Building a Christ-Centered Home: The Journey Study Series

By Billy Graham

"You will only make this journey once.  What kind of journey will it be?"

 A challenge of family living is that we not only face our own problems but we must also deal with the trails of those we love.  How do we keep our faith strong and allow God to live through us?  The health of our faith is connected closely to the spiritual health of our families.   Building a Christ-Centered Home teaches how to invest time wisely in the people and things that matter.  The strength of your family's commitment to spiritual life and faith can do much to enable growing together.  As we journey through life, with God's strength, we can become the people and the families He intended us to be. The Journey Study Series is based on Billy Graham's best-selling book The journey, the culmination of lifetime of spiritual insight and ministry experience.  Each chapter explores the joys, triumphs, and conflicts we all encounter on our journey through life.

• Use for self-study or shared experiences in small groups
• six weeks of lessons
• sidebars offer a scriptural journey through God's word
• questions for starting group discussions
• insight-filled scripture passages to study

Each chapter includes thought-provoking questions, commentary, Scriptures, and insights to help you on life's journey.  Each lesson teaches the secret of walking with God on life's path.  Understanding God's truths will make life's journey easier and let Him fulfill His promise to lead you home. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Jul 15, 2007
• ISBN: 9781418584580

Billy Graham

Billy Graham (1918—2018) was known as America’s pastor and was a spiritual advisor to many US presidents, from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama. Graham preached to live audiences of nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territories. He also reached hundreds of millions more through TV, video, film, and webcasts.

Book preview

Building a

Christ-Centered

Home

The Journey Study Series

Searching for Hope

Living as a Christian

Leaving a Legacy

Dealing with Doubt

Confronting the Enemies Within

Embracing the Good News

Building a Christ-Centered

Home Learning to Pray

The Facilitator’s Guide

Building a

Christ-Centered

Home

A Thomas Nelson Study Series

Based on The Journey

by

BILLY GRAHAM

BldgChristCntredHome_TXT_0003_001

© 2007 by Billy Graham Literary Trust

Additional material written by Terry Hadaway

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [e-mail].

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Building a Christ-Centered Home: A Thomas Nelson Study Series Based on The Journey by Billy Graham

ISBN-13: 978-1-4185-1768-7

ISBN-10: 1-4185-1768-2

Printed in the United States of America

07 08 09 10 11 RRD 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

1. One Day at a Time

2. Forks in the Road

3. For Better or for Worse

4. Being a Family

5. Broken Dreams

6. Preventive Medicine

Notes

1

One Day

at a

Time

TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS STUDY GUIDE, READ pages 227–236 of The Journey.

Many things can disrupt our journey through life if we aren’t careful. Life is full of daily challenges and minor annoyances. And unless we take measure to prevent it, they will smother our faith.

BILLY GRAHAM

The Journey

THINK ABOUT IT

I determined never to stop until I had come to the end and achieved my purpose.

—DAVID LIVINGSTONE¹

Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

—HEBREWS 12:1

A college student once quipped that he just wanted to get through one day without having a major life event take place. Maybe you can echo his sentiments. Life seems to come at us faster than we like. From nagging aches and pains to major catastrophes, none of us is immune to the small and large problems of life.

Occasionally, someone will get the idea that a believer’s life will be free of problems. That’s not true. Believers do have the advantage of God’s presence when dealing with problems, but the problems persist. Some even argue that Satan’s attacks on believers may cause them to experience more problems than non-believers.

REWIND

Think back over the past twenty-four hours and list the problems you have encountered.

________________________________________________

________________________________________________

________________________________________________

What has been the overall spiritual effect of these problems?

____ I have been made spiritually stronger.

____ I have been made spiritually weaker.

____ The problems had no spiritual effect.

____ I haven’t thought about it.

One of the challenges of living in a family is that the issues demanding our attention seem to multiply. Not only do we get to handle the problems we face, but we also face the problems of our family members. If we aren’t careful, the pressures of life will suffocate our faith and we’ll find ourselves wondering what happened.

JOURNEY THROUGH GOD’S WORD

What does the Bible mean when it refers to worldliness? It has to do with the concept of the world and its effect on our spiritual lives. The world is used to describe the spirit of evil that permeates the culture in which we live. In the writings of John, the world is painted in a particularly negative light.

People who are governed by the world lack the ability to understand the significance of the cross and