November 17: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text:  James 4:13-5:6

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James

• God Will Set Things Right

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What areas of your life is it easy for you to be a control freak?

• James is New Testament Wisdom literature.

  • It is direct. At times, it feels abrupt. It is meant to lead to practical action.

  • This is our 8th week moving through this relatively short letter. And we have been saying that James is like New Testament wisdom literature.

  • This letter is a cousin to the Proverbs or parts of the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes. 

  • It is trying to grapple with how people who have trusted in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection should live.
    
    
    

• In this text James is pressing in on something that he has been addressing at several points in the letter and here as well.

  • Watch out, you are in very perilous place when you start trying to play God. When you see all the gifts of your life as something you have just gotten for yourself, or you imagine that because your ability and resources you can steer you life wherever you want it to go.
    

• He says “Now, Listen” and here is some of what I think he is saying to us.

  • Fire yourself from the role of God

  • Take on fully the role of image-bearing human being

  • There are inescapable time limits for injustice

• We have to fire ourselves from trying to do God’s job in the world - this is humility that needs to show up in how we pray and how we plan 

• But there are still certain things we absolutely can do. We shouldn’t imagine that because we aren’t God, there aren’t meaningful choices we need to make and actions we need to take. - this is humility of doing what we can with what we have 

• And then look where we are going to give an account for our lives. James keeps reminding us of this. Even the moist ingrained and established injustice has a time limit. God will set thing right.  This is the humility to acknowledge that and look towards that day with our lives.

• Fire yourself from the role of God

  • “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil.”

    – James 4: 13-17

  • Is God against you making plans? Is God against your vision board? Is God against a sound strategy?

    • Of course not. There are plenty of other places in the Proverbs and in Jesus’ teaching that show the wisdom and fruitfulness of planning ahead.

    • The trouble here is that God is an afterthought if anything

  • James is not against praying and planning. He is saying the essence of friendship with the system of this world, the essence of sin, the essence of us living with the illusion of control like we are God 

  • “Don’t you realize what your life is like? Think of the mist you see out of the window on an autumn morning. It hangs there in the valley, above the little stream. It is beautiful, evocative, mysterious; yes, just like a human being can be. Then the sun comes up a bit further, and … the mist simply disappears. That’s what your life is like. You have no idea what today will bring, let alone tomorrow... Learn to take each day as a gift from God, and to do such planning as is necessary in the light of that.”

    – N.T. Wright
    

• Take on fully the role of image-bearing human beings

  • At the end of this paragraph James almost seems to change directions. He says …

    • “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. “

      – James 4: 17

    • A prayer:

      God, I don’t want to make plans without you, but I also don’t want to skip this wonderful adventure of life you have called me to.I want to walk in the humility of Jesus and the authority of Jesus. The Lion and the Lamb.

      Amen. 
      
      

• There are inescapable time limits for injustice (or money sometimes tells a great lie)

  • “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. u 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.” 

    – James 5: 1-6
    
    

Parents:

• Ask your kids where they recognize current injustice. 

• Help them understand that God has a limit on the timeline of injustice. 

• Pray together  for the people they recognize as victims of injustice.

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November 10: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text:  James 4: 1-12

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive,because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
    but shows favor to the humble.”

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James

• Humble Yourself Before God

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• How do you think pride is defined in our culture?

• What does it look like in the world you engage with? 

• James is New Testament Wisdom literature.

  • It is direct. At times, it feels abrupt. It is meant to lead to practical action.

• James knows it's hard to be a person. 

  • And maybe for you this week, in particular, it has felt hard to be a person.

    • If you were thrilled with the election results, I want you to know that you are fully welcome at this church. We celebrate your presence.

    • If you were devastated by the election results I want you to know you are fully welcomed at this church. We celebrate your presence.

    • If you’re somewhere in between those two: apathetic, numb, resigned, relieved, looking for explanations, whatever. You are fully welcome here. We celebrate your presence.

• We really believe you are made in God's image no matter what.

• If you are a follower of Jesus, you have been given the Holy Spirit. Each one of you carries the potential to show us more of God than what we have known before.

• James knows it’s hard to be a peacemaker who walks in God's wisdom and controls their speech, puts action to their trust and love and endures challenging times with a vision for what patience and perseverance offers  a vision of wholeness

• He shows us that he knows being a person is hard. That’s what verse 4 starts with….

• When desires that are false advertisers get rooted in our hearts, they then get expressed in our lives, choices, and relationships. They tear at the fabric of our love and connections.

• James is saying Pride will kill you and keep you alone and make you think it had to be that way.

• James is saying – you're tearing each other apart because some desires that are totally disconnected from God are running rampant in your souls. They cannot actually bring you real satisfaction, but for the sake of them you are breaking apart your lives and loves.

• James is saying We have to be so careful because we can want to play the role of God in our lives, sometimes in the world, so much. But it always does damage. There is only one who is loving, wise, and sacrificial enough to be God.

• Recognize the source of your conflict and its damage to our soul

  • Your desires are like road signs and even if they are lying to you, they show a type of journey you are on. 

  • They show your allegiance, your friendship, your love.

  • As James K. A. Smith restated for us across the ages.. “You are what you love”

    • A desire points to an allegiance, and friendship.

  • And what is that allegiance? What is that ethos of life in opposition to or disregarding God?

    • It’s pride.

  • You see one of the big western myths is that of autonomous self determination. You are who you decide you be.

  • As if it’s that simple and your self-expression as you see it is the paramount thing to you being fully alive and joyful.

  • But most older cultures and even most of our social scientists know that your immediate community shares who you are and what you want tremendously.

  • Your childhood attachments, your friendships, your community now. Shape you deeply. 

  • You are way more than just what you decide to be. 

  • And James says God opposes the proud.

    • It’s another way of saying God cannot cooperate with you trying to take His job.

  • 6 Markers of Spiritual Pride - Keller summarizing a Christian Author from the middle of 1800s

    • Pride makes you more aware of others’ faults than you are aware of your own. But humility causes you to be far more aware of your own faults. - "if you spot it you go it"  

    • Pride leads you when you speak of others’ faults to have an air of contempt and disdain, but humility leads you to speak of others faults with some understanding, grief, and mercy

    • Pride leads you to quickly separate from those you have criticized or have criticized you, but humility means you stick with people even through difficult relationships 

    • Pride makes you dogmatic and sure about every point of belief. Proud people cannot distinguish between minor and major points of belief because everything is major.

    • A Proud person either loves to confront to be proven right or they refuse to confront out of apathy or fear, but a humble person will gently confront when necessary

    • A Proud person is often unhappy and sorry for themselves. They are filled with self-pity. 

  • When can we start to get a picture of the life of Biblical humility.

  • C.S. Lewis - “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.”

  • Entering the bliss of self-forgetfulness out of our worrying self-obsession

• Humble yourself

  • “God opposes the proud 

    but shows favor to the humble.” 

  • “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you.

    – James 4: 6-8

  • One of the scariest and most difficult parts of being a person is realizing that your character formation up to this point in your life has not left you with enough maturity to make it through this season of life.

• Trust God will be near and God will lift you up.

  • Corrie Ten Boom said “When a train goes through a dark tunnel, you don’t tear up your ticket and jump off; you sit still and trust the driver.”                 

    • More like Corrie Eleven Boom there.
      

Parents:

• How can you talk to your children about what pride is? 

• What does it mean to be a peacemaker?

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November 3: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text:  James 3: 1-18

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving,considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James

• Speaking Peace

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Think of words that someone spoke over you that have stuck with you for years. (positive or negative)

  • Share this with your group. 

• James is New Testament wisdom literature.

  • It is direct. At times, it feels abrupt. It is meant to lead to practical action.

  • James is giving us something of a litmus test for living the Jesus way

  • He provides this like a thesis early on and then expands on each one. Living in the way of Jesus must impact…

    • How you speak 

    • How you treat the poor and the vulnerable 

    • How you adopt or resist the systems of this world.

  • In this text, he is showing us ….

    • Words have tremendous power

    • Words reveal our hearts and shape our lives

    • What to do when words have torn us apart

• Words have tremendous power

  • Our words have the power to create reality.

  • There’s a quote from Mark Twain in one of the english classes here in this school that says “the difference between the right word and the wrong word is difference between Lightening and Lightening Bug.”

  • Our words have the power to describe reality

• Words reveal our hearts and shape our lives

  • Jesus said out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

  • James says if we could somehow control our speech, we could control our entire lives.

  • So, we need self-control or do we need a change of heart?

    • The answer is Yes.

  • Our words reveal what is going on in our hearts.

    • When you use words to harm it almost always lives past that moment. 

    • Many of us have deep wounds from how words have been used in our lives. Our use and others. 

• What to do when words have torn us apart

  • Listen to how serious this is…

    • “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. 

      But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.” 

      – James 3: 13-18

  • James has already told us that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God and God will give it freely to us.

    • So that is where we begin. If we find ourselves participating in damaging speech, we ask God for help and we expect God’s help!!!

  • Ask God for a change of heart

• Pay attention to what shows up in your words

  • Consistent negativity or do you see encouragement?

  • Do you catch cynicism or is hope spring out?

  • Do those around expect words of anger or words of peace?

  • Do you use sarcasm to protect you from vulnerability?

  • Do you vilify and run down those who you disagree with?

  • Do you work to recognize where someone else may be coming from?

• Pay attention to what shows up in your words

  • And then…with God’s help….

• Use your words to sow seeds of Peace (Shalom)

• Consider how GOD MAY HAVE EQUIPPED YOU TO BE A PEACEMAKER.

• Pay attention to what shows up in your words.

• Ask God for help and a change of heart

• Sow seeds of peace.

Parents:

• How do you talk to your kids about the power of their words? 

  • Consider the affirmation your children need and make some plans to speak life and peace over them.  

  • Ask your children how they can use their words at school to be peacemakers rather than bring harm.

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October 27: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text:  James 2: 14-26

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James

• Faith Without Deeds is Dead

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Think of a person you might know who is clearly living very practically what they believe

• Is it possible that you can see what everyone believes by their actions?

• James is trying to write in a way that gets our attention. 
  

• He says faith without works is dead.
  

• Paul said: 

  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 

  – Ephesians 2: 8-9
  

• Is James saying something utterly different here? 

  • James stayed in Jerusalem. He was talking to a specific group of believers who were at risk of their faith becoming only tradition, only a belief system. 

  • James is writing to combat any assumption that may have grown up that faith in Jesus was just about arranging thoughts about God in your head.
    

• He is writing to make sure that his readers knew there was no place in Judaism or Christianity that simply involved an inner state with no outward expression.
  

• James knew what Paul wrote to the Galatians…

  • “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” 

    – Galatians 5: 6

  • Phillip Maliagnon, the apprentice of the monk Martin Luther, said centuries later

    “We are saved by faith alone but not by faith that remains alone”
    

• NT Wright commenting on this passage said…

  “It won’t do simply to tick the box saying ‘I believe in one God’ and hope that will do. It won’t. Without a radical change of life, that ‘faith’ is worthless, and will not rescue someone from sin and death.”

  – NT Wright
  
  

• The Gospel invites us to active friendship with God 

• Active friendship with God matures through obedience 

• Friendship with God means God’s concerns become our concerns 
  

• James gives three examples in this short section to make his point…

1. How we treat the poor

2. How we are when God asks us something that seems impossible 

3. How we are in God asks us to act on our faith when its dangerous 

• When the Gospel unites us to Jesus, we cannot ignore the poor or escape with just sentimentality.

• Abraham’s faith led to a life of action that built a friendship with God.

• Rahab took action that was a huge risk.
  

• You cannot do enough to make yourself Holy like God is Holy, that would be a serious diminishment of God’s Holiness, but you can be brought in. Adopted in God’s family on the accomplishments of Jesus, His life, death, and resurrection.
  

• But then you learn to live out your adoption. You learn to live the Way of Jesus. 

• Jesus promised His power - all authority in heaven and earth 

• And His presence - surely I am with you to the end of the age 
  
  

• If you say you trust Jesus but you don’t take the actions Jesus calls you to, it shows that you don’t really trust Jesus.

• If you say I trust Jesus with my eternal soul, but not my Tuesday, something has gone wrong.

• “ The Gospel is utterly free and it will cost you everything.”
  
  

• Actions give definition to our faith, but we aren't defined by our worst moments or worst mistakes. Thank God.
  
  

• What shape does unbelief take in your life? What does it look like on a monday morning?

• What areas of your life does your belief and behavior divert from one another? 
  
  
  

Parents:

• Belief is something that needs a practice to become visible

• Ask your kids about some of the things they believe. 

• Ask them what it means to live that belief every day.

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October 20: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text:  James 2: 1-13

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James

• Doers of the Word

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Describe every day situations where favoritism exists in our society.

• “Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and the impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services.”

– Rodney Stark

• The growth of the early church is arguably the most remarkable sociological movement in history.  

  • The prayer meeting before Pentecost 120 or so Christians

  • In AD 40:  Approximately 1000 - 4000 Christians in the Roman Empire

  • By AD 350:  53% of the population had converted to the Christians faith

• Believe in God or not, this is a staggering sweep of momentum…

  • How on earth could a Jewish political rebel, crucified on a Roman cross, become the Savior of the Empire that killed him

  • Something changed about the way they did life. This wasn’t a mass media movement, this was a grass roots community emergence.

• For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again. 

  So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. 

  – 2 Corinthians 5:  14-21

• Our old way of evaluating each other is gone, has been replaced with a new way of love.

• We are agents of God’s welcome, ministers of reconciliation, God became nothing to make us everything, so we are ending our small parades of self-righteous pride, to join the march of God’s healing love offered to anyone who wants it.

• James knows we cannot sink back in to the old world’s way of just looking out for people who are like us or only having energy and time for those who can obviously improve our status.

• James knows whatever ideas we have about God in our head, the people we text back, and the people we invite over, and culture of our welcome says what we actually believe.

• In fact, this ethic of compassion finds its origins as we know it in the Christian movement. We take for granted in some sense what the early church spent their lives for.

• Our culture’s view on equality has largely been shaped by the Christian view. It was not always this way. 

• If God has made you family, extend the welcome to all.

• My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 

  – James 2: 1-4

• The Kingdom of God is often upside down - especially regarding human appearances and status 

  • Often being aware of our need is easier for the poor

  • At times the wealthy have many more levels of self-sufficiency to work through and let go 

• We all need mercy and we all pass on what we have received

• Our actions (how we treat other people) should communicate the Gospel, not just our words. 

• “Mercy triumphs over judgement”

• Do we have a culture of the Kingdom of God?

  • The kingdom He promised those who love him?

  • an outpost of the Kingdom of God

• Extending the rich welcome - do you practice this personally?

• The first are last - where in your life is this really difficult to live by?

• Mercy is our lifeblood - Where do you lack mercy?

• What does this do in your heart?

• Where has your heart been bribed by status?

• Where do you need mercy?

• Where do you need to give mercy?
  

Parents:

• How does favoritism take shape in your childrens lives? Where are they faced with temptation to show favoritism? 

• How can you talk about it with them around the dinner table?

---

October 13: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

---

Love

Teaching Text:  James 1: 19-27

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

---

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James

• Doers of the Word

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Describe someone in your life who has been a source of wisdom to you.

• “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.” 

  – James 1: 19-21
  

• The dangers of overconfidence

  • We can hear and hear and hear and remain unmoved, locked in to what we already think and do what we have always done.
    

• Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry for the anger or people does not produce the righteousness of God.
  

• God’s word is like this slow seed that is planted and grows up into fullness and life and nourishment and blessing.

  • The most direct equivalent picture is from Psalm 1 about the person who meditates on God’s word day and night….

    • “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,

      which yields its fruit in season 

      and whose leaf does not wither— 

      whatever they do prospers.”

      – Psalm 1: 3

• Watch out for 

  • Closed Ears, Quick Words, and Anger 

  • Thinking Agreement is the Same Thing As Action 

    • Beware of thinking hearing is the same thing as obedience 

  • For the temptation of Ignoring the Fruit of Our Heart 

• Malcom Gladwell was warning us in 2009 that a person who talks a lot, doesn’t really listen, and uses anger to get things done may be celebrated as a great leader.

  • But that will not produce the realities of God’s Kingdom and character and love.

• Watch out when you are so full of belief but you cannot really listen to anyone except a select few you are already sure you are in complete agreement with 

• Watch out when you are a zealous for the bread and the cup but you forget Jesus and drag someone out of line 

• Watch out when you are prepping a sermon on James and swearing in texts to your wife or blowing up on your kids cause they left the sink full of dishes

• Be careful if you know the Scriptures but dont live them. If you can quote chapter and verse but dont look anything like the one who is called THE WORD OF GOD.

• Watch out when you’ve got a million words to explain yourself but no compassion for anyone else.

• Watch out when you try to bend the word back to you being in control which was never the same anyway.

• JAMES HAS SOME PROVERBS LEVEL WISDOM FOR US.

• James is saying you will be tempted to move that wrench back control and refuse to wait.

  • Unwillingness to listen - watch out if you are slow to listen 

  • Words disconnected from soul - watch out if you just vomit words to shape your world or protect yourself or control other 

  • Using anger to control - watch out for what your anger actually produces. It feels so right in the moment, but look at what grows

• An unavoidable reality of God’s Kingdom is we mature by obedience.

  • We really struggle with this as Americans. 

  • But obedience to God is trust that God made life and knows how to make life work.

  • It’s trust that God wants what is best for us.

    • That God loves us more than we could possibly fully grasp.

  • When we hear so much that we dont put into action we deceive ourselves.

    • WE MISTAKE AGREEMENT FOR ACTION

• We look in the mirror and then forget what we look like 

• James says pay attention to what is growing out our you heart….

  • “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” 

    – James 1: 25-27

• What do I do when this is my struggle? 

  • James gives us a clue…

    • “humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.” 

      – James 1 v 21

  • James is pulling from Israel’s prophetic tradition, specifically here drawing from Isaiah 55…

    • “As the rain and the snow 

come down from heaven, 

and do not return to it 

without watering the earth 

and making it bud and flourish, 

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 

so is my word that goes out from my mouth: 

It will not return to me empty, 

but will accomplish what I desire 

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” 

– Isaiah 55: 10-11

• Jesus is the Word of God.

• Jesus will accomplish the purpose He was sent for.

Parents:

• How do you teach your children the value of wisdom in the sea of information access, which is our current reality? 

• How can you connect obedience of God to the  love God has for you? 

• Pick one thing from the commands of God that you can DO together as a family(prayer, confession, service, affirmation, etc.)

---

October 6: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

---

Love

Teaching Text:  James 1: 13-18

When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all He created.

---

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James

• The Truth about Temptation and Desire

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Do you still notice temptation in your life? 

• Where did you get tempted this week? 

• What is your go to response when you are faced with temptation? 

  • Give in

  • Avoid/Escape

  • Justify

  • Other…?

• James, from his endurance in the fire of trials and with the help of the Holy Spirit, writes this letter.
  

• “Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters when you face trials of many kinds…”
  

• He says “hey watch out if you find yourself blaming God” for the difficulty you are going through, that does something to us. Namely, it turns us away from the person who is our comfort and help.”
  

• Now he writes about temptation.

  • When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

    – James 1: 13-15
    

• God can always be turned to in a time of temptation because God is not the cause of temptation.

• It’s worth mentioning just briefly, this dynamic though, that there is a difference in our life with God between TESTING and TEMPTATION.

  • TEMPTATION very often works on a desire that really does need to be met in our life and a suggestion of how to meet that desire without God or in conflict with God and God’s way.

    • Appetites, Approval, Ambition

    • Consumption, Security, Status

    • These are archetype temptation areas of the human life.
      
      

• God will allow us to be tested, sometimes even lead us into testing. But God does not tempt us to sin.

• There are times when testing is essential

  • Before we are given more power and responsibility 

  • When it needs to be determined if you are ready 

• If God brings you into a time of testing, it almost always because God wants to trust you with more.
  

• One of the more difficult aspects of maturity is learning to deal with the reality that not everything your mind and heart produces is worth trusting and worth acting on

• There can be powerful impulses in our life that are deeply deceptive.

  • Cultures says:

    We need to learn to trust what we want.

• Now this takes some nuance to parse because of course there can be good instincts, and wisdom, and true longings that grows up within us

• BUT ALSO the long testimony of the Scriptures says that desires can come into our consciousness, into our field of consideration, that if we follow them will not lead where they initially seem they will.
  

• We seek the satiation of our appetites, or the satisfaction of our souls, without considering God and God's way.
  
  
  

• The image James uses is graphic; there are certain desires that get you pregnant with death.

  • There are desires that when followed diminish your genuine human life

    • The desire for revenge, gives birth to violence, which leads to physical loss of life.

    • The desires to seek comfort over and over again in a harmful numbing or mind altering substance, leads to addiction, which leads to many deaths before then actual physical death.

      • workaholism, envy, distraction, lust
        
        

• How these idols work:

  • In the beginning there is a great promise and small request

  • Over time the requests get more and more and the shine comes off the promise 

    • The job, the relationship, the alcohol, the grudge, the envy.

    • Laziness asks more and more of you gives less and less
      
      

• “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.”

  – James 1: 16-18
  
  

• If it's good in this world, it originated with God

• Have you been in a place where you have been following desires that lead away from God?
  

Parents:

• How do you talk to your kids about desires?

• Do you help them recognise desires and help them think through how to be patient and find healthy satisfaction?

• Can you help your children be aware of temptation? 

• How can you help them see the prize of delayed gratification?

---

September 29: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

---

Love

Teaching Text:  James 1: 1-12

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:

Greetings.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position.But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.

Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

---

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James

• Joy in Trials

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• If you could change one thing about your instantly, what would you change? 

• What defines your well-being? 

• What does our world say about what well-being looks like? 

• There has to be more than just the circumstances you are currently in to determine your well-being. 
  

• One of the other most powerful arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul makes note of this sibling phenomenon…

  • “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” 

    – 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8

• There is no gospel without the resurrection of Jesus.

  • Jesus could not have been just a good moral teacher with some historical influence because his ideas were compelling.

  • He claimed to be God, to be Israel’s Messiah, and the world’s Redeemer. 

  • If He wasn’t those things, then He was either crazy and delusional, or He knew He was lying, or He was those things.

  • He is life and He gives life.

    • And this brings us to the heart of the book of James.
      
      

• JAMES is New Testament wisdom literature. Like what you might find in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Scriptures.

  • Whatever your view of the world or your belief system or your philosophy, you need some answers to the questions …

    • Why is life so challenging? AND 

    • How do we deal with its difficulty and pain?

    • Is there is a way to live through pain other than just being blown and tossed by it and then despair?
      

• Our world is good at some things. It’s not very good at all in our currently culture for preparing people to go through hardships and pain 
  
  

• James gets right into it. And he shows us that patience doesn’t give all its treasure away on the first day, but that if we can learn to endure in faith 

• We might 

  • shatter the illusion of sufficiency

  • deepen our understanding and awareness of God

  • expands our compassion

  • we might even know and understand ourselves more

• “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” 

  – James 1: 2-4

• James seems to know that suffering exposes reality and because of that can deepen our understanding of and ability to live in the real world.

• Our world had a brokenness and violence in it that runs through to the core. The more you live well doesn’t mean you will live easily with a smooth journey.

• At the heart of our faith is a perfect Person suffering deeply, all the way to death for crimes He didn’t commit.

  • A man dying for his enemies.
    

• James is saying that we need to pay attention to our perspective when life gets hard.

  • But along the way you may have to realize all the other things you are practically relying in for your well-being, 

  • You may need to see that despite what you say about God you have many other functional Saviors.

  • “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.  But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.” 

    – James 1: 5-8
    

• “Doubt” is translated more accurately as divided loyalty. 
  

Ask for wisdom

• God doesn’t just give wisdom to the best people who have earned it.
  

They ask for help

• “Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business. 

  Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.” 

  – James 1: 9-12

• Sometimes suffering exposes things for how they reality are.

Connects us to reality

• Suffering shows the character of God beyond my mood and circumstances. 

• Capacity for endurance

An important word about the why and the where of suffering

• Be very gentle and humble with the WHY

• Be courageous with the WHERE
  

The Crown of Life

• Suffering and hanging on to God and knowing God is hanging on to you can prepare you to LIVE

• And the reward is you get LIFE.
  

This is a Friendship

• We are to run to Christ. Who has suffered. And we are not alone.

• We trust in His resurrection!!!
  

• “From the standpoint of Heaven, the most miserable life on earth will just look like one night in a bad hotel”

  – Theresa of Avila 

• “My question – that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide – was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man…a question, without an answer to which, one cannot live. It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow? What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?” It can also be expressed thus: Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy.”

  – Leo Tolstoy  
  
  

• Shatter the illusion of sufficiency

• Deepen our understanding and awareness of God

• Expand our compassion

• We might even know and understand ourselves more
  

• Where do you go to ask for help?

• Which circumstances make you question God? 
  

Parents:

• What is your first instinct when you see suffering in the lives of your children?

• What do your responses teach your kids?

• Do your children see some of your suffering? 

• How do you model suffering and faith response to your children?

---

September 22: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

---

Love

Teaching Text:  ‭‭John 15: 1-16

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

---

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• Vision Sundays | Love | Gardens

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What’s one thing you have done that you are proud of and that has taken a long time to accomplish? 

• Name a person who has served or invested an extraordinary amount in your life

• What about that person’s love are you grateful for? 

Gardens 

• “I think this is the best-known story in the world because it’s everybody’s story.  I think it is the symbol story of the human soul.  I’m feeling my way now—don’t jump on me if I’m not clear.  The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears.  I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection.  And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind.”

  – East of Eden 

• Lee goes on....

“One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world—and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty animal. Now wait! Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul—the secret, rejected, guilty soul.”

– East of Eden

• Whatever our understanding of the world or our lives we have to grapple with some explanation for why we fall back into the same patterns and struggles and anxieties and violences or aching search

• “In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised. I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks of us. It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

  – C.S. LEWIS

• Is there a love that could heal everything?

• Creation and redemption are the movements of God Who has love at the very center of God’s Being

• Julian Barnes said, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.”

• From Eden to the New Jerusalem - we begin in a garden with a tree in the middle and the last pictures are of a city with a garden in the center and the tree of life for the healing of the nations.

• “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

  – John 15: 1-5

• Out of love grows fruitfulness

• “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. 

  “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

  – John 15

• Church, our vision is PRESENCE, FORMATION, and LOVE

• It is their story - BE WITH GOD, BECOME LIKE JESUS, LIVE A LIFE OF LOVE BY THE SPIRIT

• “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other. 

  – John 15

• Our vision is love, because God’s Vision is love.

• The fruit of God’s Kingdom grows in love. That is the Garden.

• God is the Gardener, but He has asked us to join in.
  
  

Here is our call. 

• Abide in the Love of God

• Contend for Love in Your Closest Relationships 

• Work the Gardens of Love in Our City 

• We can only pass on what we have received. 

• We sow seeds of love where we can 

• We tend what we can see in the gardens where we see the things of God growing

• What does your garden look like? 

• Your home, your building, your block?

• What tending of that garden is needed? 

• What one place can you love and serve consistently this fall? 

Parents:

• What gardens of love and care can you invite your kids to participate in?

• Where can you serve the city or church together as a family? 

• What habits do you want to create for your family? 

 

For ideas on how to show hospitality through the Good Neighbor Collaborations, email Patricia Manwaring at patricia@trinitygracechurch.com

---

September 15: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

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Love

Teaching Text:  ‭‭Luke 22: 7-34

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”

“Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked.

He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.”

They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”

After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed. But woe to that man who betrays him!” They began to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this.

A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdomand sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• Vision Sundays | Formation | Tables

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Describe one of the most memorable meals you’ve ever had and why it was so memorable.

• Imagine yourself at the end of your life, looking back and asking yourself what matted most in your brief time on earth. 

ALTARS

• We are answering the question, “What matters most?”

• Jesus himself, when asked to summarize, said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.”

• We are spending a few weeks this fall asking what is most important for us as a church. What is our VISION? 

PRESENCE - FORMATION - LOVE

• That we are called to make this a priority as a church family, as people…to…

  • Be with God

  • Become like Jesus

  • Live by the Spirit

ALTARS + TABLES + GARDENS

• We believe God is inviting us to… 

  • Build Altars - places where we are seeking God’s presence and mark that God has met with us

  • Set Tables - places of welcome, friendship, hospitality, where we are formed in community 

  • Tend Gardens - sow seeds of love, tend places where good things are growing, seek the fruit of the Kingdom of God

• “If you can read the gospels without getting hungry, you are not paying attention.”

– Arthur Boers

• In Luke 5 Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners at Levis house.

• In Luke 7 Jesus is anointed at the home of Simon the Pharisee during a meal.

• In Luke 9 Jesus feeds the five thousand.

• In Luke 10 Jesus eats at the home of Mary and Martha.

• In Luke 11 Jesus condemns the Pharisees and teachers of the lay at a meal.

• In Luke 14 Jesus is at a meal when he urges people to invite the poor to their meals rather than their friends.

• In Luke 19 Jesus invites himself to dinner with Zachaeus.

• In Luke 22 we have this account we heard today of the Last Supper.

• In Luke 24 the risen Christ has a meal with the two disciples in Emmaus, and the later eats fish with the disciples in Jerusalem - thats where PETER is restored after his predicted denial 
  

• ”The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10;45); “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost: (Luke 19:10); “The Son of Man came eating and drinking.” (Luke 7 v 34.) 

• Tim Chester points out in his book A Meal with Jesus …

  • “The first two are statements of purpose. Why did Jesus come? He came to serve, to give his life as a ransom, to seek and save the lost. The third is a statement of method. How was he going to do this? He came eating and drinking.”

– TIM CHESTER

THE SACRAMENT IS A MEAL 

• “The blend of celebration and betrayal in the scene at supper is preparing us for the blend of triumph and tragedy in the crucifixion itself. Jesus accomplishes his true mission by being falsely accused. He achieves his divine vocation by submitting to the punishment that others had deserved. As God took the arrogant opposition of Pharaoh in Egypt and made it serve his own ends in the spectacular rescue of his people, so now, through this one man at supper with his friends, we see God doing the same thing. When the powers of evil do their worst, and crucify the one who brings God’s salvation, God uses that very event to defeat those powers.

  We who, daily, weekly or however often, come together to obey Jesus’ command, to break bread and drink wine in his memory, find ourselves drawn into that salvation, that healing life. The powers may still rage, like Pharaoh and his army pursuing the Egyptians after Passover. But they have been defeated, and rescue is secure.”

– NT WRIGHT

• We grow through BREAKTHROUGHS and HABITS

• What tables can you set?

• What invitations can you extend? 

• Where are you committed to showing up every day? Every week?

• What are your practices and habits of formation?
  

• Parents:

  • What table habits can you create that will immerse your kids in the value of hospitality?

  • Which non-married person/s could you invite over for a meal to welcome them and give the family time to hang out with?

  • How can your family show hospitality to the vulnerable and or under-resourced? 

• For ideas on how to show hospitality through the Good Neighbor Collaborations, email Patricia Manwaringat patricia@trinitygracechurch.com

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September 8: Groups Guide

About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

---

Love

Teaching Text:  ‭‭Genesis 3: 8-9

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walkingin the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

Revelation 21: 2-3

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

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Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

• Vision Sundays | Pressnce | Altars

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What aspects or traditions do you like most about the fall?

• What are you personally excited about this Fall? 

• The world we live in keeps us perpetually in An Imminent Frame

  • What urgent language in our world can you recall? 

• The thing we lose is TRANSCENDENCE

  What matter most? 

  So many opinions about what matters most. 

• And we wanted to take these few weeks at the beginning of the fall as to celebrate 15 years and move into all that God has next for us to center in on what is most important for Trinity Grace.

• At our 10 year anniversary as a church GOD spoke some words to us. Simplified the expression of our vision. It wasn’t utterly new, but it was a sharpening of what we had been living.

  • PRESENCE. FORMATION. LOVE

  • Be with God. Become like Jesus. Live by the Spirit 

• MAKE ALTARS - places of God’s revealed presence

  SET TABLES - places of friendship, hospitality and love 

  TEND GARDENS - places where the things of the Kingdom grow.

• ALTARS + TABLES + GARDENS

  • These are places of a presence, formation, and love. They are spaces we build and set apart, we set up and host, we sow seeds and join in cultivation.

  • Places to consecrate and seek God's face. (prayer events becoming a prayer culture)

  • Places to gather and be formed in hospitality and love. (discipleship in groups and specific equipping, growth in hospitality)

  • Places where good things grow, things of the Kingdom, seeds becoming fruit. (seeds of service, love, partnership, growing and harvesting for others)

• This begins with God’s Presence

  • Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” 

    And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”
    – Exodus 33

• This is our prayer - God your presence is what matters most and if we have come to place where that isn’t the case will you renew our hearts and minds.

  • The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. There can be the one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His Presence. On our part there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work it is to show us the Father and the Son. If we co-operate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.

    – A.W. Tozer

  • Importance of presence throughout scripture… 

    • In Eden, it is the loss of a sense of God’s presence that we look on at in sadness as Adam and Eve hide in fear from the God they walked with the cool of the evening.

      • And the restoration of our union with God in that way weaves through the whole story 

    • Jacob wrestling with God at Bethel and making an Altar to mark where he had met and wrestled with God 

    • Moses in his tent of meeting, as a precursor to the tabenacle - a place to speak and be spoken to by God as a friend 

    • David - longing to make a place - a house for God - and you can take a deep dive studying David’s tabernacle as a place where he sang and worshipped and ached and celebrated in prayer, writing Psalms, marked by and making God’s presence

    • Jesus - could have prayed anywhere - but he had a custom of drawing away, early in the morning, late the evening, drawing away to be with the Father - he had places, gardens, groves of trees where he went AS HIS CUSTOM WAS - he also also gathered to worship with his neighbors - making altars and sanctuaries in time and place.

    • and the final picture we are given in Revelation is a PRESENCE picture, a marker of where God is with his people, an altar in the text…

      • I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 

        – Revelation 21:2-3

• What is MOST important to you this Fall? What Matters MOST? 

• Where do you 3want God to meet with you?

• What parts of your life do you want to consecrate to Jesus? 

• How can you make time to be with Jesus?

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