21 Study Guides
Bible Study & Scripture
Go deeper into God's Word with structured discussion guides. These studies help groups understand biblical books, themes, and characters with questions that connect ancient texts to modern life.
Adorned
by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth
In Adorned: Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel Together, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth takes readers deep into Titus 2:1–5 — a short but stunning passage in which the apostle Paul lays out God's vision for women discipling women. Nancy's central thesis is deceptively simple: older women are called to live out "sound doctrine" in the fabric of everyday life and to invest that life into younger women, so that the gospel itself is put on display for a watching world. The word "adorn" — from the Greek kosmeo — becomes the book's guiding image: our lives are meant to be jewelry that makes the gospel beautiful and believable. Each chapter unpacks one of the qualities Paul calls women to embody (self-control, purity, kindness, love for husband and children, and more) and shows how these virtues, lived together, become a stunning apologetic for Christ.
View Discussion GuideEven Better Than Eden
by Nancy Guthrie
Nancy Guthrie's Even Better than Eden: Nine Ways the Bible's Story Changes Everything about Your Story invites readers on a sweeping journey through the whole of Scripture to discover a stunning truth: the end of God's story is not merely a restoration of what was lost in Genesis 3, but something far more glorious. Tracing nine key themes — including the garden, the tree, the river, the bride, the family, the city, and others — Guthrie shows how each thread runs from creation through the fall, deepens through redemption, and culminates in a new creation that surpasses Eden in every way. The book's central argument is that understanding where the biblical story is headed transforms not just our theology of heaven, but our everyday lives right now. Hope, rightly understood, is not escapism — it is the most practical force in the Christian life.
View Discussion GuideDark Clouds, Deep Mercy
by Mark Vroegop
Mark Vroegop's Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy opens with a simple but countercultural claim: lament is not a failure of faith — it is an expression of it. Drawing from the psalms of lament and the book of Lamentations, Vroegop argues that the church has largely lost the art of honest, God-directed grief, and that this loss costs us dearly. When suffering arrives — a miscarriage, a broken relationship, a diagnosis, a season of spiritual darkness — we tend either to suppress our pain with forced positivity or to vent it in ways that lead away from God. Lament offers a third way: a structured, biblical practice of bringing raw sorrow before the Lord, wrestling honestly, and being carried — not to easy answers — but to deeper worship and renewed trust in his mercy.
View Discussion GuideMultiply
by Francis Chan
Multiply by Francis Chan is a practical, Scripture-saturated call to return to the Great Commission as the organizing purpose of every Christian's life. Built around Jesus's command to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:18–20), the book argues that discipleship is not a program or a curriculum — it is the normal Christian life. Chan, joined by co-author Mark Beuving and online teaching partner David Platt, walks readers through what it means to be a disciple, how to read and understand the Bible, and how to live out the core doctrines of the faith in a way that reproduces itself in others. The book is organized into five major parts: Living as a Disciple-Maker, Living in the Church, Living in the Old Testament, Living in the New Testament, and Living as the Church in the World — making it both a handbook for personal discipleship and a guide for leading others.
View Discussion GuideA Long Obedience in the Same Direction
by Eugene H. Peterson
Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction is built on a deceptively simple premise: the Christian life is not a sprint of emotional highs but a patient, steady pilgrimage. Drawing on the fifteen Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120–134) — ancient pilgrim songs sung by Israelites traveling up to Jerusalem for worship — Peterson argues that what the modern world desperately needs is disciples who resist the culture of "instant everything" and instead commit to the long, slow, faithful journey of following Jesus. The title itself is borrowed from Friedrich Nietzsche, who observed that the one thing the modern age had lost was the ability to sustain "a long obedience in the same direction." Peterson takes that phrase and plants it at the heart of Christian discipleship, showing that virtues like hope, repentance, joy, and perseverance are not feelings to be conjured but habits to be cultivated over a lifetime of worship, community, and prayer.
View Discussion GuideSeamless
by Angie Smith
Seamless by Angie Smith is a seven-session Bible study designed to give readers a panoramic view of Scripture — from Genesis to Revelation — so that the whole Bible begins to feel like one unified, connected story rather than a collection of disconnected books, rules, and characters. Angie's central thesis is that the Bible is not a random anthology but a seamless tapestry, every thread woven by God to point toward the same destination: the gospel of Jesus Christ. Whether you have grown up in church or are picking up the Bible for the first time, Seamless is designed to replace the insecurity and overwhelm many people feel about Scripture with clarity, confidence, and delight.
View Discussion GuideThe Bible Recap
by Tara-Leigh Cobble
The Bible Recap by Tara-Leigh Cobble is a 365-day companion guide to reading the entire Bible in chronological order. Rather than presenting the Bible as a disconnected collection of ancient texts, Cobble's central thesis is beautifully simple: the whole Bible — from Genesis to Revelation — is one unified story about who God is. Her daily recaps are designed not primarily to teach you facts about Scripture, but to help you see God's character more clearly on every page. Each entry ends with the same anchoring question: "Where did you see God in today's reading?" This study guide is built around that same conviction — that the goal of reading the Bible is not to master information, but to encounter the living God who reveals Himself on every page.
View Discussion GuideYou'll Get Through This
by Max Lucado
You'll Get Through This by Max Lucado is built around one of the Bible's most dramatic and hope-filled stories: the life of Joseph, son of Jacob, as told in Genesis 37–50. Joseph was thrown into a pit by his own brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, imprisoned, and forgotten — yet God never abandoned him, and what his enemies intended for evil, God turned for extraordinary good. Lucado's central thesis is captured in Genesis 50:20, the verse that anchors the entire book: what Satan intends to use to destroy us, God is already redeeming for his purposes. Whether your "pit" is financial ruin, a broken relationship, a health crisis, the loss of a job, or the grief of betrayal, Lucado argues with pastoral warmth and storytelling skill that God has a plan and a path forward designed just for you — and that you will get through this.
View Discussion GuideWomen of the Word
by Jen Wilkin
Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin is a practical, passionate guide to help Christian women study the Bible with both their minds and their hearts. Wilkin's central thesis is simple but transformative: we cannot love what we do not know. Before the Bible can change our hearts, it must inform our minds — and that requires moving beyond devotional habits that feel good in the moment but leave us biblically shallow. Wilkin identifies common pitfalls women fall into when approaching Scripture (treating it like a mirror, a magic eight ball, or a personal encouragement journal) and then offers a clear, memorable framework for deeper study built around five P's: Purpose, Perspective, Patience, Process, and Prayer. The goal is not just information, but formation — women who know God more truly because they know His Word more deeply.
View Discussion GuideGod Has a Name
by John Mark Comer
What you believe about God is the most formative belief you hold. In God Has a Name, pastor and New York Times bestselling author John Mark Comer takes readers on a careful, line-by-line journey through Exodus 34:6–8 — the moment on Mount Sinai when God reveals his own name and character to Moses. Comer's central argument is disarmingly simple: many of us are relating to a God of our own imagining rather than the God of the Bible, and that gap between our projected "God" and the real God is quietly warping our souls. The good news is that the real God — the one who has a name, Yahweh — is not just different from our distortions; he is far better. This book is an invitation to let God define himself on his own terms.
View Discussion GuideSurprised by Hope
by N.T. Wright
N. T. Wright's Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church is a paradigm-shifting work that challenges one of the most widespread assumptions in popular Christianity: that the goal of the Christian life is to "go to heaven when you die." Drawing on decades of New Testament scholarship, Wright argues that the Bible's actual hope is far more earthy, physical, and glorious than a disembodied soul floating off to a spiritual realm. The true Christian hope is resurrection — the renewal of creation itself, with God dwelling among his people in a transformed physical world. Wright shows that this is not a minor theological footnote but the very engine that drives the Church's mission of justice, beauty, and healing in the present age.
View Discussion GuideTwelve Extraordinary Women
by John MacArthur
Twelve Extraordinary Women by John MacArthur is a study of twelve women whose lives are woven into the grand tapestry of God's redemptive story. MacArthur's central thesis is both surprising and liberating: what made these women extraordinary was not their natural talent, social standing, or personal charisma, but the power and grace of the God they trusted. From Eve in the Garden to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, each woman appears at a pivotal moment in redemptive history — not as a footnote, but as an essential thread in the story God is telling. MacArthur argues that their struggles, doubts, failures, and acts of faith are the same ones believers face in every age, and that the God who shaped them is still shaping ordinary people today.
View Discussion GuideThe Prodigal God
by Timothy Keller
Timothy Keller's The Prodigal God is built on a startling claim: that we have been reading one of Jesus' most familiar parables with one eye closed. Most of us know the story of the prodigal son — the younger brother who demands his inheritance, squanders it in reckless living, and crawls home to a father who runs to meet him. But Keller argues that this parable has two lost sons, and that Jesus told the whole story primarily to confront the older brother — the respectable, religious, rule-keeping son who never left home and yet was every bit as far from the father's heart. The book's title is itself a clue: "prodigal" means recklessly extravagant, and it belongs not only to the younger son but supremely to God, whose grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic is scandalously lavish. By recovering the older brother's story, Keller argues, we recover the very heart of the gospel.
View Discussion GuideHow to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
by Gordon D. Fee & Douglas Stuart
How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart is one of the most widely used introductions to biblical interpretation ever written — more than three-quarters of a million copies sold worldwide. Its central thesis is simple but transformative: the Bible can be read and understood by ordinary people, not just scholars, provided they learn to ask two foundational questions of every passage — "What did it mean to its original audience?" (exegesis) and "What does it mean for us today?" (hermeneutics). Fee and Stuart argue that the single most important interpretive skill is recognizing the literary genre of the text you are reading, because God chose to speak through history, letters, poetry, apocalyptic visions, and law — and each genre has its own rules for responsible reading. By working through each major biblical genre, the book equips readers to move confidently from the ancient text to contemporary application without either flattening Scripture into a flat rulebook or letting it say whatever they want it to say.
View Discussion GuideBreaking Free
by Beth Moore
Beth Moore's Breaking Free is a rich, Isaiah-anchored study of what it means to live in the freedom Christ has already purchased for us. Drawing extensively from the book of Isaiah, Moore identifies five benefits of our covenant relationship with God that captivity robs us of: knowing God and believing Him, finding satisfaction in God, experiencing God's peace, enjoying God's presence, and bearing fruit that glorifies God. Using the parallel between Israel's Babylonian captivity and the spiritual bondage that so many believers live in today, Moore argues that freedom is not simply a positional truth to be acknowledged — it is a daily, practical reality to be walked in. The enemy's greatest strategy, she contends, is convincing Christians that they are stuck, that their strongholds are simply "the way they are," when in fact the truth of God's Word is powerful enough to demolish every stronghold.
View Discussion GuideJesus the King
by Timothy Keller
Timothy Keller's Jesus the King (originally published as King's Cross) is a deep and searching exploration of the Gospel of Mark — the shortest, fastest-moving, and arguably most dramatic account of Jesus's life. Keller's central thesis is that Jesus came as a king, but not the kind of king anyone expected. He came not to be served but to serve, not to conquer through power but to rescue through sacrifice. Working through Mark's Gospel passage by passage, Keller shows that the story of Jesus is simultaneously cosmic (it reorders the entire universe), historical (it is grounded in real events), and deeply personal (it calls every reader to a reckoning with who Jesus is and what he demands). The book is divided into two parts — "The King" and "The Cross" — mirroring Mark's own dramatic structure, which builds relentlessly toward Jerusalem and the cross.
View Discussion GuideThe Armor of God
by Priscilla Shirer
The Armor of God by Priscilla Shirer is a six-week Bible study built around Ephesians 6:10–18 — the apostle Paul's famous call to "put on the full armor of God." Shirer's central thesis is that the invisible spiritual war raging around every believer is real, active, and personal. The enemy's battle plan depends on keeping you unaware and unarmed, so the antidote is not vague spiritual optimism but a deliberate, specific, strategic response: putting on each piece of armor through intentional prayer. More than a survey of biblical imagery, this study is an action plan — one that transforms Paul's ancient military metaphor into a personalized prayer strategy for your everyday life.
View Discussion GuideEvery Woman a Theologian
by Phylicia Masonheimer
Every Woman a Theologian by Phylicia Masonheimer is a warm, accessible invitation for women to stop outsourcing their theology and start owning it. Masonheimer's central thesis is simple but countercultural: every woman is already a theologian, because every woman holds beliefs about God, herself, and the world that shape how she lives. The only question is whether those beliefs are formed by Scripture or by culture, experience, and emotion. Drawing on her background as a Bible teacher and her popular "Phylicia Masonheimer" podcast and blog, she walks readers through the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith — theology proper, bibliology, anthropology, soteriology, sanctification, ecclesiology, and eschatology — in plain, story-rich language that assumes no seminary background. By the final page, readers are equipped not just to know what they believe, but to articulate and live it boldly in a post-Christian world.
View Discussion GuideElijah: Faith and Fire
by Priscilla Shirer
Priscilla Shirer's Elijah Bible study traces the life of one of Scripture's most electrifying prophets — a man who stood alone against a corrupt king, a manipulative queen, and a nation that had quietly traded the living God for the convenience of Baal. Drawing from 1 Kings 17–19 and 2 Kings 1–2, Shirer argues that Elijah's story is not ancient history but a mirror held up to our own moment: a time of cultural pressure, moral compromise, and spiritual exhaustion. The study's central thesis is that the same tenacious faith and holy fire that marked Elijah's ministry is available to every believer today — not because we are extraordinary, but because the God who sent fire from heaven is still the same God.
View Discussion GuideThe Jesus I Never Knew
by Philip Yancey
Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew (1995) is a landmark work of popular Christian nonfiction in which Yancey — a self-described skeptic who came to faith slowly and painfully — sets out to strip away the stained-glass sentimentality surrounding Jesus and meet the real person of the Gospels. Yancey structures the book in three movements: who Jesus was (his birth, background, and character), what Jesus did and said (the Sermon on the Mount, miracles, parables, and the mounting collision with religious authorities), and what Jesus accomplished (the cross, resurrection, and ongoing presence in the world). His central thesis is disarmingly simple: the Jesus of the Gospels is far more dangerous, surprising, and grace-filled than the domesticated figure many of us learned about in Sunday school — and encountering him honestly changes everything. Yancey draws on an extraordinarily wide range of sources, from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., from film portrayals of Jesus to modern Middle Eastern politics, to illuminate a figure who defies every category his contemporaries tried to place him in.
View Discussion GuideTwelve Ordinary Men
by John MacArthur
In Twelve Ordinary Men, John MacArthur makes a stunning and deeply encouraging claim: Jesus did not choose the most gifted, the most educated, or the most religiously polished men to carry the gospel to the world. He chose twelve ordinary men — men marked by doubt, pride, impetuosity, political zeal, and even betrayal — and transformed them into the pillars of the church. MacArthur's central thesis is that God's pattern has never changed: He delights to display His glory through weak and unlikely vessels, so that no one can mistake the power as belonging to the messenger rather than to the message. By examining each apostle's personality, background, failures, and transformation, MacArthur invites readers to see that the same Jesus who made fishermen into world-changers is still in the business of making something extraordinary out of ordinary lives.
View Discussion GuideBible Study & Scripture Studies — Questions Leaders Ask
- How many Bible Study & Scripture study guides are there?
- 21 guides right now, listed above, out of 223 in the library. Each one is written for a specific published book: a reading, discussion questions, and a closing prayer for every week of it. Browse the whole library →
- How long does a study take?
- Bible Study & Scripture guides run 8 to 27 weeks, one meeting a week, and each week has its own reading, discussion questions, and closing prayer. Groups that meet every other week or take a break for the holidays simply spread the same weeks further apart. Put your meetings on real dates →
- Can we read part of a guide before we pay?
- Yes. Week 1 of every guide is free — no card and no account. Three of its discussion questions sit right on the guide's page for anyone to read, and the rest of Week 1 opens as soon as you tell us where to send it. Browse the guides →
- What does a guide cost?
- Two ways to pay. This Guide Only is $29 once for the book you pick, and never renews. Full Library is $79 a year for every guide in the library — $59 for your first year if you have not bought from us before, through September 30, then it renews at $79 a year unless you cancel. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee on the year (with 2 or fewer guides downloaded) and 30 days on a single guide. See both options →
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