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?

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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.

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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.

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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 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.)

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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.

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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

• The Truth about Temptation and Desire

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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

• Joy in Trials

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Themes

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

• Vision Sundays | Love | Gardens

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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

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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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June 23: 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:  ‭‭1 Corinthians 12: 1-11 and 27-31

Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.

---

Themes

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

• FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT | Meditations on the Ministry of the Holy Spirit

• Gifts of the Spirit

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What special ability do you have that people in your group does not know about? 

• Resume Virtues and Eulogy Virtues.

  • “The resume virtues are the ones you list on your resume, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being - whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.

    Most of us would say that the eulogy virtues are more important than the resume virtues, but I confess that for long stretches of my life I’ve spent more time thinking about the latter than the former. Our education system is certainly oriented around the resume virtues more than the eulogy ones. Public conversation is, too - the self-help tips in magazines, the nonfiction bestsellers. Most of us have clearer strategies for how to achieve career success than we do for how to develop a profound character.”

    – David Brooks

  • God is a wild life artist. Eugene Peterson has said this in his book Run with the Horses…

    “Every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless. He never, fatigued and unable to maintain the rigors of creativity, resorts to mass-producing copies. Each life is a fresh canvas on which he uses lines and colors, shades and lights, textures and proportions that he has never used before.

    We see what is possible: anyone and everyone is able to live a zestful life that spills out of the stereotyped containers that a sin-inhibited society provides. Such lives fuse spontaneity and purpose and green the desiccated landscape with meaning. And we see how it is possible: by plunging into a life of faith, participating in what God initiates in each life, exploring what God is doing in each event. The persons we meet on the pages of Scripture are remarkable for the intensity with which they live Godward, the thoroughness in which all the details of their lives are included in God's word to them, in God's action in them. It is these persons who are conscious of participating in what God is saying and doing that are most human, most alive. These persons are evidence that none of us is required to live "at this poor dying rate" for another day, another hour.”

    – Eugene Peterson

  • God is an artist with our lives, but beautifully God is not simply making us into something, but inviting us into a story, giving us gifts along the way, filling our spirits with the Spirit of God in this kind of friendship dance.

• When God wants to build something, God equips people with gifts.

  • Corinth - was a city and church where God was clearly at work - they saw fruit in the Gospel and outpourings of the power of the Holy Spirit, but we also know they dealt with..

    • divisions over leadership 

    • jealousy and quarreling 

    • obvious and public sexual sin 

    • indulgence and forgetting the others in the body

    • spiritual pride 

    • confusion and even chaos in their gatherings 

  • Their gifts were greater than their maturity - it is interesting that this then is the letter in the New Testament with some of the most extended teaching on the spiritual gifts.

• Our strengths and weaknesses are often intermingled and what can make us great can threaten our downfall. And where we most need help may be the place God is most clearly seen in our lives. 

• The Spirit of God is always lifting up Christ.

  • “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. 

    Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”

    – 1 Corinthians 12 v 4-7

• These are two huge errors the church can make…

  • Demanding each story to look the same.

    or 

  • Missing that each person’s gifts are not just for them but for the body.

• We see this in the American church in 

  • Rigid behavior modification in a given community - wells vs fences

  • Celebrity Christianity - overly exalting someone because of their gifts

  • Phariseeism - clean up the outside but your heart is heart 

  • Second hand christianity - that person will do the God seeking so I don’t have to

• If you are in Christ you are given the Holy Spirit

• If you are in Christ you are gifted by the Holy Spirit

  • You are gifted by the Spirit to love well.

  • You are gifted by the Spirit to lift up Christ.

  • You are gifted by the Spirit so the body of Christ can this shining outpost of the Kingdom of God, tabernacle that it is meant to be.

• Message of Wisdom – applying knowledge of God and His Word to specific areas of life, making sense of a moral dilemma, I need wisdom here.

• Message of Knowledge – similar but more to do with navigating a particularly difficult to understand issue and making it clear. Help me in this confusion. 

  • Wisdom is the decision

  • Knowledge is the clarity.

• Faith – seeing situations with Gods power in perspective, remembering that all things are possible with God. Trusting God’s character and promise in the real details of life

• Healings – this is the plural which means can happen at times, not necessarily always, and God gives the power for instant or gradual healing. WE should be praying for healing!!

• Miraculous Powers – asking an evil Spirit to leave a person, having a vision of something that will happen, praying for someone to live who has died. 

• Prophecy – sensing Gods heart on a matter and redirecting people by sharing it, Scripture, pictures, words

• Discernment between spirits – being able to sense when motives are impure,  being able to tell when something is not from God

• Speaking in Tongues – praying in a language that is not understood by the speaker, happened at Pentecost and all heard, happens in private prayer, if it happens publically in church then it is meant to have an interpretation

• Interpretation of Tongues –  the ability to interpret what has been said it tongues

• Apostolic – visionary, pioneering work in the Kingdom of God

• Which of these do you think you have? 

• These are way to love one another

  Ways for Jesus to be lifted up

  And you are gifted by the Spirit

• Spiritual gifts emerge in the body of Christ as we…

  • Walk in friendship with Jesus – ABIDE is what the Jesus calls this

  • Speak the Gospel to your heart

  • Regularly spend time in extended prayer

  • Practice speaking with God through your day

  • Hide His word in your heart

  • Meet regularly with the church

  • Have people in your life with permission to call you to Jesus

  • Take risks of obedience when given

• Take Opportunities of Service – when you have chances to serve even if you are not sure yet what you GIFTS are, begin serving

  • Understanding for Christians is often on the other side of obedience

• Follow the Clues of your Passions – look at what makes your heart race

  • Look at what you have imagination for

  • Look at what bothers you in our church

  • How are you meant to BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE

• Follow the Clues of Confirmations from Community

  • Pay attention when those in your community feel deeply encouraged by your service

  • Pay attention when you are being used to build the body up

  • Paul reminded Timothy that the church had prayed words over Him about his calling

• Practice Using Gifts  - once you get an idea about something realize that it will take development

  • A gift can be neglected

  • Practice in your Life Group – you may sense God gving you special insight for a person

  • You may notice a skill at explaining hard to grasp things

  • You may sense it is easy for you to bring people and be open about your faith

  • You may have vision for new things your life group or our church could do

• Capacity - God has given you gift but you may not know yet the space it will fill 

• Development - is in consistency 

• Acceleration - acceleration is a gift God occasionally gives

---

June 16: 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:  ‭‭1 John‬ ‭2‬:‭ 29‭‭ - ‭3‬: ‭2

If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

---

Themes

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

• FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT | Meditations on the Ministry of the Holy Spirit

• Seal | Evidence of Adoption

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What are some unique personality traits in your family of origin? 

• What are some habits that are unique to your family growing up?

• A family image. 

• In the book of Genesis, the author is describing the thought process of the creator God and writes:

  “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

  – ‭‭Genesis‬ ‭1‬:‭26‬-‭27‬ ‭‬‬

• Image: the Hebrew word is selem and in the bible it is mostly used— outside of this verse and a few others in Genesis—to describe idols. We tend to talk about idols today in sort of metaphorical terms: things that we build our lives and worth around that are not God (work as an idol, marriage as an idol, etc. But biblically idols were very literal—they were structures made of materials that people carved or smelted into the shape of other created things (whether animals or other humans) and then they worshipped those structures.

  • “You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god— which you made for yourselves.”

    ‭‭– Amos‬ ‭5‬:‭26‬

• That same word is used in the psalms to describe a phantom or a shadow—something that has form, but no substance—like the same way a ghost is an image of a human being, but is in fact disconnected from its life source.

  • “Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be.”

    ‭‭– Psalms‬ ‭39‬:‭6‬

• God takes his image very seriously. Later in Genesis, God is speaking—making a new covenant with Noah. God says:

  • “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.”

    – ‭‭Genesis‬ ‭9‬:‭6‬‬‬

• You and every person you have ever met carries the image of the creator. Being made in the image of God means that you have inherent worth and value as derived from the one who gave you that image. 

• The word “Likeness” (in Hebrew demut): is used to compare things that are similar in substance.  This one thing is like this one other thing—they share a quality or qualities.

• When Isaiah is prophesying trying to put into words what he’s hearing, he says:

  Listen, a noise on the mountains, like that of a great multitude! Listen, an uproar among the kingdoms, like nations massing together! The Lord Almighty is mustering an army for war.

  – Isaiah‬ ‭13‬:‭4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

• We were created in God’s image and likeness. We both bear the mark of creator God in our physical bodies, but we were also meant to share in his character–in the substance of who he is. 

  • The image of God in you is immutable. It cannot be changed. 

  • Wherever you are, whatever you do in this world, you will always carry the indelible mark of the one who created you. We look like our Father.

  • So we carry the indelible mark of our creator, but the fall did happen. And part of what was broken or injured was the likeness. The separation that humanity experienced made us not unlike the phantom images the psalmists wrote about. The events in the garden disconnected us from the source of life and cast a shadow over the likeness of God in us.  

• And that is what Jesus came to repair.  It says in Colossians that:
  For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him…

  – ‭‭Colossians‬ ‭1‬:‭19‬

• Jesus came and showed us how to live, not only as an image of God, but also in his likeness–the full likeness of God, in Jesus.

  • Jesus, through his life, showed us how to live by the power of the spirit–the spirit is what re-creates us the likeness of God that was marred in the garden.

  • “Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

    – ‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭5‬:‭5‬

• In the biblical story, seals were a big deal.  It was the way you authenticate a message from a person of importance, usually a king.  It indicates a decision that cannot be changed.

  • “Now write another decree in the king’s name in behalf of the Jews as seems best to you, and seal it with the king’s signet ring—for no document written in the king’s name and sealed with his ring can be revoked.”

    – ‭‭Esther‬ ‭8‬:‭8‬

• The clear implication here is that once you believe the good news and receive the Holy Spirit. That the King—our living and eternal king has made a decision about you that cannot be changed

• Here, the thing that is promised, the thing that God has sealed and made an irrevocable deposit toward is our full and complete redemption. 

  • Like the immutable image of God in us, the seal and deposit of the Holy Spirit makes God’s likeness in us an inevitability—it makes it a promise. This is the description that Paul is giving us and the picture that John is painting for us.

  • When you see Jesus, you will be like him. You will be like him. Somehow in the mystery of the gospel and of grace, by the power of the holy spirit, what was lost in the garden will be fully restored to us when we see our savior face-to-face.

• There will be an unmistakable family resemblance—not just appearance, but also character.

  • That is the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives—reconciliation into the family of God. 

  • “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

    ‭‭– Galatians‬ ‭5‬:‭22‬-‭23‬

---

June 9: 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 14: 25-27

“All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

---

Themes

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

• FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT | Meditations on the Ministry of the Holy Spirit

• Teacher | Reminder | Keeper

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What aspects make for a good life in NYC? 

• If we pay attention to our city we can hear the question being asked, being lived. WHAT MAKES A GOOD LIFE?

  • We see the Spirit of God at work in Creation.

    • In the opening moments of Genesis, in the poetry of the creation account in Torah, we have a picture of God as Spirit.

  • We see the role of the Holy Spirit in initiating New Creation 

    • When Jesus goes to begin His public ministry, we have this powerful picture again. The picture is of the Spirit as a Bird, descending on Jesus.

  • The Holy Spirit gives birth to the New Creation community of Jesus 

• All of what we see Christ doing throughout the Gospels is done in the power of the Holy Spirit.

  • And this is the very same Spirit that fills you and I. The life of God in the soul of a person.

  • Jesus says in the upper room…

    “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”

• John 14

  • The Spirit of God Teaches Us - instructs us, helps us with discoveries of who God is.

  • The Spirit of God Reminds Us of what we have come to know - often in crucial moments the Spirit will pull into our minds and hearts who Jesus is, what God has said is true about us, how life actually works.

• Jesus’ expectation for us is that the Spirit will give them a share in the peace that He experiences. The Holy Spirit will give them, give us a share of The Shalom of God.

• 2 Corinthians 5 says … “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

  • You may be familiar with a translation that says if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation.

  • THE HOLY SPIRIT MAKES US ALIVE IN A WAY THAT WE WERE NOT BEFORE

• The apostle Paul puts in “I pray that out of his glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” – Ephesians 3 v 16-17

• THE SPIRIT COMES TO DWELL IN OUR INNER BEING.

• Romans 5 says the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts.

  • So now there is a new way to live, a new way to operate, a new way to change that is not simply our already formed MIND, WILL, and EMOTIONS.

  • We are in the REALM OF THE SPIRIT.

  • Our minds are renewed, and our decision-making is changed by God.

  • ONE WAY TO UNDERSTAND THIS IS OUR SOUL BEGINS TO BE HEALED 

• THE GOSPEL IS NOT JUST PUNCHING YOUR TICKET FOR AN AFTERLIFE IN PARADISE. IT IS HEALING YOUR SOUL SO YOU CAN BEAR BEING IN GOD’S FULLY REVEALED PRESENCE 

  • SO YOU CAN BE FULLY ALIVE.

  • “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. “

    – 2 Corinthians 4 v 16

• How does this reality inspire you to change how you live? 

• THE SPIRIT IS OUR TEACHER AND REMINDER

  • BUT THERE ARE SOME PLACES THE SPIRIT HAS PROMISED TO MINISTER TO US 

  • TO TEACH AND REMIND US.

  • SCRIPTURE. WORSHIP. COMMUNITY. PRAYER

• How much is your life ordered around the practices that engage specifically with the Holy spirit? 

• SCRIPTURE. WORSHIP. COMMUNITY. PRAYER

  • The Spirit might teach and remind us in many ways in our life, but these are four places we can expect the Spirit to minister to us

  • THIS IS A CRUCIAL PART OF THE HEALING OF OUR SOULS

• Scripture - the stories of Jesus, God’s work in the world, in the armor of God, the sword of the spirit is the word of God

• Worship - the narrative of the Scripture shows us over and over again that God inhabits the praises of his people. 

  • The ministry of the Spirit is to lift of the life of Christ. When we worship we are agreeing and participating in that.

  • Worship helps to re-orient our affections, it begins to direct and reinforce our love to the highest aim of God rather than some other lesser thing.

  • So those lesser things find their proportion and place 

• Community - the priesthood of all believers, we minster the Spirit to each other, where two or more are gathered in God’s name, God is there.

• Prayer - as we grow in talking and listening to God we learn to discern how God speaks to us, often in a still small voice in our inner being, prompts and invitations to love, conviction or correction when we have drifted from God’s way

• So the Spirit is teaching, but the Spirit is often teaching by reminding …

  • Reminding 

  • I often experience this as conviction in my heart or mind…

    • Of identity + Of correction + Of promises

• ASK THE HOLY SPIRIT TO BE YOUR INSTRUCTOR AND REMINDER TODAY, IN YOUR INNER BEING.

• I want the last words of this meditation to be the words of this prayer for the ministry of the Holy Spirit…

  • “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 

    Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” 

    – Ephesians 3 v 16-21

• Pray this prayer over one another in your small group, family, marriage, friendships…

---

June 2: 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:  Roman 8: 9-14

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodiesbecause of his Spirit who lives in you.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.

---

Themes

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

• FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT | Meditations on the Ministry of the Holy Spirit

• Advocate | Intecessor

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• How do you observe shame being used or leveraged in our culture? 

• Specifically, do you see shame playing a role in relationships you have?

• Is Christianity a set of thoughts about God in our head that we have organized in the right or satisfactory way or is it something more?

  • Certainly, there are essential beliefs, but what is the experience? 

  • And since the experience can be so subjective, can we really say anything definitive about what must be true of it?

• Is it dangerous to have a set expectation about what the experience of being a Christian should be like to be real and true or enough?
  

• We certainly have testimony from the ages, from the saints of the past that the same Christian life might have rapturous joy in God's presence; a full emotional fire at God's nearness and also seasons of dryness, distance, and even dark nights of the soul.

• Jesus said “it is good that I go away, because My Father will send you The Spirit” - THE PARAKLETOS

  • The Helper, Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor. This word is so rich and holds for us some pointers to the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

• Jesus prophetically tells them about the sending of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's ministry.

• And then they wait and pray and wait and pray, and at Pentecost—50 days after the Passover—Christ died as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

• WE HAVE THE OUTPOURING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

  • The Spirit is poured out, and the church is born.

• And the community they form by the Spirit is an heart-stirring and beautiful

  • “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” 

    – Acts 2 v 42-47

• They see Jesus’ promise prove true.

  • They experience the Holy Spirit as Parakletos. Helper. Comforter. Advocate. Intercessor.

• SO: Yes, Christianity is something you believe 

• But it is also something you experience

• And it becomes something that you live.

• And if you have only had the belief, the thoughts about God organized a certain way, and never the experience, never the fullness of life, I want to tell you THERE IS MORE

  • More of Jesus. Poured out in our hearts and minds and bodies by the Holy Spirit.

• “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. 

  Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. 

  14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”

  – Romans 8 v 9-14

• The Spirit of God makes us alive in Christ. In the Gospel.

• The realm of the flesh is about living the human story by human resources

  • The realm of the flesh is all your natural resources for living that don’t include awareness of, surrender to, or love for God.

• The realm of the spirit is living with a dependence and trust on the loving kindness that is God.

• Two ways the Spirit ministers the life of God in us 

  • The Spirit lifts our shame

  • The Spirit helps us pray

• The Spirit lifts our Shame | Advocate

  • Applies what is true of Jesus to us 

  • Forgivness for all sin 

  • Power to break free from any pattern or thought 

    • Uncontrollable anxiety 

    • Lust and pornography  

    • Destructive patterns with alcohol 

    • Anger and a vision of masculinity rooted in aggression rather than sacrificial love 

    • Love of comfort 

    • Measuring success in materialism 

    • Really defensive when criticized 

    • The Holy Spirit is my advocate

• THE SPIRIT HELPS US PRAY | Intercessor

  • “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. 

    And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

    – Romans 8 v 26-28

  • When you pray you aren’t praying alone.

  • When you are out of words, you can still pray 

  • No matter where we start we can come to alignment with God’s will through prayer 

• What place of your life does shame reside? 

• How is the Spirit trying to address that place and apply what is true of Jesus to that part of your life?

---

May 26: 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 14: 15-21

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

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Themes

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

• FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT | Meditations on the Ministry of the Holy Spirit

• Helper | Comforter

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What is the Holy Spirit’s purpose? 

• The New Testament’s Greek word to describe the Holy Spirit is Parakletos - one summoned or called alongside.

  • “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”

    – John 14 v 15-17

  • This one being given is helper, advocate - PARAKLETOS.

  • You will know the Spirit, the Spirit will be in you..

• Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. 

  25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. 

  – John14 v 23-27

• This Holy Spirit will point to Jesus.

• The Holy Spirit is eternal, is our teacher, our reminder, and peace.

• The Holy Spirit is a person, the third person of the Trinity, sent from the Father., given by the Son. The Spirit is God.

• Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.  

• “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning. 

  – John 15 v 26-27

• So The Spirit Comforts us by Making Jesus Known

• Jesus SAYS…The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, He has anointed Me ...

  • To proclaim the gospel to those who need it

  • Freedom for those who are trapped

  • Sight for those who cannot see

  • Release for those who are oppressed

  • And favor from God

• When the Holy Spirit is lifting up Jesus in our midst:

  • We know and remember we are can be forgiven and united to God - What Jesus has done has accomplished that so we can come in Jesus’ name, not our own deserving or performance

  • We can be set free from those things that ensnare us 

  • We can see where have not been able to - vision for our life

  • We can experience freedom even in a world with broken systems that attempt to crush us 

  • We can know God doesn’t just love us, God like us

• God is with us in our pain

  • God has put a time limit on it, and God will be present when it is gone.

• The Lord is near

  • God comforts us with His Presence - 

    • Many times the Holy Spirit will let us know God is near

    • It may not resolve every circumstance in the moment

    • But You are loved and God is with you is a powerful sense from the Holy Spirit 

  • God comforts us with His Promises - we have times where we hold these promises without the benefit of feeling better right away

    • His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. 

      – 2 Peter 1 v 3-4

• Here’s just a few …

  • I will never leave you or forsake 

  • You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you 

  • Nothing will snatch you out of My hand 

  • My peace I give you 

  • And on and on…

• All the promises of God are yes for us in Christ. The Spirit is our guide to live these promises.

  • God comforts us with Intervention - sometimes the Spirit will comfort us with direct change 

  • God comforts us with Sustaining and Endurance 

• Here’s the thing…

  • Your anxiety, your depression, your illness, you loneliness, your addiction, your sin has a limited time.

  • God is before and God is after. You are untied to God in Christ.

  • So God will remove your suffering or carry you through it 

  • and in both experiences … And the Holy Spirit is your Comforter and Helper

• Do you need comfort today?

• Do you need help?

  • This is what the Holy Spirit does.

• Where in your life do you need the Holy Spirit to bring comfort?

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May 19: 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: Acts 2: 1-41

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

“‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
    and they will prophesy.
I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood and fire and billows of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood
    before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

“Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. David said about him:

“‘I saw the Lord always before me.
    Because he is at my right hand,
    I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest in hope,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    you will not let your holy one see decay.
You have made known to me the paths of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence.’

“Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
    “Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
    a footstool for your feet.”’

“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”

When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

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Themes

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

• FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT | Meditations on the Ministry of the Holy Spirit

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• The Promise

  The Outpouring

  The Counterfeits and Questions

  The Invitation

  • How have you experienced the Holy Spirit in your life? 

  • Do you live with an expectation of the Spirit’s nearness and awareness? 

• The Promise

  • “On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 

    – Acts 1 v 4-5

  • Pentecost is a reminder that God keeps His promises.

  • Don’t be so sure that all you’ve tasted is all there is. God may have a day of revelation on the way.
    
    

• The Outpouring

  • The story opens…

    “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” 

    – Acts 2 v 1-4

  • The Holy Spirit makes the presence of God known and people are filled.

  • Two challenges.

    1. If it doesn’t happen like this its not the Holy Spirit 

    2. Or we go the other way and ignore what’s possible - these were a one time thing

  • The Spirit can speak as a gentle whisper 

  • The Spirit may move as an inner conviction or an insight when reading the Bible

  • But The Spirit may also break through your categories.

    • A sound like a violent wind

    • Visuals of tongues of fire 

    • Physical sensation and empowerment.

  • The outpouring is God making His love alive and knowable.

  • The Holy Spirit is not simply to give us a memorable experience but to make the goodness and love and victory of Jesus known.

  • This account ends with people being cut to the heart and trust in Christ as their Savior and Lord

    • Have you seen people experiencing the Spirit, and it leads to them relating to Jesus more? 

• The Counterfeits and Questions

  • Some of us long to be filled with the Spirit, but there is also a place in us that we will not surrender. Our experience of God is shallow because we know we are keeping certain things in our control.

  • In the text:

    • People think they are drunk and grasp for a reasonable explanation 

    • People are afraid and wonder what is happening 

    • There is confusion and distraction - how is this happening and theories shared

    • There are commitments to the world’s power structures

  • Our problem is not a new problem. 

  • Alcohol is the one example here but there are many. Some in the crowd think they are drunk. And it’s not just a random possibility or comparison.

    • Booze can help you escape stress for a time, it can make you feel connection, it can give you temporary courage, it can turn the volume down on your pain.

    • Jesus turned water into wine. The traditional cup of communion is wine, but many of us have appetites that we satiate that are substitutes for the Holy Spirit.

    • “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

      – Ephesians 5 v 18-20

  • Pentecost is a challenge to our appetites that lead us away from God

    • What appetites can you recognize in your life that are substitutes for experiencing the Holy Spirit? 

  • Some of us are just afraid. Or when spiritual longing comes up in us it is always mixed with fear. Fear of losing control. Fear of it not working for us. Fear of failing later. Anxiety

  • There is confusion and bewilderment in this story. People don’t have categories for what they are seeing.

  • “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

    – 2 Timothy 1 v 7

  • Pentecost is a call out of our fear and into the experience of God’s love.

    • Some of us know the confusion and distraction - we go down the rabbit holes of our own questions and never take what God is offering us.

  • Pentecost is a call to be present to what God is doing - now, today

    • Some on Pentecost had deep commitments to the world’s power structures. They wanted to keep things as they were.

    • God has no problem shaking up our allegiances if they are misplaced.

      • Many of us are finding to stay in charge of our lives but let God consult. 

        • Peter has to confront those who wanted Jesus out of the way so their way could go on..

  • Pentecost is a challenge to surrender to God. To let go of having to be the one in control. 

• The Invitation

  • “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” 

    When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 

    Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” 

    – ACTS 2 v 36-39

  • When the Spirit moved through the message of Jesus, people were cut to the heart.

  • Cut to the Heart

    • And the call to trust Christ and be filled with the Spirit is open to…

      All who are near. All who are far.

    • “This work of God is wonderfully inclusive, because there is no category of people which is left out: both genders, all ages, all social classes. But it is wonderfully focused, because it happens to all ‘who call on the name of the Lord.”

      – NT Wright

• What is your ask of God regarding the Holy Spirit? 

• Where in your life do you want the Holy Spirit to reach in to?

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May 12: 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: Numbers 6: 22-27

The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:

“‘“The Lord bless you
    and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you
    and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you
    and give you peace.”’

“So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

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Themes

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

• Blessing prayer

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• How would the world be different if God answered all your prayers?

• If everyone prayed the way I pray, what would the prayer life of our church life be like? 

• Prayer is our participation with God in making the word right.

• God can do whatever God wants

  • But God shows us over and over that God wants relationship 

  • God invites us to participation and cooperation 

  • God insists on involving us through love 

• But it’s even more than that. God is committed to distributing the resources of Heaven in the world through His sons and daughters in Christ.

• God has said you are My sons and daughters. Here is My Ring.

• It’s all by grace. Distribute the resources of My Kingdom in the world through your prayers and love.

• God’s entire plan has always been participation - Joining/Sharing - Friendship - Love

• A blessing is more than a well wish. It is to use our spiritual authority to confer something to another. It is to partner with God in declaring a present identity or a future good into someone's life.

• To really bless someone is to conspire with God for their good

• To ignore or belittle a blessing is a profound mistake.

• When we pray for one another - we practice blessing one another.

• A blessing confirms our identity - one loved by God

• A blessing invites us into good - may a light shine on how to live out who we are

• A blessing announces the security of our future - reminds us that we cannot be taken out of God’s love 

• When we bless - we are not only offering the Good News of Christ to others. 

  • We are offering our lives as well. 

  • We say I will join in in giving you what God intends in your life.

• “Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, 8 so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.“

  – 1 Thessalonians 2 v 7-8

• Who needs you to pray and enact blessings in their life? 

• What moments in the lives of those around you require you to represent and disperse the blessing and resources of God?

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May 5: 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 10: 1-10 and 27-30

“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

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Themes

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

• Hearing God

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• When God began to set the world right after the fall, God initiated a conversation ...

  • Abraham heard a calling - an invitation 

  • Moses drew near to something he has seen everyday for years before

  • Samuel was sleeping as a child when he began to sense God's voice

  • Mary, Paul, Augustine, Martin Luther, Thersea of Avila, Brother Lawrence, and Jackie Pullinger

• Redemptive History is shaped by God's children hearing His voice and responding in faith and love.

• In a relational world and a relational Kingdom of God, there is little that rivals the importance of communication. It is at the heart of every deep relationship.

• God speaks. God is active in revelation. We can learn to discern the voice of God in our lives. 

• Jesus gives us this incredible promise that His sheep will hear His voice. 

• It comes at a moment where His very identity is being questioned. Jesus locates who He is in the reality that His sheep, His disciples, those He has saved, who apprentice under Him WILL HEAR HIS VOICE.

• HEARING FROM GOD IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR LIFE AS FOLLOWERS OF JESUS

• Hearing from God is your spiritual birthright in the Gospel 

• But as in so many things, what is important is not without challenges.

  • It can take time to discern how God speaks to us

  • It can take some wisdom and consideration as to why that is so very rarely in human history in an audible voice

  • It can be humbling to know we may get it wrong sometimes when discerning God's voice

  • I have four children and communicating with them over the years has taught me that different ways of communicating are needed based on the situation and on who they are. There are shared principles, but ways and settings of talking and listening that are unique to each of them.

  • God has children beyond number, but we can be confident that we can learn to hear God's voice, especially if we ask to and commit to seek God's voice.

• Experiencing God study in college

  • 4 of the primary ways - SCRIPTURE, GOD'S WHISPER IN THE SPIRIT, COMMUNITY, CIRCUMSTANCES
    

• Which of the 4 ways of hearing God have you found most prevalent in your life?

• Which of hearing God do you want to grow in? 

• How can you learn/practice that?

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April 28: 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: Song of Songs 2: 14-15

My dove in the clefts of the rock,
    in the hiding places on the mountainside,
show me your face,
    let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet,
    and your face is lovely.
Catch for us the foxes,
    the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
    our vineyards that are in bloom.

---

Themes

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

• Little foxes that ruin your prayer life

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• On the scale of discipline to delight where would you plot your prayer life right now? 

Discipline –----------------------------------------------------– Delight 

Song of Solomon 2: 14-15 – My dove in the clefts of the rock,
    in the hiding places on the mountainside,
show me your face,
    let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet,
    and your face is lovely.

Catch for us the foxes,
    the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
    our vineyards that are in bloom.

• Prayer is about relationship with God. 

  • When Jesus teaches we should pray for His kingdom to come, He is not just trying to keep us busy, and out of trouble. 

  • He invites us to cultivate and share His heart for putting the world right. 

• It is intended to cultivate a communion between us and God. 

  • There are ways we can approach prayer that harm the relationship it was intended to cultivate

• In our text, we see that the lover acknowleges the threat of disruptors of intimacy. 

  • They are called little foxes. 

• Disruptors of intimacy can take on many shapes … little things that you don't think have meaning, or big, looming, glaring, violent things. 

• Foxes chew at the vines and break off the ability for the life-giving nutrients to make their way to the branches. 

• There are little foxes, intimacy disruptors, that are right now at work in breaking down your vital connection to the Jesus. 

• Before prayer changes our circumstances, its intent is to change us. 

  • “Whether prayer changes our situation or not, one thing is certain: Prayer will change us!”

    – Billy graham 

  • It changes us because it has us encountering the living God. 

• Then it does change our world…

  • “It would be of course a low voltage spiritual life in which prayer was chiefly undertaken as a discipline, rather than as a way of co-labouring with God to accomplish good things and advancing his Kingdom purposes.”

    – Willard

• The goal is to restore relational connection and, through that, affect all of life. 

  • “The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God. Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me. ' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father.”

    – Ortberg

1. Exchanging a relational offering for a bowl of soup

2. A Misrepresentation of the character and nature of God 

3. Superficial Formality

4. Lack of Honesty

5. Paralyzing Guilt and Shame

6. Spiritual Laziness

7. Neglecting Prompts from the Holy Spirit

8. Sensationalism

9. Unrepented sin

• Which of these affect you prayer life? 

• Who can you partner with to work on this? 

• What action can you take to combat each of them?

Confess it

Share it 

Schedule it

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April 14: 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: Luke 11: 1-13

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
    for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”

Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

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Themes

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

• Praying the Psalms

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

Did you recite the Lord’s Prayer growing up? 

• If yes, what did you think when you did that? 

C.S. Lewis lost the love of his life, his wife Joy, to cancer after only being married for 4 years. Afterwards he wrote A Grief Observed - at first published under a pseudonym.

Here is the brutally honest way Lewis described some of his prayers in that time…

“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

– C.S. Lewis

Prayer doesn’t work, or doesn’t always work like pulling a lever and getting what we want from God. The wild part is sometimes it does, but because we don't always know when we develop all these THEOLOGIES OF UNBELIEF to protect ourselves and to protect God.

Either we can’t bear being disappointed, or we don’t think God would bother, or we just want to leave it to a sense of mystery of whatever life reveals.

But Jesus wants to tell us to keep going with prayer. Even if we don’t like how it goes at first, especially if we don't like how it goes at first.

• What about the practice of prayer makes you want to give up or not even try? 

The invitation and the instruction is to just keep knocking even when it looks like we aren't getting what we need.

And in the shameless audacity of the continuing knock - you will find yourself provided for. 

Tim Keller said God answers our prayers exactly as we would if we had all the information.

• But of course we don't have all the information. Or the same degree of Love or Power. We often don’t know the prayers of our neighbors, or the way all the longings of our heart relate to the wider world.

• We are often aren’t aware of resistance to our prayers. 

So we have to trust God. And it's building that loving friendship and trust and confidence in conversation with God that we realize our whole lives are held. And even what we lose is held by God.

So Jesus teaches us:

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” 

He said to them, “When you pray, say: 

“ ‘Father, 

hallowed be your name, 

your kingdom come. 

– Luke 11: 1-2

The Kaddish was one of three important prayers in the first century Jewish worship liturgy and it began like this…

“Magnified and hallowed be His great Name

In this world which He created according to His Will.

And may He establish His Kingdom during your life.”

Look at the two of them side by side… (this is also in Pete Greig’s book)

“Magnified and hallowed be

His great Name

in this world which He created

according to His Will.

And may He establish His Kingdom

during your life.

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your Name,

Your Kingdom come,

Your Will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

The utter crucial difference is the personalization of Jesus’ prayer…

• Call Him Abba. OUR ABBA. 

• Call Him Abba and then speak to Him like you would to a good Father….

You can call the God of the Universe, Abba - Father - Friend. 

"The most important discovery you will ever make is the love the Father has for you.  Your power in prayer will flow from the certainty that the one who made you likes you, he is not scowling at you, he is on your side.  Unless our mission and our acts of mercy, our intercession, petition, confession, and spiritual warfare begin and end in the knowledge of the Father’s love, we will act and pray out of desperation, determination, and duty instead of revelation, expectation, and joy.”

– Pete Greig

There are some important things to say about this prayer, but the most important thing is to pray it.

• Get it in your mouth and mind and heart.

• The one who asks receives.

• The one who seeks finds.

• To the one who knocks the doors is open.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” 

– Luke 11: 9-13

PERSIST

• What does it mean to persist in prayer? 

• What stops you from persisting in prayer?

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April 7: 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: Psalm 147: 1-11

Praise the Lord.

How good it is to sing praises to our God,
    how pleasant and fitting to praise him!

The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
    he gathers the exiles of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars
    and calls them each by name.
Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
    his understanding has no limit.
The Lord sustains the humble
    but casts the wicked to the ground.

Sing to the Lord with grateful praise;
    make music to our God on the harp.

He covers the sky with clouds;
    he supplies the earth with rain
    and makes grass grow on the hills.
He provides food for the cattle
    and for the young ravens when they call.

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
    nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;
the Lord delights in those who fear him,
    who put their hope in his unfailing love.

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Themes

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

• Praying the Psalms

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

What has the easter reality of the resurrection of Jesus changed for you personally? 

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

What should we do? What was the resurrection for? 

“A restored relationship with Jesus” 

We should talk with Jesus. We should listen for what Jesus has to say to us.

• We should participate relationally in His Life, Death and Resurrection

I can talk with Jesus.

Our hope for the Resurrection of Jesus is not simply about verifying a past event. It is about experiencing the ongoing reality of a conversation with Christ, a friendship with Christ.

“The resurrection is not just something that happened to Jesus two thousand years ago and will happen to each of us sometime in the future, after we die, when our own bodies will be raised to new life. It is that, but it is much more. The resurrection is something that buoys up every moment of life and every aspect of reality. God is always making new life and undergirding it with a goodness, graciousness, mercy, and love that, in the end, heals all wounds, forgives all sins, and brings deadness of all kinds to new life.”

– Ronald Rolheiser

Our life becomes a prayer, becomes a sensing of God's presence, becomes worship, becomes talking and listening to God.

• Mary Magdalene who was first human to tell of Jesus resurrection. How did she begin? She talked with Jesus. She heard Him say her name, and her eyes were opened.

• Peter was an erratic mess, in shambles, buried in shame. And in talking and listening to Jesus after the resurrection, his life was reasssmbeld stronger than before.

• Thomas was full of doubt. He wouldnt believe his friends’ account of Jesus being alive. He has to see Him for himself too talk with Him.

• A couple on the road to Emmaus - they were leaving dejected and confused. They talked with a man as they left town. And then they finally recognized Him in the breaking of bread.

As they recounted their time with Him they said, as we were talking....

• Did our hearts not burn?

• Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

• What should we do?

But the reality is many of us find prayer challenging.

• We struggle to get started 

• We struggle to keep it going 

• We struggle to make it a regular part of our day 

• Many of us feel we don't pray very well

• We wish we prayed more 

Caleb says:

“And the least part of the challenge from my experience is that many of us have a primary way we have thought about prayer that is basically EYES CLOSED SPIRITUAL IMPROV”

Have you experienced prayer this way?

How would you describe your experience of prayer?

Is your idea of prayer helpful for or hindering to your prayer experience? 

And if that is intimidating, then hear this:

• You are not alone

• That’s not the only way to pray

“The great and sprawling university that Hebrews and Christians have attended to learn to answer God, to learn to pray, has been the Psalms. More people have learned to pray by matriculating in the Psalms than in any other way. The Psalms were the prayer book of Israel; they were the prayer book of Jesus; they are the prayer book of the church. At no time in the Hebrew and Christian centuries (with the possible exception of our own) have the Psalms not been at the very center of all concern and practice in prayer.”

– Eugene Peterson

In Jesus’s most trying moments, He prays a pre-written prayer that He is familiar with. He was praying the psalms.

“My God my God why have you forsaken me”

“Into thy hands I commit my spirit”

– Psalm 22 and Psalm 36.

We learn to pray by praying other prayers. 

The Psalms is an amazing place to learn to pray. 

Our vision as a church this year is to expand our prayer life.

For every person in TGC to talk and listen to God every day.

“The Psalms model ways of talking to God that are honest, yet not obvious – at least, they are not obvious to modern Christians. They may guide our first steps toward deeper involvement with God because the Psalms give us a new possibility for prayer; they invite full disclosure. They enable us to bring into our conversation with God feelings and thoughts that most of us think we need to get rid of before God will be interested in hearing from us. The point of the shocking psalms is not to sanctify what is shameful (for example, the desire for sweet revenge) or to make us feel better about parts of ourselves that stand in need of change. Rather, the Psalms teach us that profound change happens always in the presence of God. Over and over they attest to the reality that when we open our minds and hearts fully to God who made them, then we open ourselves, whether we know it or not to the possibility of being transformed beyond our imagining.”

– Ellen F. Davis: Getting Involved with God  

Easter tells us God’ve love will not fail.

Unfailing love is a pretty good foundation for prayer  - God is not disappointed in you. 

For conversation - for talking and listening

God is always previous - you don’t have to start it all

God is in conversation - you don;t have to sustain it all

Praying the Psalm is a way to being when you can’t work out how to begin

“I need a language that is large enough to maintain continuities, supple enough to maintain nuances across a lifetime that brackets child and adult experiences, and courageous enough to explore all the countries of sin and salvation, mercy and grace, creation and covenant, anxiety and trust, unbelief and faith that compromise the continental human condition. The Psalms are this large, supple, and courageous language.”

– Eugene Peterson

Praying the Psalms this week:

• Like Mary, you may hear your name called 

• Like Peter, you may sense a lifting of your shame 

• Like Thomas, you have have your doubts confronted 

• Like those leaving town going to Emmaus, you may find your heart burning.

The Psalms lift our spirit before they lift our circumstances. 

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