” with God.

Galatians 2:16b (NIV) – So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.

Galatians 2:16b (The Message) – We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good”.

Galatians 2:21 (The Message) – Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.

Galatians 3:2-5 (NIV) – I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?

Galatians 3:25 (NIV) – Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.

Bottom Line: Blood reminds us of the limitless love that comes from our limitless God.

Genesis 3:21 (NIV) – The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

Matthew 9:12-13 (NIV) – It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’

Matthew 26:27-28 (NIV) – “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Bottom Line: God is present in the storms of our lives because of what Jesus experienced on Good Friday.

Genesis 1:1-2 (NIV) – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Psalm 69:1-2 (NIV) – Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me.

Psalm 69:13-15 (NIV) – But I pray to you, O LORD, in the time of your favor; in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation. Rescue me from the mire, do not let me sink… Do not let the floodwaters engulf me or the depths swallow me up or the pit close its mouth over me.

Matthew 27:45-46 (NIV) – From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Romans 8:38-39 (NIV) – For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Mark 4:38-39 (NIV) – Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

Bottom Line: Jesus is the daily bread that reminds us of God’s love for us.

Matthew 26:17 (NIV) – On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”

Matthew 6:9-11 (NIV) – “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it in heaven. Give us today our daily bread.”

John 6:35 (NIV) – “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he
who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Matthew 26:26 (NIV) – “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’”

Galatians 2:19-20 (NIV) – For through the law—this being the law that he did such a good job keeping before he started following Jesus, the law that God gave to Moses—I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Proverbs 19:20 (NIV) – Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise.

Proverbs 28:26 (NIV) – He who trusts in himself is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom is kept safe.

Proverbs 24:14 (NIV) – Know also that wisdom is sweet to your soul; if you find it, there is a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.

Proverbs 28:13 (NIV) – He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

Proverbs 29:3 (NIV) – A man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father.