Welcome to Studies with Stearman.

Join us as we look deeper into the Bible.

Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching.

And now, here's Gary.

What do you do to manipulate God in your favor?

I'm not going to answer that question.

I don't want to answer that question.

I shouldn't have to answer that question

because I want to tell you, it's God who does the manipulating.

And yet, you stop and think about it, there are people today who are being

conditioned to think that there are scriptural methods of coaxing God into giving the proper

results in one's life. Today, there is growing doubt and skepticism and frustration in American society,

particularly when Christian practice is viewed by outsiders. They look at Christian practice

and they see just a variety of bizarre behaviors. And they say, I don't want any part of that Christianity. And particularly

kids, teenagers today are really being turned off to Christianity. I'm talking about public

school kids. The average teenager on the street out there, they look at Christianity and they just

think of it as everything from stupid to wishful thinking to you name it.

They're turned away, and I think, well, they should be based on a lot of what they see.

Well, this brings us to a study, and we started it last week, a study of God's will,

particularly as expressed in the epistle to the Ephesians.

And last week we looked at the word will, Thelima, in chapter one.

And we noted it's not just in chapter one, but all through the book of Ephesians,

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