Bible Study – Central Haywood Church of Christ

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Bible Study

Can a Leopard Change Its Spots?

Jeremiah 13:23

There is a question tucked inside the book of Jeremiah that is easy to read past. It sounds almost like a riddle. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?” (Jeremiah 13:23). Jeremiah was speaking to a people who had drifted so far from God that their rebellion had become second nature. They weren’t just breaking rules; they had broken their covenant, the deep, binding promise they had made with the Lord Himself. And the honest answer to the question was no. You can’t change what you’ve become.

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The Secret Nobody Wants to Hear

Jeremiah 7:23, ESV

Most of us have spent a good portion of our lives looking for something. Not always sure what it is, exactly, but something that would make us feel like we had finally arrived. The next job, the bigger house, the right car — maybe then we would be content. Maybe then we could breathe.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 9

John 20:11–18

A man I read about was adopted at birth and grew up with no knowledge of his biological family. In his forties, a DNA service connected him with a half-sister he had never known. They exchanged careful, tentative messages for weeks. Then one afternoon she called him, and the moment he heard her voice, something unexpected happened. She said his name, and he wept.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 8

1 Corinthians 15:12–24

A historian I read about spent two years trying to disprove the resurrection. He was not a believer, he was a skeptic, and he approached the accounts of Easter the way a detective approaches a crime scene: looking for inconsistencies, alternate explanations, reasons to dismiss. He catalogued the evidence on both sides. He interviewed scholars. He traced the manuscript traditions.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 7

Psalm 2

A photojournalist who covered conflict zones for twenty years described what she called the hardest moment of her career. Not the violence she’d witnessed, but a single night in a city under siege when she genuinely believed darkness was going to win. The brutality seemed total, the cruelty organized, the hope of liberation absurd.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 6

Exodus 2:23–25

For eighteen months, a woman I know wrote weekly letters to her estranged adult daughter who refused all contact. She never knew if the letters were read, returned, or thrown away. The silence was total. She kept writing anyway, because the love didn’t stop just because the replies did.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 5

John 14:1–10

Maybe you’ve been there. You’re hiking a trail, the fog rolls in thick, and suddenly you can barely see five feet ahead. Your map is useless, all the landmarks you’d been following have disappeared. You’re standing at a fork in the trail, genuinely unsure which way leads back to the trailhead and which leads deeper into the backcountry.

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The Hope of Easter: Day 4

John 13:6–20

A master woodworker once described the most discouraging phase of any project: the middle. “The beginning is exciting,” he said. “You have vision, you have energy. The end is satisfying, you can see the finished piece. But the middle? The middle just looks like a mess of sawdust and mistakes. That’s when most people quit.”

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The Hope of Easter: Day 3

Romans 8:18–27

A cellist I once heard interviewed said something that has stayed with me for years. She was asked which pieces she found most moving to perform. Without hesitation, she said the slow, mournful ones, the adagios, the elegies, the laments. “There’s something in sadness,” she explained, “that reaches for what beauty is supposed to be. Joy tells you it exists. Longing tells you where to look.”

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The Hope of Easter: Day 2

Romans 5:1–11

I read about a woman who spent three years training for a marathon she never ran. A stress fracture sidelined her two weeks before race day. She said later that the hardest part wasn’t the physical pain, it was the quiet, creeping question that followed her for months: What’s the point of all this effort if it can be taken away so easily?

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Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

Isaiah 53:4-7

It’s a question I’ve been asked more than a few times, usually over coffee, sometimes in a hospital room, occasionally from someone sitting in the back pew with tears they’re trying to hide. Why did Jesus have to die? The truth is, it’s not an easy question to explain. Not because the answer isn’t there, but because the weight of it is almost too much to hold in a single conversation.

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February 22, 2026

When the Dark Won’t Lift

Isaiah 50:10

There are stretches in life when you do everything right and still feel lost. You read your Bible. You pray. You show up on Sunday. And yet the fog stays. The confusion lingers. Some of us are walking through one of those stretches right now, and the hardest part isn’t the darkness itself. It’s wondering whether we did something wrong to end up in it.

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February 15, 2026

Lessons from a Roller Coaster Life

“Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the LORD you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my lifetime.’” (Isaiah 39:8, NIV)

Life can feel like a roller coaster. One moment we’re celebrating a victory; the next we’re facing a crisis that shakes us to the core. King Hezekiah knew this reality well. His life reads like a dramatic story—miraculous healing followed by foolish pride, divine favor followed by sobering consequences. Yet in his journey, we find wisdom for navigating our own ups and downs.

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January 18, 2026

This Can Be Your Best Year Yet

As a new year begins, we do not all step into it the same way. Some of us come hopeful and eager, ready for a fresh start. Others arrive cautiously, carrying disappointments from the year behind us. Some are grieving. Some are tired. Some are quietly wondering if they have the strength to face whatever comes next. God meets us in all of those places, and it is there that our confidence must begin.

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January 4, 2026

Making Room For Jesus

Luke 2:1–7

It is funny how the story sneaks up on you. Not the twinkly Hallmark version, but the quieter one tucked into Luke’s Gospel, the weary couple, the long road to Bethlehem, and that awkward moment when someone shrugs and says, “Sorry… no room.” And you wonder, really? No room for them?

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December 14, 2025

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