Guest Author Liz Curtis Higgs Completes our Back to School Survival Series: It’s Good to Learn (Part 4 of 4)
Greetings, sweet friends! I pray you’ve had the opportunity to grab onto (and not let go of) the past three posts on back-to-school survival. These survival tactics are equipping us adults to survive not only this back-to-school month, but are giving us ways to survive daily living. If you’ve missed any, here are the links to our previous three survival skills:
It is my distinct honor and privilege to turn you over to my dear friend and mentor, Liz Curtis Higgs, who will give us our fourth survival tactic. Oh, do you ever have something to look forward to!!! (www.lizcurtsihiggs.com)
Lizzie came to our Bible study this past Tuesday. She kicked off our 10-week study straight from her amazing book, It’s Good to Be Queen: Becoming as Bold, Gracious, and Wise as the Queen of Sheba. She taught us all about diving into God’s Word and the many pearls we can glean.
Tears from laughter and from His revealed Word touching our daily lives fell on many a Kleenex. Liz’ life lessons blessed all of us a thousand fold.
You’ll see our time together didn’t end with Bible study, it rolled onward and out the door for lunch. She tells it better than me. (Only for her would I try a restaurant I’d never been to before. You’ll see….)
Please give a hearty welcome to Lizzie and hear from her WHY IT’S GOOD TO LEARN….
—————HERE is Liz Curtis Higgs!!!———-
It is Good to Learn
By Liz Curtis Higgs
Gathering with a group of friends to study the Bible is the most fun a girl can have on a Tuesday (or Wednesday or Thursday) morning. Not kidding.
This is how one group does things (and does it well!).
First they eat. Then they meet. They stay parked in the Word for an hour or so, with open minds and open hearts, not to mention a good deal of laughing and crying and learning and growing. Just the best. Finally, they pray. And then they eat.
Really, is there anything not to love about a day like that?
“Facts don’t make us bold. Faith makes us bold.” ~ It’s Good to Be Queen
This week I joined Elizabeth and a dozen other delightful sisters in Christ to kick off their fall Bible study with It’s Good to Be Queen. Right. My own book. Kinda scary. I thought, What if they don’t share with one another, since I’m there in the room?
Not to worry. This was a lively bunch. They were glad to be together and glad to be in the Word. And seriously, look how cute they are!
Group dynamics are a wonder to behold, aren’t they? At every Bible study, God brings together talkers and listeners, thinkers and doers. Every person matters, and their unique perspective on the material adds to the group experience.
The best part was having one empty seat—a reminder that the Lord was with us, just as He promises: “the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6).
For chapter one, we studied a single but powerful verse:
When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard questions. 1 Kings 10:1
All of us agreed the one word that really got our attention was relationship. King Solomon of Israel didn’t merely worship the Lord—he had a relationship with Him. This surely amazed the queen of Sheba every bit as much as the king’s renowned wisdom did, since she came from a country that worshiped a hundred different deities. One could hardly have a relationship with the sun or the moon. What a concept for this pagan queen to grasp!
Her curiosity and hunger for wisdom sent her on a two-month journey across the Arabian Desert. Roughly fifteen hundred miles. On a camel. Oh my.
Sheba was bold, all right. She didn’t come to simply listen to Solomon, like other rulers of the Near East did. She came to test him, and with hard questions at that.
We kicked around some questions of our own during the discussion time. I may have written the book, but believe me, these bright women had plenty to teach me. Bible studies are less about teacher/student than they are about willing learners getting together to read, study, and encourage one another, using God’s Word as their first and foremost resource.
With Sheba’s royal boldness beating in our hearts, we took our own (much shorter) journey to the Queen of Sheba restaurant in Louisville for lunch. Really, how could we not?
The food was exotic, the fellowship was wonderful, and the opportunity to bless our server let us put our faith into action in lots of positive ways. With more visiting queens planned for the weeks ahead, Tuesdays with Elizabeth and Susan are going to be a blast!
Interested in learning more about the queen of Sheba? Here are some links that might be helpful:
Weekly Bible study blog for It’s Good to Be Queen
Free videos to enhance your study of It’s Good to Be Queen
Liz Curtis Higgs has one goal: to help women embrace the grace of God with joy and abandon. She’s the author of 32 books with 4.6 million copies in print, including Bad Girls of the Bible and her latest, It’s Good to Be Queen. Liz has also spoken at 1,700 women’s conferences in all 50 United States and 14 foreign countries, including Women of Faith, Women of Joy, and Extraordinary Women. Liz and her family are grateful to call Louisville, Kentucky home.
————————–THANK YOU, LIZ!!!——————————
Nobody says it like Liz. Truly one of her many gifts is writing which teaches us there’s nothing more important to one’s survival than being in the Word. Studying the Word. Talking about the Word. Translation: Bible study!
Liz told us her most favorite thing to do in all the world is to teach God’s Word. I can tell my Tuesday group’s next nine weeks together is going to be something spectacular indeed. Why don’t you grab some friends and try it?
‘Til next time!