Are you leading A Study of John 1–10? Here are some extras to enhance your sessions. What other ideas do you have? Post them below!

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Session 5: News Clip

Do your students truly believe that the Word of God is living and active, piercing the soul? As they explore chapter 3 of John’s Gospel, they will realize that the famous verse 16 is from Jesus’ words to the Pharisee Nicodemus.

You may want to share this account from a story in World magazine about how God used his words from John 3:16 spoken 2,000 years ago to change the life of a politician in Georgia.

Paul Broun’s family business has long been politics. His father, Paul Sr., served 38 years as a senator in the Georgia General Assembly. But the elder Broun served as a Democrat, making the younger Broun an outlier in his own family when he decided to run for office in 1990 as a Republican.

After years of practicing medicine throughout rural Georgia, Broun felt called to run. The fact that he had a sense of calling would not have occurred to the Broun of 1986. Then a 40-year-old Broun was an atheist spending most of his nights on the couch of his medical office in Americus, Ga. He and his wife, Nikki, had been married for a short time but were already headed for a divorce. It would have been his fourth failed marriage.

On a Saturday morning he woke up on his office couch feeling like he had to find some way to change his situation. A Gideon Bible sat on a nearby table. Just a few Sundays before, while watching a football game on television, Broun had seen the camera scan a sign in the crowd that read “John 3:16.” Broun turned to that verse in the Bible, and, after reading its promise of salvation to those who believe in Christ, he asked himself, “Could this be true?”

He prayed out loud: “God, if You are real, show me by putting me on the right track.”

This summer Broun and Nikki will celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. God changed both their lives. As a result, Broun says the Bible plays a central role in how he acts and votes as a congressman.

—from “Twelve Worried Men” by Edward Lee Pitts, World Magazine, March 9, 2013

Do your students have a story of John 3:16 affecting the life of a family member or friend?

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