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.
breakthrough
Teaching Text: Matthew 17:14-21
When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”
“You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment.
Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed,you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
Prayer
Fasting
Presence
Take a moment of silence and think about these questions:
This is a version of the five-step Daily Examen that St. Ignatius practiced.
Locate yourself in God’s presence. He is with you. Give thanks for God’s great love for you.
Pray for the grace to notice and understand how God is acting in your life.
Review your day — recall specific moments, highs and lows, and your feelings at the time.
Reflect on what you did, said, or thought in those instances. Were you drawing closer to God, or further away? Celebrate and repent for those moments.
Look toward tomorrow — think of how you might collaborate more effectively with God’s plan. Be specific, and conclude with the “Our Father.”
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
The intensity of the need
The Physical and Spiritual Suffering of the Boy - the focus lens of the story zooms in on the disciples and the teaching moment that Jesus has with them.
But consider the plight of this boy. He is suffering physically - has seizures which on its own would be a very difficult life in the 1st century. But his seizures have him thrown into the fire and water. There is an indication that something more than just physical is going on even in the diagnosis.
The boy is suffering physically but also spiritually.
The pain of the failure
So much was riding in this moment. Jesus, Peter, James, and John are all missing. But also, the remaining nine couldn’t do what they had been commissioned to do: “I brought him to your disciples but they could not heal him.”
There is renewed pain for the father of the boy. Jesus expresses frustration. We often know the struggle of learners or apprentices or children who haven’t gotten a handle on something yet. But here were see the exasperation of Jesus as Messiah and a Rabbi.
No one seems to be getting it. And the consequences are real and right in front of him. There are a number of conclusions that someone watching may have drawn at this point:
This type of healing can’t happen.
Jesus is the only one who can really do the the Kingdom stuff.
There are spiritual elites that have to tackle the hardest stuff.
Any of those conclusions might not give you the full perspective and that’s why the disciples following up with Jesus is so important: “Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not cast it out?”
Where you go with your questions matters
Many of us have made conclusions with had the information and our best guess. But bring your God questions to God. Don’t let someone without faith or with very little be the final word on faith for you.
We live in a world where we borrow each others doubts. How about using someone else’s faith?
The father of the boy came directly to Jesus: “can you help me?”
The disciples came directly to Jesus to learn what the limitation was.
Jesus answer is painful but its freeing: “So Jesus said to them, Because of your unbelief…” Jesus tells them something the New Testament reinforces. God’s power in our lives flows through faith.
The power of faith
Jesus gives a description of the power of faith the disciples: “For assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Faith, Hope, Love - any of these may be felt, but may be acted on without the feelings as well.
James 4: 2-3: “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.“
Fasting
This is some of what fasting can be. A small sacrifice of devotion and worship. A way to pray with my body that I am hungry for God to move in my life and world. Makes me a small degree more attuned to things I can ignore when I am full with food.
First Jesus said, it was their unbelief. Then he added that certain things have to happen through prayer and maybe prayer and fasting.
If we add this to what we see in the rest of the Scripture I think we see something begin to come into focus that is perhaps initially confusing.
We can go after breakthroughs and healing for others. Faith will play a massive role. Prayer and fasting help to bring about breakthrough and healing.
Love
Read these notes and discuss the questions below:
What are you going after for someone else? What do you want to see? In your friends, family, kids, city, etc. Are their physical and spiritual places where healing and freedom is desperately needed?
Let’s bring our frustration, pain, disappointment, deep needs to Jesus feet. Let’s remember how much power Jesus attributed to Faith. Let’s use our faith on behalf of others.
Intercession is a way to secure good things including breakthroughs to life and freedom for others.
Fasting and prayer is a way to exercise faith in secret that you long to see impact public life.
Isaiah 58: "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 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. 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 We are inviting us to fast together as a church: from sunrise to sundown, skip lunch, or 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 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 let’s Fast on Wed. When we fast we pray with our bodies. We say and demonstrate that we are hungry for God. We fast as an expression of love.
Pray for one another in the group.
