Ephesian Bible Study Now Available Print and Ebook

Wow! The First Bible Study is Here! And More to Come!

The first of my 10 Bible studies hot off the press is Ephesians: God’s Great Mystery Revealed: In Christ, In His Church. It’s part of my Beholding-is-Becoming series which connects people to the love of Christ through intimate, intelligent, and accessible Scripture studies using an integrated head/heart/hands rhythm with:

• 10-minute daily devotional questions (and an “express” version for those overwhelmed by life)

• Discovery sheets for deeper, personal connection with Scripture

• Concise commentary

• Guides for teachers and facilitators (email me at nancy@nancywcarroll.com for a PDF!)

You can purchase it on Amazon (or contact me at nancy@nancywcarroll.com if you want a bulk amount).

Would you add your review?

You can review Ephesians on Amazon (link here for tips on how to) and Goodreads (link here). Reviews are helpful and appreciated. If you did my Ephesians study a few years back, I’d love for you to give a review. Thanks so much.

Here’s some information about the book:

 It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Ephesians1:11 The Message

Ephesians is my heart book, where I grappled with the “believe it or not” truth of God’s love for me. This is the book where I caught the picture that it is through all of our individual puzzle pieces fitting together that we show Jesus Christ, God’s great Masterpiece, to the world. I pray that God can open the eyes of your heart to believe his love for you and his destiny for you as his beloved and royal children.

For a sneak peek, these are the chapters for the study, with the hope of soaking deeply in this amazing epistle!

Discover Your Destiny: Sons and Daughters of the King

Overview of Ephesians          Discover Your Destiny: In Christ  

Ephesians 1:1-14                     And Can It Be? (Yes!)

Ephesians 1:15-23                   Living the Unbelievably True Life

Become Who You Really Are: His “Master Pieces”

Ephesians 2:1-10                     Piece of Work or Masterpiece?

Ephesians 2:11-3:13                 God’s Great Mystery Revealed

Ephesians 3:14-21                   Living the So Much More Life

Walk Out Who You Are Together: His Beloved Children

Ephesians 4:1-16                     Time to Grow Up

Ephesians 4:17-5:21                 The Cinderella Syndrome

Ephesians 5:21-6:9                  Living the Royal Life Relationally

Stand Strong Together: Royal Warriors

Ephesians 6:10-24                   A Call to Arms and Prayer

Ephesians Summary               Living Out Loud

For those teaching it and facilitating small groups, please email me for the leader’s guide for additional notes and resources.

Thanks to God and to my agent Julie Gwinn at Seymour Agency and to Brian Kannard with Donelson Press! And to all of you who kept asking me for these studies. AGOG! All by the Grace of God. All to the Glory of God.

How Will We Emerge? My Turn

How will we emerge? That’s the question I’m asking myself and others in this “unprecedented” year. That’s the question I challenge you to ask yourself. There are lots of presumptions in this question:

• An acknowledgement that we’re in epic times that’s going to change our world and us.

• An optimism that there will be a “coming out on the other side” of all these global health, social justice, and political pandemics. An optimism that it will be in 2021.

• The hope that “we” will come out. Not just “me” against “you.”

• The reality that in the midst of what we have no control of, there are a few things we can control. What are the small (or big) ways you personally want to come out of this? What are you learning? What good or hard things have surfaced? How do you want your life / faith / heart / work / relationships to be different? 

If I tune into the daily news or read the statistics, that question ripples through me with uncertainty and fear. If I lay the uncontrollable “we” down, and focus on me, I can answer. I want to emerge with some “more” in a year filled with “less.”

More kind

I entered this quarantine with the mantra “Be kind to yourself.” I’ve needed to hear that on repeat. During these 10 months, I’ve lost the ability to juggle more than a few things a week. And I don’t need my inner critic berating me for that.

These months exposed that I live in a system which benefits me at the expense of others. It’s revealed that I’m all for you doing well as long as it doesn’t affect my bank account or my children’s future.  I pray I emerge more generous and willing to welcome others to share in my privilege.

As conflicts and divisions increased this year, especially in the church and among family and friends, my mantra shortened to “Be kind.” I want to emerge, by the grace of God, without breaking relationships or avoiding people who believe differently than I do. In a world where so many are loudly “right,” how can I quietly love?

More resilient

My physical and mental fall-apart accelerated in lockdown. I damaged my knee, fractured my tooth, had a scary reaction to wasp stings, gained some of the infamous pandemic pounds, and slid into the gray jello of depression. Courage is choosing to keep coming back even if I’m three steps further behind each time, (hobbling, swollen, with a snaggle-tooth smile). This pandemic has made me accept the fact I’m not going to win any races, but I want to keep stumbling forward, even if I could be hired as an extra in a zombie movie.

More grateful

The small-big things this year fill me with thankful wonder: That in this quarantine our kids are neither toddlers nor teens. (My prayers for all the parents and teachers in the thick of it.) That our son spent time with us as he worked remotely. That my 88-year-old mom has been safe. For a camera and how it slows me down to see the beauty around me. For walks with my husband and our dog, both who still like me after lockdown. For a safe neighborhood to walk in and a home to return to—a home with electricity, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and two-ply toilet paper. For fresh food in the stores and too many good books to read and listen to. For a future with in-person concerts, spontaneous unmasked get-togethers, and worship services where we can sit side by side and “sing loudly (and in my case, poorly) for all to hear” without fear of spreading disease.

Thank you, Jesus, that nothing this year surprises you and good will come from what you’re doing inside of me—inside of all of us—this unprecedented season. More than anything, I want to emerge more deeply in love with you, Jesus. And to relish the reality that you love me right where I am (even if it’s huddled up with Netflix and my stash of dark chocolate peanut butter cups) in these hard and holy moments.

This Advent: Wrestling Until We Rest

No. No. No.

In the past month, we've attended too many funerals (masks and distancing making it even harder). For an 11-year-old boy who drowned in a creek. For a man who succumbed to suicide leaving a wife and three children. For a mother who died in her sleep five months pregnant. We’ve grieved for those who’ve lost family and friends to Covid-19, one who lost her brother and her twin sister. We’ve agonized with friends who stayed by their youngest daughter's side as she delivered a stillborn son.

I’m flooded with “it-should-not-be-this-way” raging shouts in my head.

No! No! No!

I keep saying “No, No, No” for friends wounded by betrayal from fellow Christian teammates. For a widow forced to face the total chaos and renovation to her home and belongings because of smoke damage. On her own. For single friends longing not to be single. For my 88-year-old mother and all those locked away in their retirement homes, wondering if it’s worth not being able to touch anyone for a year. For political tensions separating family and friends more than any medical pandemic. For all those waiting for justice, for steady employment, for a child, for healing (or at least an easing of pain), for adult children to return to faith, for peace and safety in their own homes and hearts and minds.

No. No. No.

I am grateful Jesus tells us to come to him as children, even when we’re weary, confused, hurting, “hissy-fit” children. I am grateful God will not let me go as I pummel him with my angry and fearful prayers. I am grateful I can’t pry myself away from his embrace. This truth is embedded in me from Romans 8:38-39, TPT

So now I live with the confidence that there is nothing in the universe with the power to separate us from God’s love. I’m convinced that his love will triumph over death, life’s troubles, fallen angels, or dark rulers in the heavens. There is nothing in our present or future circumstances that can weaken his love. There is no power above us or beneath us—no power that could ever be found in the universe that can distance us from God’s passionate love, which is lavished upon us through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One!

No. No. No.

That’s been my honest, wrestling prayer with God this season. I love the word “wrestle” because rest is nestled right in the middle of it.

I will wrestle until I rest. And then wrestle and rest again.

That rest isn’t found in pat answers but in the mystery and wonder of a God who is beyond my questions and tantrums. That rest isn’t in my understanding, but in a God who understands and loves me. His answer is in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

In this Advent season, I am meditating on Luke 1, on Mary’s wrestling  with “how will this be?” releasing into the rest of “let it be to me according to your word.”  I think about Mary’s yes in a No! No! No! world

Her yes to not be afraid. Her yes to receiving God’s favor and grace. Her yes to being overshadowed by God’s power. Her yes to his word and will. Her yes to the impossible. Her yes to bearing greatness. Her yes to magnify the Lord and rejoice in God her Savior as she births the son destined to die.

In this dark, waiting-for-his-return Advent season, I long for Jesus to come and change all the “no’s” of this broken, painful, not-right world into that glorious final “YES!” of making all things as they should be.

Rest. Rest. Rest.

If you’re a wrestler like me, I pray Psalm 131 comforts you. It takes a lot of squalling and squirming before I settle down and rest, quieted, my soul humbled in his presence. I pray in this hard season, you will find rest and contentment in his presence.

Lord, my heart is meek before you.
I don’t consider myself better than others.
I’m content to not pursue matters that are over my head—
such as your complex mysteries and wonders—
that I’m not yet ready to understand.
I am humbled and quieted in your presence.
Like a contented child who rests on its mother’s lap,
I’m your resting child and my soul is content in you.
O people of God, your time has come to quietly trust,
waiting upon the Lord now and forever.
Psalm 131, TPT

Wait. Wait. Wait.

As we long for things to be made right and for Jesus' return this Advent, as we wrestle to come to the point of surrender of “Let it be to me,” may we quietly trust and "Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always!"(Ps. 131:3b, MSG)

Recalibrating Practices: Spiritual Life Map

Do you remember life before GPS? I do.

Unfolding (and ripping) the huge paper map, turning it upside down to reorient myself, hesitantly saying, “I think you’ll need to turn here. No wait. . . . go back . . . “ Rustle more with the map. Hear tension in Bill’s voice, “Dear, are you looking in the right place?”

Thank God for technology.

My first GPS would say “recalibrating” when I took a wrong turn and reroute me. That’s what I want spiritually—to quickly find out when I’m lost and reorient.

One of the truths which struck me as I have spent time in John 13-17, Jesus’ farewell address to his disciples, is how oriented Jesus was and how disoriented his disciples were. Jesus knew who he was, what he’d been given, where he came from, and where he was going and that his time had come. He wanted to implant that kind of spiritual life map into his followers by sending them the Holy Spirit to help them find their way home. A home in which he was preparing a room for them (John 14).

Because I can get spiritually lost and forgetful more often than most, I want to tune in more and more to my implanted GPS (God’s Prevailing Spirit). But I also love a good old paper map— a spiritual life map—a recalibrating practice that helps me remember who I am and where I’m going. I pray this exercise helps you in your spiritual journey.

Spiritual Life Map

A spiritual life map gives you a visual reminder of who and where you are, where you’re going, and how to keep re-finding your way home. This recalibrating tool shows where you’ve seen God move through the events in your life and keeps your eyes focused on the the perfect ending even if your current path is dark.

Create this map in a way best suited to your personality or wiring. Engineers and number folks may track their journeys through graphing or a chronology line (as long as they’re comfortable with non-straight lines). Artists could draw their epic movements. Writers may gather stories of disorientation and reorientation.

Start by imagining a drone looking down at the big picture of your life. Meditate on the seasons of disorientation in your life. Where have you experienced a stormy event which spun you out of the calm waters of life? Where did you land and how did you reorient as you came out of it? What did you have to let go of? What did you learn from those seasick days? What truth about God and yourself? Knowing more storms will come or you may be in one now, what foundations are essential to you?

Perhaps create a map like one you find in the Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia series, drawing out the battle scenes and dragons of your life and mark an X for where your treasure lies, what your ultimate destination is, where your “home” is.

Make sure to include these key elements in your map (and then fill in the details of where you’re currently at and your next stop on the journey):

Anchor this map with who you are: the one Jesus loves (John 13:23).

Remember your eternal purpose that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31).

Focus on your eternal destination, “Don’t worry or surrender to your fear. For you’ve believed in God, now trust and believe in me also. My Father’s house has many dwelling places. If it were otherwise, I would tell you plainly, because I go to prepare a place for you to rest. And when everything is ready, I will come back and take you to myself so that you will be where I am. (John 14:1-3 TPT)

Don’t Map Alone

Share your spiritual life map with a loved one, friend or small group so that others can ask you these “recalibrating” questions to make sure you don’t forget who you are and where you’re going. To keep refreshing your map and refocusing on Christ, consider asking and answering these questions in safe community on an ongoing basis:

• Where are you right now (emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally)?  Rate either on a scale of 1-10 or by simple adjectives or descriptors (sad, energized, joyful, disappointed, etc.)

• Where are you going (your next step or stop as well as your ultimate destination)?

•  Who do you want to be when you get there?

•  What’s blocking your way and what side roads are you taking? If you feel lost, how do you think you got there?

•  How do you need to get back on road/listen/recalibrate?

• How can you refocus on Jesus right now?

•  How can we pray?

  • For the things outside your control

  • For those things in your control 

A life map is a helpful tool for those, like me, who forget and get lost, again and again.   It is just one more way to remember who you are, whose you are, what you’ve been given, what your purpose and your ultimate (guaranteed and secure as a believer) destination is.