(Edited by Tom Jones, Springfield, Missouri)
In all probability someone has shared this study guide with you immediately following your decision to die with Jesus Christ in baptism. You have just come forth from the water and all your sins have been forgiven, and there is now a new power at work in your life, the Holy Spirit of God. You were willing to “count yourself nothing” and now God has raised you up to life on a higher plane.
One of the things a disciple of Jesus learns quickly is that there is much that he or she doesn’t know or understand. You too will learn this, but it should in no way discourage you. It just means you have a lifetime of growing and developing ahead. It will never become boring. God’s love is wide and deep and long and high, and the more we grasp the better it all becomes.
This study guide is designed to help you have some direction each day for the next forty days as you start listening to the voice of God as he speaks to your whole life. Why forty days? We have picked this because that was the length of testing Jesus himself went through following his own baptism. He passed victoriously through that testing because he knew the word of God and each time Satan came, he drove him away by using the very words of the Scripture. Satan will make his attack on you. He knows you are young and more vulnerable, but God is with you, and with the weapons of righteousness in the right hand and the left you can defeat anything that would take your new life from you. Determine right now that you are going to make this a rich and powerful study. Open wide your heart and let God do with you all He wants to do. Make sure that you have a definite time and definite place reserved each day to be studying the Scriptures so you can keep hearing the Word of God. Don’t let anything or anyone keep you from this most crucial time. You will be greatly helped if you will buy a notebook to put this booklet in along with your notes.
Week One — “Dead to Self — Alive to Christ”
Week Two — “No Life Outside the Body”
Week Three — ”Go Make Disciples”
Week Four — “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”
Week Five — “Submit to Every Authority”
Week Six — “Fighting the Good Fight of Faith’
Prayer: “Father, thank you for taking our broken lives and making something beautiful out of us. May we always put ourselves in your hands to be molded and shaped by you. Use our very lives to draw many people into the Kingdom of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Through Him, Amen.”