The 3:16 Challenge

By Jim Tornell

Are you overwhelmed by the prospect of studying the Bible? Have you put your commitment to biblical discipleship on hold? Have you ever wanted to share a verse with a group but couldn't remember where to find the verse in the Bible? This book is designed to narrow your focus to just ten Bible verses. It explores the depths and richness of these passages and the numerous biblical themes they illustrate. The format of the book is designed to help the reader remember the verses and their principles. Hopefully, this taste of God's Word will ignite your appetite for discipleship and challenge you to partake all its delicacies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098047849

Book preview

A Lesson from Powell’s Bookstore

When believers begin the process of becoming that good and faithful servant mentioned in Matthew 25:21, they come face-to-face with a discipleship challenge that can seem overwhelming. For example, a disciple must certainly become familiar with the principles found in God’s handbook, the Bible. But finding what principles are the most important when literally everything in the Bible is important can seem daunting. The purpose of this book is to offer the reader motivation to get started and enough manageable content as to be encouraged upon its completion.

On a trip that took us through Portland, Oregon, in 2016, my wife and I stopped to visit Powell’s Books, which I believe, claims to be the largest new and used bookstore in the world. I don’t know if this claim is true or not, but you’ll certainly get no argument from me regarding the veracity of the bookstore’s claim. I remember standing in front of this multistory monument to the printed word and feeling helpless and inadequate for the task facing me.

Since my wife and I have very different tastes in reading, we agreed to go our separate ways and meet back at the entrance in an hour. I distinctly remember pausing for a moment and wondering, How am I going to navigate this monster? and How can I manage to accomplish anything worthwhile in just sixty minutes? This initially crippling feeling of inadequacy, related to my first encounter with the massive volume of resources in Powell’s, is instructive. It helps remind me how many believers can feel helpless and inadequate for the challenge of discipleship, especially in the face of all the distractions and roadblocks to spiritual growth that life presents. So what can be done?

As a high school math teacher for thirty-eight years, I learned that one very helpful problem-solving strategy is to solve simpler problems first. In other words, narrow the focus to solving more manageable problems before attacking the larger one. At Powell’s, rather than trying to become acquainted with the whole store during my sixty minutes, I limited my focus to a simpler task…finding any relatively inexpensive book written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I had heard Bonhoeffer’s name mentioned frequently by many Bible teachers but had never personally read any of the books written by this Christian war hero and martyr. With that narrower focus, I was able to locate the religious section, do an alphabetical search, and find exactly what I was hoping to find. I was waiting for my wife at the end of sixty minutes, holding my eight-dollar purchase—Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is important to note, for the purposes of this book, that in addition to this minor success, I also learned a little about the larger problem.

The 3:16 Challenge is designed to help the reader narrow his/her focus and solve the simpler task of becoming familiar with the scriptures. This study is limited to just ten Bible verses. By focusing on these few passages, my goal is to expose the reader to the richness of God’s Word and trust that to be the catalyst for beginning the bigger challenge of becoming a student or disciple of the Word, one who is intimately acquainted with our loving savior, Jesus Christ. This discipleship process never ends, but what does it look like further down the road? Perhaps an appropriate example is given in Acts 17:11, where the Berean church is praised for what it had become. "These were more fair-minded…in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were