Dear readers and participants in the summer book club,
I do hope you have a marvelous Mother’s Day Weekend and an enjoyable week of reading more in The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Week Two Recap
If you are following along the suggested reading schedule (found here) you will have read chapters one and two this last week. We are introduced to Christian, a distraught man with an incredible burden upon his back. He reads in a Book of the coming judgement, is so terribly troubled that he pleads with his wife and children to believe what he says is true. They however fear he has lost his mind, and leave him crying out helplessly, “What shall I do to be saved?”
Evangelist then comes upon Christian and asks what is troubling him so. Christian tells him of his condemnation and coming judgement after death, and the great burden on his back. Evangelist then tells him what he ought to do about it. He tells him he must flee the wrath to come and sets him off on a journey with very specific instructions.
As he leaves he comes across two neighbors who attempt to convince him to turn back. Obstinate, when he realizes he tries to persuade his neighbor in vain, turns back to head home. Pliable however, is intrigued by this incorruptible inheritance of which Christian speaks and sets out with him.
Discussion Questions
- What is it that Christian has discovered that troubles him to the point of inability to sleep at night?
- Have you ever been burdened so by something? If so, how did you feel when people didn’t take you seriously, and made light of your burden? Did it encourage or dishearten you?
- Doing the right thing, more specifically following Christ, is often a hard thing to do. Christian was given many opportunities to turn back, and plenty of excuses and persuasions from Obstinate, but he kept on. Why was Christian so determined? What do you think fueled his earnest desire and commitment to leave?
Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
Acts 16:30-31 ESV
The Corner Shelf 
1. The book he’s been reading has revealed his sinfulness and he despairs—wondering how he can be saved.
2.
3. “I seek an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away; and it is laid up in heaven, and safe there, to be bestowed, at the time appointed, on them that diligently seek it.”
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