About This Guide: This weekly groups guide, “The Bread of Life,” is designed as a companion to our Lent 2022 teaching series, fostering discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting. Join a group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.
Pray with Your Body, Eat with Your Eyes
Teaching Text: Mathew 3:16-17, 4:1-3
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
an introduction to fasting and prayer in the way of Jesus
Presence
Take a moment of silence and think about these questions:
Take 2 minutes of silence
Notice your body, all the aches, and pains
Notice your emotions, what rises to the surface?
Notice your mind - what thoughts keep coming to you in the silence? (It might help to have a pen and paper ready to write them down so you don’t feel the urge to be distracted by them during the time)
Meditate on these words of God through the Prophet Isaiah.
“Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.” (Isaiah 58)
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
The Time Between
This describes an important aspect of many of our Christian lives.
Lent is a time between - carries us from winter to spring
from agony to resurrection
prepares us
invites us to examine
calls us to remember
for years the church used this time to prepare people for baptism
this year might be a time for you to remember yours
to return to your first love
to reconnect with Jesus from theory to friend
And so as we begin Lent together I want to look at what fills the in-between time from Jesus’ baptism to the temptations we have recorded.
In that in-between Jesus prayed and He fasted
Jesus spoke with His Father and He abstained from food.
Jesus did not fast to get the Father’s love and affirmation. He had that.
We fast:
To prepare
For Easter
For communion
To do without in love
To be free:
from the flesh
“Freedom to, freedom from, freedom for”
For fruit - some place you long to see God show up
For Breakthrough - some long standing challenge you want God to change
And all that He receives at His baptism is tested… Baptism: Identity, Anointing, Affirming, Filling
Temptation:
Who are you
You are weak and hungry
Who knows you or cares
How will you accomplish anything
There is a struggle between the flesh and the Spirit - many of our challenges are in this space…
Jesus is the bread of life
Prayer - soul venting, singing, silence, journaling, fasting, praying with others
Fasting and praying with others
a way to say no to the flesh and yes to the Spirit
“Our lives are destined to become like the life of Jesus. The whole purpose of Jesus’ ministry is to bring us to the house of the Father. Not only did Jesus come to free us from the bonds of sin and death, he also came to lead us into the intimacy of his divine life. It is difficult for us to imagine what this means. We tend to emphasize the distance between Jesus and ourselves. We see Jesus as the all-knowing and all-powerful Son of God who is unreachable for us sinful, broken human beings. But in this way of thinking, we forget that Jesus came to give us his own life. He came to lift us up into the loving community with the Father. Only when we recognize the radical purpose of Jesus’ ministry will we be able to understand the meaning of the spiritual life. Everything that belongs to Jesus is given for us to receive.” (Henri Nouwen)
Love
Read these notes and discuss the questions below:
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke. Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter-- when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness [1] will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.” (Isaiah 58)
The heart of fasting as a follower of Jesus is to give up something good to seek something greater, God and God’s Kingdom. Though it is certainly a good idea, when we give up something that is already damaging or sinful, that is not exactly fasting. That is repentance.
Every Wednesday during Lent I am inviting us to fast together as a church.
from sunrise to sundown on Wednesday or skip lunch
give during fasting times
The biblical record of fasting primarily involves willingly giving up food for a period of time as a response to a grievous sacred moment in life. This could be anything from a death, sin, fear, threat, need, sickness, period of preparation, or time of seasonal renewal such as Lent. We respond to these moments with fasting.
So lets Fast on Wed. When we fast we pray with our body.
We say and we demonstrate that we are hungry for God. We fast as an expression of love.
Pray for one another in the group.
