The season of Advent is an invitation—an opportunity to slow down and notice, to slow down and take in the wonder and miracle of Jesus’ birth, to reflect and anticipate. This Christmas may look different than you had hoped or planned, but Jesus is still the same. He has not changed, and He has never let us go.
Erin H. Warren is joining us today to discuss her Advent Bible study, Waymaker. This episode is not meant to be another “to do” on your list or create more stress in an already stressful season, but rather to point you to the reason He came in the first place. His coming was more than giving us forgiveness of sins or to part the way before us. He came to part the divide between God and us, between us and heaven. Jesus is our Waymaker.
Summary
In this episode of the Love Offering Podcast, Rachael Adams and Erin Warren discuss the significance of Advent, the importance of digging into scripture, and the role of community in faith. They explore the humble birth of Jesus, the teachings of Hebrews, and how to navigate hard seasons during Christmas. Erin shares her journey of faith, the impact of her husband’s health crisis, and the lessons learned about God’s love and promises. The conversation emphasizes the importance of understanding the ‘why’ behind Jesus’ coming and encourages listeners to engage deeply with scripture and each other during Advent.
Takeaways
Erin’s faith journey began with a health crisis that deepened her understanding of scripture.
Advent is a season of anticipation for the coming of Jesus.
Community is built through the foundation of God’s Word.
The humble birth of Jesus signifies God’s love and approachability.
The book of Hebrews focuses on why Jesus came, not just that he came.
Navigating hard seasons requires a focus on eternity and God’s promises.
Jesus is our Way Maker, providing access to God’s presence.
Living in the in-between requires trust in God’s character and promises.
Christmas traditions can bring joy and connection to family.
The ultimate expression of love is Jesus laying down his life for us.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Connection
02:59 Faith Journey and Scripture Engagement
06:02 Understanding Advent and Its Significance
08:58 The Humble Birth of Jesus
11:47 Exploring the Book of Hebrews
15:02 Navigating Hard Seasons During Christmas
18:06 The Promise of Jesus as Our Way Maker
21:09 Living in the In-Between
23:55 Community and Support in Faith
26:51 Christmas Traditions and Memories
29:59 The Ultimate Love of Christ
33:02 Conclusion and Prayer
Transcript
Rachael Adams (00:02.788)
Welcome to the Love Offering Podcast. I’m so happy to have you.
Erin Warren (00:05.457)
Thanks, Rachel. It’s so good to be here with you.
Rachael Adams (00:08.996)
So you and I have become friends, and I love it. The last time you were on the show, we were strangers, and now we like to talk, and even just for talking for 30 minutes before this, we even hit record. So it’s always a joy. I’m just excited to have you back on personally, But we will be talking about the last time you were on. You spoke of everyday prayers for faith, and I am releasing everyday prayers for love in that same everyday prayer series with a million praying moms. So I’m so thankful that God connected us in that way, but you also write a lot of other things, and you’re a Bible’s Bible teacher, and we’re going to be talking about Advent, and so I’m excited about that in this Advent season.
Rachael Adams (00:54.952)
But before we get into that, I want everybody to go and listen to that previous episode about everyday prayers for faith. It will give us a little mini refresher on what has shaped your faith the most.
Erin Warren (01:08.265)
I grew up in a Christian house. I went to a Christian school and grew up there. What was it they say? Like on the second row of the Baptist church, you know, whatever. I don’t remember a day when I didn’t know about Jesus and I didn’t love Jesus. And I think though that one of the things that maybe I realized in adulthood that held me back is, I just had never dug into scripture enough for myself to really root myself in faith. And so, about a decade ago, my family got rocked by a health crisis. My husband got sick. He was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and it just shook me. It shook me in a way that I couldn’t. Christianese, my way out of, know, couldn’t go, God’s timing is perfect, and God is so faithful. And so it was really in that season I began digging into scripture for myself. Because I had some really big questions, mostly around feeling like I had misunderstood something about God. I thought I became a Christian, and then life went well. There were peaks, valleys, and bumps in the road, but everything always got a bow on it because God works all things for good. For me, I was like, okay, I’m now facing chronic illness in our family, and this is not something that’s going to go away. Not that I didn’t believe God could heal him, but I just had to come face to face with the reality that we live in a broken world, we have broken bodies, and we don’t always get the answers to prayers that we want here on earth. And God just gripped my heart though with a passion for his word and helping other women to discover his truths in scripture for themselves so that they are rooted in truth in a way that the enemy cannot twist and distract and lie about so that they are, you know, their sword of the spirit is ready and wielded and so that they can fight back against the enemy in their seasons.
Rachael Adams (03:23.652)
So, the Bible studies that you’ve written are all under this umbrella of feasting on truth. We actually both this morning, we’re like, we just both left Bible study in our community of women. And it just is such a gift to walk alongside other women in our faith and so encouraging. And so what do you hope, I guess, as you look at your ministry in general, what do you hope that it will help women to do?
Erin Warren (03:49.161)
I love gathering in a community around the Word of God. And I think many people tend to believe that Bible study is just gaining knowledge and that it’s not community building. They believe that it’s one or the other. And I love that nothing builds community like God’s Word and the foundation of that. Know, when you look around at what You know, there are clubs for people who like to ride bikes. There are clubs for people who want to do these things. What could be more potent than the common ground of God’s Word? And so it has the power to build community. And so that’s a huge aspect is helping women to build a community founded on the solid truth of God’s Word, to have a space where they can wrestle hard questions, but with God’s Word in between them, know, my opinion, this and my opinion that. What does God’s Word tell us about who He is, and how does that affect where we are? And then I would say the third is learning to study God’s Word for yourself. I always talk about feasting on God’s Word and snacking on others. We tend to want to pick up the easy answer, the fill-in-the-blank Bible study, and the devotional. We don’t have time for Bible study, so we read a devotional instead. And you don’t have written devotionals. They’re not on the whole bag, but that should not be our only engagement with God’s Word. The Holy Spirit is given to us to help teach us, John 14, 26. And so he can teach us, and he can guide us. We have to be willing to sit down and do the work. And it’s not as hard as it seems. I love cutting out the middle man sometimes and just going straight to God’s word and getting revelation from him and not secondhand revelation from someone else.
Rachael Adams (05:45.027)
So good. God convicted me of that several years ago. It’s like, how are you going to get to know me when you’re just getting to know me through what somebody else says about me? You know, come and be with me. And that’s what we do in any relationship. We have to spend time and get to know the other person. So like we talked, so today is all about Advent, the kind of this Christmas season. And so, for those unfamiliar with the term, what is it, and why is it important?
Erin Warren (06:16.665)
Advent means coming. It’s from the Latin word for coming, Adventus. And it’s this kind of a season of anticipation. So, if you are part of a church denomination that celebrates the liturgical calendar, certain seasons within the calendar focus on different things. Advent is this time when we anticipate the coming of Jesus. Second coming, yes, but over the years, this term has been applied to the Christmas season, too, and thinking through the coming of Christ to earth. So it’s something that has always been there in the background, but I feel like in recent years, we’ve seen more and more about Advent studies, Advent devotionals, and things that help prep our mind for scripture.
I like to think of it, and I talk about this in the intro to my Advent study that we will be talking about today, about Jerusalem, where the steps to the temple were not uniform. And so they were different. And that purpose was so that you couldn’t rush up the steps into God’s presence. You had to slow down. You had to bow your head. You had to keep an eye on where your foot was walking. And so I tend to think of Advent as a time when I can slowly take a step toward recognizing his presence in this season and what his coming means. I think, particularly during Christmas, there’s so much activity. There’s so much busyness. There’s, you know, and it’s fun and good. I love a good Christmas party, getting together with friends, and doing a white elephant gift exchange, but I want to keep the reason for his coming.
Rachael Adams (08:27.032)
You know, when they had been waiting for, right? This whole intertestamental period existed between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so these people are just waiting and waiting and waiting for the Savior. And then he comes as a baby. It’s so interesting because just today, at Bible study, we were doing Luke and the Land by Kristi McClelland. And today, this whole week has been about Mary, Joseph, shepherds, and Advent.
Rachael Adams (08:58.837)
It’s so wild how just the Lord will, you know, marry subjects and try to get that home in your heart. Kristi McClelland shared today that our nativities are probably not set up correctly.
Erin Warren (09:14.318)
No, they’re not.
Rachael Adams (09:15.212)
You know, we envision that even Mary and Joseph were alone, and she was riding on a donkey, and there was no room in this hotel, you know, this inn. But it was the exact opposite. They were going, and they were probably with a caravan of people, probably their family surrounded by family, and they were perhaps likely poor because they only had doves, and this inn was a guest room and a house. You know, just all these things that we typically think of when we think of Jesus coming and then the shepherds and just how beautiful it is that he came in such a humble way into this little town to a 13-year-old, you know, mother named Mary, know, probably very young teenage girl and just in this unlikely scenario and in this very insignificant place and that’s and Presenting himself to these shepherds that were just out in the fields that were kind of a dirty considered dirtyand lowly in that time too. But that’s how he chose to come. It just is amazing. That’s the kind of God that we serve.
Erin Warren (10:16.507)
We just recently sang this song at church: All-Sufficient Merit. And there’s this line, in love, he condescended eternity now in time. And gosh, it just gives me goosebumps even now to think about how he condescended, like he went from glory to manger, you know? And that is what He, who is eternal and above time, entered into time, into finite for us because of his great love for us and because he wanted to make way for us. And I just, it’s so powerful. And I think it’s vital for us to remember that at Christmas. We do good remembering that at Easter, but I think we must also extend that same kind of look toward Christmas.
Rachael Adams (11:21.124)
Well, I think what’s so interesting is that I’m mentioning Luke 2, so we’re all referencing, but you don’t write about Luke 2 in this. You are in Hebrews, which is, I’m like, wait a minute, why are we in Hebrews? But it’s called Waymaker. And so, you know, you’re not even really writing about Jesus’ birth. So, what made you want to write a study on Hebrews at Christmas? It’s so unexpected.
Erin Warren (11:47.129)
It is unexpected. I think that’s part of it. There’s, can find, you know, a hundred studies out there on, on the web, on the internet about, you know, going through the names of God, the names from Isaiah, the, you know, and I wanted something different, and I wanted something that focused on why he came, instead of the fact that he came. Hebrews is just this incredible, incredible, astonishing book. It’s one of my favorite books that takes all of that anticipation from the Old Testament of what God would do through the Messiah and then shows how Jesus is the fulfillment of that. And this is why he came. So, I wanted to focus on the why and what he did. We love to think about sweet little baby Jesus wrapped in his.
Erin Warren (12:44.717)
Right? All wrapped in his swaddling clothes with doting Mary, the animals all bowing down. You know, I think that is not necessarily a realistic picture. And I want us to understand the bigness of that moment, that we have this great feeling that Jesus was not some guy God sent to do his dirty work. Like, I think sometimes we think of Jesus as, you know, as that and instead in some majesty and miracle of the Trinity that I don’t even know my brain will ever comprehend this side of heaven, that God the Son is God himself, eternal and full of power and glory and majesty and all of that condescended and constrained it into human skin to a baby to the most humble beginning possible for us and what he came to do. So that’s really the why behind Hebrews. And it has been, I think, a compelling exercise to think about why he came instead of just the fact that he came.
Rachael Adams (14:01.378)
Yeah, absolutely. So you talk about it in your devotional, like it was written during an unexpected crisis that affected your Christmas. So would you tell us about that?
Erin Warren (14:13.957)
It was during that season, post my husband’s diagnosis, that we spent probably the better part of two years, a year and a half, really getting him toward a place where he was healthy and in remission and doing well. That first Christmas was tough because we all entered the Christmas season with expectations of what we wanted to do, where we wanted to go, and how we wanted our Christmas to look. And I was just in this season where I had to lay aside all of my plans to really step up and care for my family in a way I was not expecting to do. And I tell a story of our Christmas tree in the Waymaker study that year. I didn’t even have the energy to decorate my Christmas tree. I didn’t have the power to decorate any of my houses. And so we put up this pre-lit tree and left it blank and empty because I couldn’t even fathom taking it back down in four weeks. So I wanted to, but in that season, we could focus on the true meaning of Christmas in a way that we hadn’t been able to because everything had been stripped away. I wasn’t able to go to all the parties. We live in central Florida. There are so many fun things at theme parks around us during Christmas time, and I am just kind of taking in the general splendor of that season and everything going on. We were pretty much at home and with each other with our three kids, who were very small at the time, and I really wrestled with that, but in the end, it just turned out to be a sweet gift of time together and just really being able to focus and slow down. What a gift to be able to slow down sometimes.
Rachael Adams (16:19.394)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I do think Christmas can be such a joyful time, especially when we think about Jesus and all the celebrations and all the parties. It can be joyful for some, but it can also be really difficult for some. And so, how would you say Hebrews would encourage us in these hard seasons?
Erin Warren (16:40.113)
One of the gifts that Hebrews gives us is that it turns our minds toward eternity. This is something that God has been working in me really since that season, but even more so now because two years ago, almost three years ago now, we entered into an even more trying health crisis with our son. Our youngest son has type 1 diabetes, and it is every day, and it is, you know, I was up at three o ‘clock this morning, which is if you’re looking at the video is, why my eyes are all my black circles under my eyes that are huge. And I haven’t washed my hair in three days, but, you know, giving him insulin, checking his blood sugar, and making sure that he’s safe and OK. And it’s just daily. But the Hebrews helps us remember what we have that is eternal and will not be stripped away. And in these hard seasons, it is so hard to walk through hardness in a season where everything around you, every song, tells you to have joy and joy, and Jesus came, and Jesus is coming and joy. And I love Hebrews because it helps us remember what he did for us and the big thing, and I know I’m probably jumping a little ahead on you, but yes, Jesus came to help us in our hard seasons and to make a way. But I think we often look at his coming as a way for him to help us through hard seasons. And we stand on the Red Sea’s shore and go, God, part the Red Sea again for me. Part of the Red Sea, I want to get to the other side. And we forget that the other side of the Red Sea was the wilderness. It wasn’t the promised land. And the whole purpose, but God was on the other side.
Erin Warren (18:46.075)
They crossed the Red Sea, and God brought them to himself at Mount Sinai. And that was the purpose. That was Jesus being our waymaker. It wasn’t about making it easy for us. It wasn’t about making it easy for us to get through hard times. While that is a benefit, he walks with us and helps us. I talk a lot about that in the Everyday Prayers for Faith book. But His being our waymaker was about the fact that we literally cannot stand in God’s presence and live without some covering for our sins, some sort of sacrifice. And that’s what he came to do. He came to be that sacrifice and did for us what we could not do as a one-and-done sacrifice so that we could have God himself. When Jesus is on that cross and that curtain in the temple tears in two, it opens access for all of us to the presence of God, that is, the majesty, beauty, and miracle of him being our waymaker. We can stand before a holy God, that his presence can dwell in us, and that we can always have that hope. I get excited about it.
Rachael Adams (20:03.844)
So would that be what you’re saying? When we think about Jesus as our way maker, it says I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me, so that’s who he is. And I’m even thinking we have Leeland and they have that the worship song way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper. Like that is who you are, and that is who he is.
Erin H. Warren:
Yeah, that is who he is. But we like to apply all those names to our earthly circumstances. But all of those, we might get that, the sight of heaven. You know, we might get the healing. We might. We might get you to know the miracle here. But the greater miracle is what we get for eternity. I’m studying through 1st and 2nd Peter right now, and that’s what Peter’s message is. He keeps telling them, you can be steadfast in faith because you have an inheritance in heaven that’s imperishable. It’s undefiled. Nobody can touch it. It will not run out. It will be there and it will have the same value when you get there, and it will have the same value a million years from now that what we have for eternity, that is where we keep our eyes, because that’s where our hope is.
Rachael Adams (21:16.74)
So there is the promise that Jesus will come again, a second coming, but I almost feel like in some ways, and this is not theologically sound, but we’re in our own intertestamental period, you know like the New Testament has ended, and we’re waiting. We’re in the season. Lord, when are you going to come again? We want you to come again. And so, how do we live while we’re in this, in between, while we’re waiting?
Erin Warren (21:45.863)
I think one of the things I get so paralyzed about is sometimes when I’m in intense seasons of waiting. Honestly, I’m in one right now where I am begging the Lord for answers. I beg for a way, for something, and it’s hard. We want our good; we want the bows on our stories here. But the character of God is what I come back to repeatedly. Every study I do asks the question, what does this tell us about God? And I feel like that is the first and foremost important thing we need to ask when we come to scripture. If that’s the only thing you do, if you read a chapter in John or a Psalm, and all you do is write down the character of God, you’re going to grow in your faith. It’s one of the most powerful exercises I’ve ever done in scripture because it really is about Him, which brings us comfort here. And so, in this season of waiting, we keep looking to the promise. We keep looking toward what we know will come. We root ourselves in truth so that when the enemy comes and says it was all a lie, you know that, right? Like he’s not coming. We can say no, and we have seen him be faithful here. He has kept his promise here. He has kept his promise here, and he is trustworthy to keep his promise. And so we can act in what we know to be true of God, even sometimes when our feelings don’t follow. Just as we talked about being in Bible study this morning, as some of my friends shared about the character of God they saw in the first chapter of 1 Peter, it reminded me again that it’s about eternity. And I read Revelation 21, and I cry. I get excited about what is to come because I know ultimately, one day, he will fulfill every promise and all the heartaches that I am facing in my life, all the heartaches you’re facing in your life if you’re listening. You’re going; I don’t know what to do. I want you to know he’s coming again. And while we wait, there’s a tension that we hold in the in-between. But we can ultimately trust that one day, he will fulfill that promise to come back and restore and make all things new. And I can’t wait for that day.
Rachael Adams (24:12.9)
Yeah, me too. And you know, he didn’t leave us alone. We have the Holy Spirit residing in us as believers to empower us to do what we can’t do in our own strength.
Erin Warren (24:17.501)
Yes, exactly. Yes. And we have each other. That’s why I’m so passionate about community. That is part of his design that encourages us. Hebrews 10 talks about not forsaking gatherings. It’s great. You want to pick up a Bible study and do it alone, but you’ll get much more out of it. You will be propelled forward more in your faith when you do it with other people and women because the Lord will confirm things. You’ll learn from things they see that you may miss. And you’ll encourage one another as you see the day approaching. You’re going to stir one another up toward love and good works. It will also help strengthen your faith as you see their faith growing.
Rachael Adams (25:07.982)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you kind of shared one of your maybe sad Christmas seasons. But do you have any favorite Christmas memories?
Erin Warren (25:19.733)
Growing up, some of my favorite Christmas memories had a tradition of always baking cookies, and we still get together. My grandparents have all passed away, but you know, I’ll take my kids over. My family lives in the same town, so we’re able to see them frequently, but we’ll do a cookie baking day, and we still use some of the same recipes from when I was growing up, and we only make these cookies at Christmas, and it’s always such a fun thing. I love that. I think with my kids, I don’t know y ‘all, this is unspiritual, and I’m here for the Christmas pajama trend like I’m I am for it. My kids outgrew kids size pajamas. I’ve got one who can wear kids-size pajamas, so we haven’t done the matching ones, but I love it. I’ll get my kid’s Christmas pajamas and give them to them on December 1st.
Rachael Adams (26:04.026)
We’ve never done that. We’ve not done that yet.
Erin Warren (26:24.901)
I don’t know why, but I just love it so much. It’s actually somewhat sad to me because my daughter is, she’s in adult sizes now, and all these Nutcracker pajamas are coming out, and I’m like, last year I bought them for my nieces because I was like, I gotta buy Christmas jammies for somebody. They’re so cute.
Rachael Adams (26:45.449)
I love that. Well, that might be a new tradition we’ll have to start. We’ll see what my kids say. I don’t know. And my husband, too. I don’t know.
Erin Warren (26:51.275)
We take a picture every year in our jammies before we open presents on Christmas morning in front of the tree and stuff. So I always have to mix mine up so I don’t have the same Christmas jammies five years in a row.
Rachael Adams (27:36.815)
I want to know, so what’s your favorite Christmas cookie?
Erin Warren (27:41.817)
One of my favorites, actually, is so funny. We talked about this last time I was on your show, on your podcast. It’s a peanut butter ball. They’re called Buckeye Balls, but I modified the recipe so it had less sugar in it because a diabetic child—I mean, yeah, he can eat sugar. I just wanted to find a better ratio of peanut butter to sugar so that it had more protein and less sugar. So anyway, I made their chocolate peanut butter boulders, which is what I call them. Because I love you, put rice crispies or crispy cereal in them, I guess I put it to say. And they look like giant rocks instead of little balls of buck eyeballs. But I do love those. I do love making gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies. I think It’s just really fun, it’s just classic. I love the classics.
Rachael Adams (28:42.028)
me too. Making me hungry. You mentioned this, but I wonder if you have anything else to say. This is a question I’ve been asking all my guests this season. Is there a biblical concept of love that you think applies to this topic we’ve been discussing today?
Erin Warren (29:01.917)
I mean, I think it is his love. This is the ultimate outpouring of his love for us, and he said, listen, I know you’re never going to find a way to get to me. So I’m going to come to you. And, you know, there’s no greater love than someone who would lay down his life for you. And that’s what he did. He, he freely, gave it up for us. There’s this little moment in John’s telling of the Garden of Gethsemane where they are coming to arrest Jesus, and it says he stepped forward. And, you know, I think so many times we take that picture of Jesus in the garden, you know, asking God like, please take this away, please take this away. And they come, and they take him. And John’s gospel is very clear throughout the entire gospel. He goes, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down, and there he just this brief moment where he steps forward to meet those he knows he knows what he’s coming to do, and he steps forward in obedience to do it, and I think what a powerful act of love.
Rachael Adams (30:18.446)
Wow, I’ve never noticed that. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You’re right. He’s constantly pursuing. He’s the one that is going before us for, you know, for us. So that is, that is a compelling image. So thank you for that. I know we talked about food. We spoke of pajamas. Is there anything else that you are loving right now?
Erin Warren (30:45.189)
I finished Nancy Guthrie’s book, Blessed, which is her book on Revelation, because our church has been going through Revelation on Sunday mornings. And I loved that. So that’s my spirituality, what I love. But we just redid like to get organized for back to school. And I now love being organized in school. So I cleaned my desk, and I have this old window from a friend’s house with six panes in it. So each pane is for a day of the week and then one for the weekend. And so I have, I can see it about staying organized on top of schoolwork, what’s coming in the week, and all of that. So that’s been a good thing, too.
Rachael Adams (31:45.8)
Yeah, organization is always a good thing. It’s just that even when my bed is made and dishes are put up, even just things like that, my brain feels less cluttered. There’s something about if, even on a Sunday, it’s like, okay, I’ve got groceries, clothes are put away. We’re ready for the week. It just does something in me that makes life better. It does. It does. I’m leaning a lot into simplicity right now and have been just kind of that simplicity of having a place to write your stuff down and having a clean desk. I’m not good at it, you all. I think the reason why I love it so much is because I’m not good at it. And so to be able to have that and get that, I always talk about just that visual clarity, like that cleanness in your visual scope. I forget how important and powerful it can be.
Rachael Adams (32:47.522)
Yeah, absolutely. And to have a place for everything. I think that that is something too. It’s like, this is where this goes. And so when you go back to look for it, you’re like, it is there because that’s its place. If we can only convince our kids of that, right? Yeah, how often do we put something on the steps, and they take it up and love it?
Erin Warren (32:57.081)
Because it was put where it belongs, yes. Yeah. How many? Was it one of my favorite memes? I think no one has more false hope than a mom who puts a thing on the stairs, expecting someone to take it up. It’s so true. Every time, every time.
Rachael Adams (33:15.648)
It is so true. It is so true. I’m like, okay, here we go again.
Rachael Adams (33:24.024)
Well, well, so thank you for today. It’s always a gift to get to talk to you. I want to encourage everybody to go and grab all of your studies. Your Bible studies are a little bit different, though. We were talking about this a little bit before, you know, when we were talking about our Bible studies this morning that we were doing with our friends, and you know, sometimes we want easy answers because that’s easy, but that’s not always what’s best for us. And so, tell us a little about your Feasting Truth Bible studies, how we can get them, and how we can stay in contact with you.
Erin Warren (33:55.737)
Yeah, they, I call them inductive, which is just the fancy word for learning to study God’s word for yourself. But first and foremost, before you turn to other sources. So, I have different levels of intensity, shall I say. However, one of the things that was hard about learning how to study scripture for myself was the methods that I found: know, observation, interpretation, and application, which are some of the most prominent ones. And I was like, I don’t know what to do with that. Even in the language, it required so much more training to understand what to do with that. And so I work off of what I call four simple questions. What does this say? What does this say about God? What does this mean, and how should I respond? And so I like to think of it as a flexible structure. So it will help give you some guidelines like, okay, what are the transitional words? Write a summary that is going to help you see the meaning. What are the characteristics of God? And there are lists in every book. And then there’s some starter kind of jumping point, jumping off point questions, but they are not going to be all-encompassing of the study because I want you to be able to wrestle with the Holy Spirit and discern beyond that. The Waymaker study is what I call simple inductive. And so it’s very focused and very narrow. So, it’s the same three questions for every chapter of Hebrews. So, each week, there are 13 chapters. So, 13 days throughout Christmas, you’ve got six weeks plus, and then you’ve got 12 extra days if you want to go to Epiphany in January. But it’s writing somewhere between. I think it’s three to ten verses; you can choose that key verse for that week. Then, we answer, how does this show us Jesus is our way maker, and what does this tell us about Jesus? And then a place to write a prayer. And there are some spaces to go deeper. But then there’s a companion teaching and podcasts that go for each of those. You can go to feastingontruth.com slash way maker, and there are links to buy the book. But there’s also a place where you can sign up, and it will auto-email you links to all the teachings so you can listen to those and run your Christmas errands.
Rachael Adams (36:31.2)
And to give you all the answers you were second-guessing yourself on. Erin will reveal the truth after all her time and work. Well, would you pray for us as we close today?
Erin Warren (36:46.461)
Absolutely. Father, thank you so much for each person listening, God, and pray, Lord, that you would meet them where they are right now, no matter what they are facing, whether they’re just in a hard season, a season of waiting, unexpected circumstances, Lord. Would you meet them and show them who you are? Would you help turn their mind toward eternity? And may they not allow the questions to make them draw back, but Lord, they would press into you because where else would we go? Lord, we know that you have the words of eternal life. You are the holy one. And so I pray you would continue to woo and draw us to you. Lord, let us not miss you amid our days, but may we see you working and fulfilling every promise you have made to us. And it’s in your name I pray, amen.
Rachael Adams (37:45.608)
Amen. Erin, thank you. I appreciate your encouragement in this Advent season, which reminds us that God is our maker.
Erin Warren (37:56.945)
Thanks for having me.
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