March 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: ‭Lamentations 3:18-26

So I say, “My splendor is gone
    and all that I had hoped from the Lord.”

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
    the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
    and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
    to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
    for the salvation of the Lord.

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Themes

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

• Cry of the Prophet

• Jonah - When We Hate God's Instructions

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Can you think of a time in your life when you wanted to give up? When you felt crushed by disappointment? When you felt you could not believe any more. Trust anymore. Love anymore. Go on anymore?

• Jeremiah is a prophet who teaches us something about endurance. About reliable maturity.

• Endurance and reliable maturity don’t sell much ad space in our culture.

• Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet

  • He found a way to cling to God’s love and faithfulness even in the middle of despair, in the middle of what looked like failure, when his spirit was crushed, when surely he wished he could give up.

• Anybody can say God you are my portion when you have as many portions of whatever else you want. But your city is crumbling and your life work lies in ruin and you can say to God...

  • You are enough for me. Your mercies are new every morning. You are my hope.

  • That type of prayer in the middle of despair is profound.

• How do we do that?

  Jeremiah had sense of being known by God

  • The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

    “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

    before you were born I set you apart;

    I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

    – Jeremiah 1:4-5

• One of the first things after God calls Jeremiah by name is God tells Jeremiah that He has known him well before Jeremiah became aware of it.

• God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God.

• “But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God had been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know.”

  – Eugene Peterson

JEREMIAH KNEW GOD HAD CALLED HIM AND HAD A VISION FOR HIM

• Jeremiah has insecurity and he told it to God... This is the exchange...

  • Jeremiah 1:6–15

  • God met Jeremiah’s insecurity with two visions

    • The first was an almond tree branch - and there is little world play here...

      • The word “almond” and the word “watching” are nearly identical in Hebrew. “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I see a “shaqed” (“almond”). “Good eyes! I’m sticking with you. I am “shoqed” (“watching”) my word to make every word I give you come true.

      • God told Jeremiah that even the most difficult of unlikely things he had to say he wasn’t saying alone. God was watching his promises to make sure they were fulfilled.

    • The second vision was a boiling pot - Jeremiah had a difficult word to share: because God’s people had ignored His covenant with them and broken it over and over again finally that brokenness was going to become their defining reality.

      • God speaks to Jeremiah in these everyday items.

  • Do you believe God has a call on you?

  • Do you believe God has vision for you?

  • Is your vision for your life so manageable that you can go about pulling it off whether God is involved or not?

  • Jeremiah knew God knew him and knew God had plans for him....

  • One of the most famous verses of Jeremiah is 29:11

    • For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

      – Jeremiah 29:11.

Jeremiah ACCELERATED HIS MATURITY THROUGH OBEDIENCE

• There can often be a huge gap in what we know about God and what we walk in.

• There can be huge gap in what we want most for our lives and how we live on the daily.

• Our maturity grows in leaps and bounds by following through on what God is asking us to do.

• Jeremiah learned to trust and know God more and more by taking God’s invitations and following God’s commands.

• Jeremiah became a new every morning person

• He came to know by experience in the worst possible circumstances that....

  • Because of the Lord’s great love ,we are not consumed,

    for his compassions never fail.

    They are new every morning;

    great is your faithfulness.

    – Lamentations 3:22-23

• Jeremiah endured wicked rulers, humiliation, set backs, failure, war and exile to keep showing up God is still at word, God is still showing mercy. The headlines are not all there is.

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March 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.

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Love

Teaching Text: ‭Jonah 3:10 - 4:11

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relentedand did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered.When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

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Themes

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

• Cry of the Prophet

• Jonah - When We Hate God's Instructions

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Two mentions of Jonah outside of these 4 chapters that make up the book with his name.

  • In the Gospels, Jesus seems to be frustrated that people keep demanding more and more external phenomena from Him while not experiencing a real change of heart and mind. 

    • He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. 

      – Matthew 12:39-41

  • In 2 Kings 14 - Jonah, son of Amittai, was a court prophet to Jereboam II. While other prophets of Yahweh in his time, Amos and Hosea, criticized the royal administration for its injustice and unfaithfulness…

    • Jonah had supported Jeroboam’s aggressive military policy to extend the nation’s power and influence.

    • Tim Keller gives a helpful comment on this story and it begins to shine some light on how Jonah ends up running from God…. 

      • The original readers of the book of Jonah would have remembered him as intensely patriotic, a highly partisan nationalist. And they would have been amazed that God would send a man like that to preach to the very people he most feared and hated.

        – Timothy Keller

• So from these two mentions outside of the book of Jonah we learn some crucial things about the story…

  • Jesus saw this as an essential sign of God’s plan bringing salvation to the world, for breaking healing and redemption to a broken world.

  • We learn a little something about why Jonah was so reluctant to follow through with what God asks of him. 

  • Parallels in the story: 

    • In 1:1 - God’s words comes to Jonah – In 3:1 - God’s Word comes to Jonah

    • In 1:2 - the message is conveyed – In 3:2 - the message is conveyed

    • In 1:3 - the response of Jonah – In 3:3 - the response of Jonah 

    • In 1:4 - a warning is given – In 3:4 - a warning is given 

    • In 1:5 - the response of non-believers – In 3:5 - the response of the non-believers

    • In 1:6 - response of the leader – In 3:6 - the response of the leader 

    • In 1:7 unbelievers respond better than Jonah  – In 3:7 - unbelievers respond better than Jonah 

    • In 2:1-10 How God taught Jonah grace through the fish – In 4:1-10 How God taught Jonah grace through the plant 

• Few things that bear on all of us…

  • Why we do not want to do what God says

  • How we return to God when we’ve gone our own way

  • Why our anger new tells the whole story

  • And from all that a few things we learn about how God works…

    • The Conflict of Identity: Jonah’s primary significance was found in being a Hebrew and a nationalist rather than a servant of God. This caused him to flee to Tarshish because he feared God might actually forgive the "wicked" Ninevites.

    • The Storm of Disobedience: The sermon posits that every sin has a "mighty storm" attached to it. For Jonah, the storm was mercy—a visible picture of the chaos that comes from trying to manage the world without God.

    • The Death and Resurrection Pattern: Jonah’s journey "down" (to Joppa, to the ship, to the sea, to the fish) represents the end of self. Jesus later calls this the "Sign of Jonah," pointing to His own death and resurrection.

    • The Cliffhanger of Grace: The story ends with God asking Jonah if he should not love the great city. The sermon suggests the story ends abruptly to force us to answer: Will we be angry at God’s mercy toward others, or will we walk in the grace we’ve been given?

• You may sincerely believe that Jesus died for your sins, and yet your significance and security can be far more grounded in your career and financial worth than in the love of God through Christ.

• Shallow Christian identities explain why professing Christians can be racists and greedy materialists, addicted to beauty and pleasure, or filled with anxiety and prone to overwork. All this comes because it is not Christ’s love but the world’s power, approval, comfort, and control that are the real roots of our self-identity.

  – Timothy Keller

• Sin: 

  It [has qualities like] an addicting drug. At first it may feel wonderful, but every time it gets harder to not do it again. Here’s just one example. When you indulge yourself in bitter thoughts, it feels so satisfying to fantasize about payback. But slowly and surely it will enlarge your capacity for self-pity, erode your ability to trust and enjoy relationships, and generally drain the happiness out of your daily life. Sin always hardens the conscience, locks you in the prison of your own defensiveness and rationalizations, and eats you up slowly from the inside. All sin has a mighty storm attached to it.

  – Timothy Keller

THINGS WE LEARN ABOUT GOD

• God is not just the God of your nation, and group , and people, and politics. God really loves and cares about your enemy. (Be very careful if you imagine God is always cheering on American missles and drone strikes)

• God can meet us where we are even when we run away. (But running away always costs dearly) 

• God redeems through the sacrificial love of death and resurrection. This we see most fully in Jesus. 

• Jonah wanted Ninevah to pay for all their evil and wrong. God wanted to warn them and offer them mercy. 

• This fight between justice and mercy is raging in Jonah - God keeps finding shocking ways to be merciful 

• And ultimately God would say I will be just and the Justifier by going to the cross.

Application Questions

• Where is your "Tarshish"? Jonah ran to Tarshish because God’s command conflicted with his personal politics and national identity. Is there an area of your life (career, political conviction, or personal comfort) that you prioritize over God’s direction?

• Are you "praying your anger"? The sermon notes that Jonah was "rage-filled" but at least he prayed his complaint. When you feel resentful toward God’s timing or His mercy toward people you dislike, do you hide that away, or are you honest with Him about your bitterness?

• How do you view your "enemies"? If God moved powerfully in the life of someone you consider a "villain" or a rival, would you be glad for them, or would you be like Jonah—jealous, resentful, and bitter? How does the "Sign of Jonah" (the Gospel) challenge your view of who deserves mercy?

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March 1: 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 Kings 19:1–I9

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the Lord came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael,and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”

So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him.

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Themes

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

• Cry of the Prophet

• Elijah - The Still Small Voice

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Now the cultural moment that Elijah is living through is important to mention. Ahab was King in Israel and this is mid 800s BC. Ahab was in a string of not ideal Kings.

  • There’s a little refrain in the book of 1 and 2 Kings where it will say and so and so did more evil than all the previous Kings before them. 

• There was a progression of moving away from Yahweh, and Ahab accelerated that again. He had a political marriage to a woman from the kingdom of Tyre and Sidon, and she has her own reputation that has spilled the pages of Scripture. 

• Ahab was married to Jezebel, and Ahab and Jezebel were on an intentional strategic path towards pluralism in Israel - that’s a nice way to say it. 

  • They had killed prophets of Yahweh and brought in prophets of Ba’al. 

  • And there were many Ba’als but the major one worshipped here was thought to be a god of the storm, a god of the rains. 

• And so Elijah the Tishbite shows up and says, OK well the real God says there isn’t gonna be any rain, there isn’t gonna even be any dew.

  • Like Yahweh had challenged the gods of the Empire in Egypt in the Exodus, he challenges the Ba’al of the storm with a drought. 

• And in a very real way Elijah is hanging on to faith in Yahweh in Isreal at a time when there is very real chance of it dying out.

• Without the turning point of Elijah’s life and ministry - the way of Yahweh and His covenant in Israel was in real threat of dying out.

ELIJAH TALKS AND LISTENS TO GOD 

• A prophetic life, a life that reveals what God is really like is a life that has learned to talk and listen to God.

ELIJAH PRAYS HIS LACK

• Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.” 

  So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. 

  – 1 Kings 17:2–6

• If this was the end of Elijah’s story it would make a great sermon. But God told Elijah to proclaim a drought, but then provided for him with Ravens and a Brook. 

• But just a little while later. The Brook dried up. 

• God is interested in us learning to trust God. And often God will give us something as a gift, but then there is a risk that that thing God has given us becomes what we actually put our confidence in.

• Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land.”

  – 1 Kings 17:7

• And Elijah prays his lack. And however he names it, it isn’t in the scene. What we get instead is God’s response.

• Elijah prays his lack. But God knows his need.

• What do you do with your Lack?

• Then the word of the LORD came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.”

  1 Kings 17:8–9

• It seems harsh that the brook that God provided dries up

• But Jezebel was from Tyre and Sidon. God sends Elijah to the territory of his enemy. If he keeps providing for him with the magical Brook we never get this story, and (SPOILER) its going to be a story of resurrection.

• But Elijah goes to the widow. He asks her for some water and bread. He has to humbly ask for the thing God has been providing. 

• And she says I have no bread, I am going to make a meal for my son and I and then we are going to die.

• Elijah receives more direction from God in his lack…

  Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain on the land.’ ” 

  1 Kings 17:13–14

• the woman’s young son dies.

• And she asks the question many of us ask in tragedy? Is this my fault? Has God been against me the whole time? Did you just come to hurt me?

• And then Elijah asks for her son and takes him away to or pray, and he prays basically the same question
  
  

ELIJAH PRAYS HIS QUESTIONS

• When life is really difficult and tragic for us, where we go with our questions matters.

• Are you able to take your questions to God? 

• Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the LORD, “LORD my God, let this boy’s life return to him!” 

  The LORD heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!” 

  – 1 Kings 17:21–23

• When he saw Elijah, he said to him, “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?” 

  “I have not made trouble for Israel,” Elijah replied. “But you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the LORD’s commands and have followed the Baals. Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel. And bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.” 

  So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel. Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” 

  But the people said nothing. 

  – 1 Kings 18:17–21

• In confidence do you still turn to God?

ELIJAH PRAYS HIS CONFIDENCE

•  He prays in stages for the rain.

• Rain came. 

• But look what happens instead….

  Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.” 

  Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die.

  – 1 Kings 19 v 1–4

• He doesn’t want to go on.

• He thinks he is a failure. 

• He wants God to end his life.

ELIJAH PRAYS HIS DEPRESSION

• He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. 

  – 1 Kings 19:4–5

• And we see the incredible wisdom of God here. 

• Elijah goes to the same place Moses went to look for God. To ask to see His Glory.

• And there Elijah prays his desperation

ELIJAH PRAYS HIS DESPERATION

• He makes Elijah food and lets him rest.

• God knows what we need.

• Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. 9 There he went into a cave and spent the night. 

  And the word of the LORD came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

  He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” 

  The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” 

  – 1 Kings 19:8–11

GOD COMES AS A WHISPER. A STILL SMALL VOICE.

• Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. 

  Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

  He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” 

  – 1 Kings 19 v 11–14.

• Elijah asks the same question, but now the Lord is speaking.

• Elijah is told that God has had a plan, he is not alone. He is gong to receive help. He is given a friend, someone to walk with. Elisha.

• As Elijah learns to pray. Elijah Walks in Wisdom.

Pray your lack

Pray your questions

Pray your confidence

Pray your depression, your anxiety, your illness

Pray your desperation

Pray and walk in wisdom

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February 22: Groups Guide

About This Guide

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

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

pdf download

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

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

more Resources

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

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

---

Love

Teaching Text: ‭Daniel 5

King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.

Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.

The king summoned the enchanters, astrologers and diviners. Then he said to these wise men of Babylon, “Whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.”

Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant. So King Belshazzar became even more terrified and his face grew more pale. His nobles were baffled.

The queen, hearing the voices of the king and his nobles, came into the banquet hall. “May the king live forever!” she said. “Don’t be alarmed! Don’t look so pale! There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. In the time of your father he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods.Your father, King Nebuchadnezzar, appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners. He did this because Daniel, whom the king called Belteshazzar, was found to have a keen mind and knowledge and understanding, and also the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles and solve difficult problems. Call for Daniel, and he will tell you what the writing means.”

So Daniel was brought before the king, and the king said to him, “Are you Daniel, one of the exiles my father the king brought from Judah? I have heard that the spirit of the gods is in you and that you have insight, intelligence and outstanding wisdom.The wise men and enchanters were brought before me to read this writing and tell me what it means, but they could not explain it. Now I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.”

Then Daniel answered the king, “You may keep your gifts for yourself and give your rewards to someone else. Nevertheless, I will read the writing for the king and tell him what it means.

“Your Majesty, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor. Because of the high position he gave him, all the nations and peoples of every language dreaded and feared him. Those the king wanted to put to death, he put to death; those he wanted to spare, he spared; those he wanted to promote, he promoted; and those he wanted to humble, he humbled.But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory. He was driven away from people and given the mind of an animal; he lived with the wild donkeys and ate grass like the ox; and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven, until he acknowledged that the Most High God is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and sets over them anyone he wishes.

“But you, Belshazzar, his son, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this.Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways. Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.

“This is the inscription that was written:

mene, mene, tekel, parsin

“Here is what these words mean:

Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Medetook over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

---

Themes

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

• Cry of the Prophet

• Fasted Life

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• The goal of the series is to look at the voices of the prophets and their impact as those who critique from the inside. 

• We look at the prophet as a “watchman,” whose job is to call for honesty and to stop the Israelites from relying on anything other than God 

• Richard Rohr says,

  “In this way, they introduced a completely novel role into ancient religion: an officially licensed insider critic, a devil’s advocate who is tasked to call out and expose their own shadow side! Few cultures, if any, develop such a counterintuitive role.”

  – The Tears of Things

• Their work is sometimes labeled “Creating holy disorder” for confronting injustice and exposing abuses of power. 

• Rohr:

  “Prophets, then, are full truth-tellers, not fortune-tellers. They pull back the veil to radically reframe our preferred storyline of history. “

• We need this in the church because:

  • The Christian religion has sought to achieve its own innocence rather than act in solidarity with suffering and sinners.

• “TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting”

  – Daniel 5:27

• King - has a moment of being measured

  • Will you honor the truth you have been taught about God and the true story of the world?  

  • He says no…I’ll worship what I want, in fact,  I’ll use the very things that were intended to affirm God’s sovereignty and drink from them while praising the idols that I have chosen instead of God to satisfy me. 

• But Daniel is also being measured in this moment

  • After 65 years of captivity and indoctrination - what would he do? He could be killed in this process if he tells the king the wrong thing.

  • He honors the God of his origin. He holds to the true story of the world. He calls out the king for neglecting to heed the warning of the past. 

• Memory is an engagement with fidelity from a God who takes endless initiatives in life-transforming, life-guaranteeing actions of generosity.

• “It is inescapable if one's past tense is burdened by self-invention and one's future tense is limited to self-sufficiency. It takes no imagination to see that technological consumerism, unable to host past miracles or future promises, has given us a present tense of greed powered by anxiety and issuing in shameless brutality against our neighbor.” 

  – Bruggeman

• For it is only when the past is brimming with miracle and the future is inundated with fidelity that the present can be recharacterized as a place of neighborliness in which

  • Scarcity can be displaced by generosity

  • Anxiety can be displaced by confidence

  • Greed can be displaced by sharing

  • Brutality can be displaced by compassion and forgiveness

• The recovery of the true story of the world includes the daring, pervasive conviction that God's fidelity outlasts every circumstance.

• Daniel was able to hold onto the truth for 65 years in a hostile pluralistic environment. 

  • Honor the past (the king didn’t honor the lessons his grandfather learnt) Daniel held to the faith and devotion of his heritage

• Trust God for the future - his fidelity will outlast every circumstance!!!!

• Be courageous in our moment - order your life around that reality. God is faithful and will continue to be.

• Daniel did this through forming daily life habits that immersed him in the truth. They connected him with God. 

  Here’s a practical outline for building these habits by Alice Bohn. 

• A Well-Ordered Life: Practical Steps – Daniel’s prophetic clarity was the result of a life oriented toward God. We are all "ordered" toward something—the question is whether it's anxiety, money, etc, or our Creator.

• The Purpose of Ordering

  • We reorder our lives to plug into God, our ultimate Source, and join His work in renewing all things.

• How to Start

  • Establish habits that seek Jesus’ presence. Lent serves as a communal opportunity to audit these routines with the support of the Church.

  • The First Step: Fasting

    • Fasting reminds us of our dependence on God and creates margin for other spiritual practices. Beyond food, consider fasting from social media, late bedtimes, or digital noise.

  • Pillars of an Ordered Life

    • Prayer: Use "in-between" moments like commuting, brushing teeth, or Emmanuel Prayer at bedtime.

    • Scripture: Try a verse a day, audio Bibles during chores, or family devotions.

    • Worship: Practice "Worship Walks," gratitude lists, or daily singing.

    • Confession: Schedule weekly friend calls, spouse check-ins, or pastoral confession/counseling.

    • Service: Integrate rhythms like trash pickup, meal trains, or plugging into TGC service opportunities.

    • Obedience: Be intentional; a well-ordered life requires a plan. Tithe. 

  • We reorder our lives to live in the Presence of God. If this is daunting, start by asking God for help this Lenten season.

---

February 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: ‭John 1:35-51

The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.

Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas”(which, when translated, is Peter).

The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanaeland told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip.

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”

---

Themes

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

• By Your Life We See Light

• Come and See

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Sometimes, we hear things at exactly the right moment.

• This opening chapter of John's Gospel account begins with something like cosmic/meta level poetry, about Creation, about the personhood of God, about the deep questions of human philosophy, about our most ancient hopes as a human race, about Israel's prophetic expectations …

  • It's breathtaking in its scope when we really hear it.

  • The Logos became flesh and blood and skin and bone and set up a tent in our midst.

  • The Eternal Word became a person and tabernacled among us.

  • God moved on to the block. 

• The chapter ends with what is almost like a kids’ game of telephone.

• In 50 verses from the highest heights of divine poetry, and human thought and longing to what appears on the surface like a very pedestrian series of conversations.

  • But these brief and initially simple encounters between friends change the world because they change these lives.

• They hear, ‘Look the Lamb of God’, right at the moment where they register the weight of what is being said and when they can walk right along follow after Jesus.

• People come to Jesus, and they want some information. They want a little clarity on who He is or what He thinks about something, or what they should do and Jesus will say “Come and See.”

  • Or “Follow Me” or “Let’s Go”. 

• And journey of relationship begins, a walking together begins. 

• The Kingdom of God moves along relational lines.

  • Because God’s very nature is relational.

• So God insists not on doing things all on His own. He insists on involving us in relationship and participation, even if as it often does, it gets messy. 

• That meant I have chosen you to be My disciple - to live in the dust of Rabbi

• “Follow me” was a really loaded phrase in Jewish culture at this time.

• “Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 

  “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. 

  “Come and see,” said Philip. 

  • Andrew found Simon, and now Philip finds Nathanael.

  • Nathanael cracks a joke about Nazareth. And Phillip says Come and See.

• The Kingdom of God is moving along relational lines.

  • These friends are passing on what they have received

• One of the most joyous things as a follower of Jesus is to be able to pass on to someone else what Christ has given you. And you don’t have less for it, you have more.

• Our world has a strong resistance to proselytizing

• We should talk about our most deeply held beliefs.

• There is tremendous joy in passing on what you have received from God

• You can often tell when someone is talking about God in a way that is more about them feeling like they must say it than any concern for who hears it.

• People talk about what they love. We pass on what is meaningful to us. 

• “But the most obvious fact about praise -- whether of God or anything -- strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. ... The world rings with praise -- lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game. ... I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”

  – C.S. Lewis

• We praise the things we enjoy. We want others to see the good in them. 

• We praise what we care about. 

• When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, He said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” 

  “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. 

  Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” 

  Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.” 

  Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.” 

  – John 1:47-51

• Nathanael is initially skeptical. He makes fun of Jesus’ home town. 

• But then Jesus reveals that He knows something true about him. The smallest detail. Where he  was sitting before Philip got to him.

• It is deeply moving to know we are seen by God.

• The Kingdom of God moves along these relational lines.

• We pass on what we have received

• We tell what has happened to us.

• Occasionally, we write it all down.

• Sometimes we meet people who have been through something just like us and need to hear how God met us there.

• If you’re embarrassed to identify with Jesus because some people publicly take His name in vain and attach it to things Christ has nothing to do with 

• All the more reason we are invited to humble integrity in following Jesus.

• We are invited to live in the dust of the Rabbi - to do what we see Jesus doing, to follow what we see Jesus teaching.

---

February 1: 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 1:19-34

Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”

They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

He said, “I am not.”

“Are you the Prophet?”

He answered, “No.”

Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

“I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

---

Themes

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

• By Your Life We See Light

• Baptizing with the Spirit

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• There is light in Epiphany, even if it’s still dark pretty early.

• There are powerful reasons for hope.
  

• Sometimes we can read the Bible like a nice clean devotional book, and treat the Gospels like everyone was just curious religious thinkers walking in small groups in robes and debating ideas.

• But - There were powerful and dark political forces at work. Jesus wasn’t executed because He carried lambs around and said love your enemies.

  • Leaders thought He was a threat.

  • And so they come looking for John because he was drawing crowds.

• John keeps pointing away from himself and playing his part in the redemption story. 

• The Words of the Prophet

• The Work of the Lamb

• The baptism of the Spirit

• The Words of the Prophet

  • John does use a quote from the prophet Isaiah to describe what He is up to…

  • “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ " 

  • Isaiah 40 in fact where the quote comes from is about Yahweh coming to His people and a highway being made for Him. John is applying that to Jesus.

• The Work of the Lamb

  • The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.” 

    Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.” 

    – John 1:29–34

  • Jesus is….

    • The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world

      &

    • The One who baptizes us with the Holy Spirit

      • The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world, sets us free by dying without any sin of His own from the law written into the universe of sin and death.

  • Do you realize that? The Law of Sin and Death is as real as gravity and it not an arbitrary thing that God set up to keep people really moral and threaten them with death if they didn’t behave.

  • God is the source of life.  God is life.

• If you part ways with God (which is what sin is) You part ways with life and death comes into the story. 

  • In big and small ways.

  • Death of trust, death of love, death of peace, death of relationships. 

• NT Wright’s comment this is helpful …

  • “The death of Jesus takes place, in this gospel, on the afternoon when the Passover lambs were being killed in the Temple. Jesus is the true Passover lamb. John, like many New Testament writers but in his own particular way, wants us to understand the events concerning Jesus as a new, and better, Exodus story. Just as God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, so God was now bringing a new people out of an even older and darker slavery.”

• Maybe you are like “How can this old tribal barbaric violent way of thinking still be relevant our modern world?”

• Friends, sin is still bringing about death. God gave His people a visceral costly picture to work with. So they could grasp what sin does to a person and community….

  • But every time forgiveness is given, someone has to absorb the cost of the wrong done.

• Christ is saving and healing the world because He took that cost on Himself. 

• If you want a commentary on this read Hebrews 9 and 10 but I’ll give you this one highlight…

  • “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” 

    Hebrews 9:14

• The Lamb who is slain sets us free

  • And the Spirit poured out – the Spirit we are baptized with makes us alive
    

• The Cross in our forgiveness, the Spirit brings our realization of it.

• The Cross sets us free, the Spirit helps us walk in freedom.

• The Cross in our mercy that changes our view of God and the world, the Spirit helps us walk in humility and courage.

• Be free and be baptized by the Spirit. 

• Whatever life we can muster on our own, it is nothing compared to life Christ is offering.

  • It is a life of freedom - where nothing ensures you

  • It is a life of union, of friendship, of fullness …

• There’s a million ways I want the world to be different. Christ brings this new creation to our lives and says ‘You be different.”  Here is forgiveness and my Spirit. Now show up in the world in a new way.

---

January 11: 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 1:1-13

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

---

Themes

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

• By Your Life We See Light

• True Light

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• The intro to gospel of John is a tremendous resource for this type of reflection. We open with it this first Sunday of Epiphany because it is such a powerful guide.

• The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

– John 1:9–11 

• Do you ever think of God as experiencing grief? That rejection impacts us profoundly, but God feels it as well? 

• Why would God arrange a situation where God would show up in a place and not be recognized?

• If you are watching there is plenty of God’s obvious power in what Jesus does but its not like sky writing in the clouds so everyone can read.

  • Instead he goes small first, shows up in weakness initially, hyper local, specific. Relational.

• In the beginning - we are clued in right away that whatever he is doing he is harkening back to the original creation story.

• NT Wright has a helpful comment on the connection to Genesis…

• Whatever else John is going to tell us, he wants us to see his book as the story of God and the world, not just the story of one character in one place and time. This book is about the creator God acting in a new way within his much-loved creation. It is about the way in which the long story which began in Genesis reached the climax the creator had always intended.

– NT Wright

• John is telling us using the opening lines of of Torah (of Genesis) that God has made and is remaking the world. 

• And the way that is happening is for God to show up in person.

• He is telling us that nothing in the natural world was created without relationship - without through-ness. 

• Creation was not a lonely endeavor.

• John is saying there is a light that is a light to whole human race.

• There is a true light that gives light to everyone and it has come into the world.

  • And no matter where you have started in life, whatever your life is up to this point, you can be Born of God.

• The reality of God’s life can be born in your life. This is something more than just a  new idea in your head about God.

• This is a transformation where what is true about God’s life begins to fill your life.

  • The light, the love, the perspective, the future of God becomes yours to share in.

• This passage says it hinges of our part on recognition and reception.
  
  
  

• He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God

John 1:10–12

• We recognize Jesus - this word made flesh 

• We receive him 

• We become family - born of God

• So lets ask ourselves…

  • How do you recognize Jesus?
    

• In this text, in your life, on a Wednesday, in your goal setting and resolutions, in your budget, on the F train, at your life group, at Monday night English language conversations, in the news?

• How do we recognize Jesus the first time or the millionth time?

• Ask for help to recognize Jesus

• How do you receive Jesus?

• Trust that he is who he says he is

• Believe in his name. - In means Yahweh saves.

• Sit with him, eat with him, speak to you him, trust his guidance.

• Be born of God - are you living like someone born of God? Like family?

• What is animating your daily life?

• What is guiding your discernment? decision making?

• Are you led by love?

• By the Holy Spirit. Pray for the filling of the Holy Spirit

• Recognize Him

• Receive Him

• Be family

---

December 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 1: 5-38

In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.

Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”

The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.

When his time of service was completed, he returned home. After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth,a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

---

Themes

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

• Watching for the Light

• PEACE: See a light—God's unchanging Character Across the Ages

• Series Intro: 

  • God is near

  • God is saving and rescuing

  • God is filling and healing.

  • But that can be confusing or disillusioning because life has quite a lot of waiting, some real season is difficultly, loss, grief. Life has what feels like delays. It has uncertainty, pain, and longing.

  • And so we need the darkness of Advent also.  We need the wilderness and waste places of Lent, we need the confused grief of Holy Saturday when Christ has died but we see no sign of resurrection.

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Types of Silence

  • Silence of despair

    • Sometimes suffering can make us forget, and that moment of forgetting is despair.  It is the moment we forget that God is a God who hears the cry of his children.

    • And in the story of the Hebrew/Israelites: hope was a groan and a cry 

    • If your silence with God is one of despair, then it is time to cry out.

  • Silence of shame/unacknowledged sin

    • When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

      – Psalms‬ ‭32‬:‭3‬-‭5‬ ‭NIV‬‬

    • Jeremiah 31:3 : “I have loved you with an everlasting love;

      I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

    • The hope of Advent is a God who is coming all the way to you. All we have to do is not hide

  • Silence of awe

    • The silence of awe is also present in the advent story at the birth of Jesus.  The shepherds who heard the announcement of the angels and who saw the newborn Jesus, shared with their neighbors what they had seen and heard.

    • Luke writes in his gospel:

      And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.

      – Luke 2:18

    • The ESV better here it says: “And awe came upon every soul…”

    • Awe is our most reasonable response to the presence of the trinitarian God or to witnessing the direct activity of God in the world.

• Tyler Staton: “Fear of the Lord is the willed choice to give my attention to God—to listen to the story He tells about who I am, who He is and where we’re going together—and then live in a contested world of competing fears like God is in fact the only one telling the truth.”

• Are you building your life on God’s faithfulness?  Do you believe the story He is telling in the world? Because if you do, if you can live in the fear of the Lord, then you can experience what I will call the silence of trust.

• Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

  – Exodus‬ ‭14‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ NIV

• ESV renders it: you need only be silent.

• The enemy you fear no longer has any power over you (fear of death, fear of failure, fear of abandonment). You just need to be still. Stand in the place where you are (keep worshipping, keep serving, keep living into the Messiah’s picture of human flourishing)--stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord.

INVITATIONS

• Perhaps we need silence to determine what kind of silence we are in. When the quiet comes and you’re alone, what are the thoughts that comes? Are they of love, trust, hope? Are they of fear, shame?

• Sometimes I don't know what my thoughts are toward God until I’m alone with them. I need to be still first. And sometimes that’s when the trembling truth comes: I’m angry with you. I’m disappointed that you let this happen. Or sometimes: thank you, I love you. And sometimes quiet: just being together. And I imagine a hand on my chest. A face next to mine. Ah, there you are. I’ve been waiting.  Let’s go on our walk.

---

November 30: 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: ‭‭Isaiah 9:1–7

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—

The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned.
You have enlarged the nation
    and increased their joy;
they rejoice before you
    as people rejoice at the harvest,
as warriors rejoice
    when dividing the plunder.
For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,
    you have shattered
the yoke that burdens them,
    the bar across their shoulders,
    the rod of their oppressor.
Every warrior’s boot used in battle
    and every garment rolled in blood
will be destined for burning,
    will be fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace
    there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
    and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
    with justice and righteousness
    from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
    will accomplish this.

---

Themes

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

• Watching for the Light

• PEACE: See a light—God's unchanging Character Across the Ages

• Series Intro: 

  • God is near

  • God is saving and rescuing

  • God is filling and healing.

  • But that can be confusing or disillusioning because life has quite a lot of waiting, some real season is difficultly, loss, grief. Life has what feels like delays. It has uncertainty, pain, and longing.

  • And so we need the darkness of Advent also.  We need the wilderness and waste places of Lent, we need the confused grief of Holy Saturday when Christ has died but we see no sign of resurrection.

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• A poem of shalom

• This poem says – The character of God is reliable
  

• King Ahaz was looking for assurance and hope. Isaiah brings him a poem. 

• This seems very unhelpful in the trenches of every day real life tragedy and challenge. 

• Ahaz wants to be helped but also wants to remain in control. 

• Surrender wasn't an option for him. 

• He ultimately asks Assyria for help and they end up overcoming Judah. 

• For to us a child is born, 

  to us a son is given, 

  and the government will be on his shoulders. 

  And he will be called 

  Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, 

  Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

  Of the greatness of his government and peace 

  there will be no end. 

  – Isaiah 9: 6–7.  

• Wonderful Counselor - the One wise enough to give wisdom that may not look like the world 

• Mighty God - the One strong enough to effect change for real 

• Everlasting Father - the One ready to call us family forever 

• Prince of Peace - the One who inherits and distributes shalom 

• The character of God is revealed.

  • Counselor, Strength, Father, Peace

  • This poem is what God is passionate about….

    • The zeal of the LORD Almighty 

      will accomplish this. 

      – Isaiah 9: 7

• In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has a picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.

  – C.S. Lewis

• Advent is about learning to trust in the promises of God when circumstances seem to contradict hope. 

• When we are faced with evidence of dark broken realities in life, we have the character of God to trust in. 

  • Name your needs and dark moments. 

  • Then think about the character of God and pray for Him to help you trust in His Nature instead of looking at the darkness. 

  • Look for ways this week where God is inviting you to trust and hope. 

• We look to other things so we can control our circumstances without any relational obligation.

  • Maybe I find myself in a spot where I want God’s power but not God, I am in a troubling spot. 

  • God says “you cannot control Me, but I have shown you My love for you.” 

• Learning in love to trust the promise…

  …those who hope in the Lord 

  will renew their strength. 

  They will soar on wings like eagles; 

  they will run and not grow weary, 

  they will walk and not be faint. 

  – Isaiah 40: 31

---

November 30: 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: ‭‭Jeremiah 32: 1–17

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. The army of the king of Babylon was then besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was confined in the courtyard of the guard in the royal palace of Judah.

Now Zedekiah king of Judah had imprisoned him there, saying, “Why do you prophesy as you do? You say, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am about to give this city into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it. Zedekiah king of Judah will not escape the Babylonians but will certainly be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and will speak with him face to face and see him with his own eyes. He will take Zedekiah to Babylon, where he will remain until I deal with him, declares the Lord. If you fight against the Babylonians, you will not succeed.’”

Jeremiah said, “The word of the Lord came to me: Hanamel son of Shallum your uncle is going to come to you and say, ‘Buy my field at Anathoth, because as nearest relative it is your right and duty to buy it.’

“Then, just as the Lord had said, my cousin Hanamel came to me in the courtyard of the guard and said, ‘Buy my field at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. Since it is your right to redeem it and possess it, buy it for yourself.’

“I knew that this was the word of the Lord; so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels of silver. I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales. I took the deed of purchase—the sealed copy containing the terms and conditions, as well as the unsealed copy— and I gave this deed to Baruch son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed and of all the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard.

“In their presence I gave Baruch these instructions: ‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’

“After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah, I prayed to the Lord:

“Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.

---

Themes

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

• Watching for the Light

• Hope: Buy a Field - Holding Onto Promise Against Incredible Odds

• Series Intro: 

  • God is near

  • God is saving and rescuing

  • God is filling and healing.

  • But that can be confusing or disillusioning because life has quite a lot of waiting, some real season is difficultly, loss, grief. Life has what feels like delays. It has uncertainty, pain, and longing.

  • And so we need the darkness of Advent also.  We need the wilderness and waste places of Lent, we need the confused grief of Holy Saturday when Christ has died but we see no sign of resurrection.

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Jeremiah

  • God tells him to buy a field in the land that is falling. The place where the enemy is currently camped, besieging the city.

    • In the midst of the city falling.

    • In the middle of the death of a dream.

    • In the chaos of defeat.

    • God says houses, fields, and vineyards will be bought again in this land.

    • Judgement, death, and defeat will not have the last word.

      • Mercy will. Salvation will. Renewal will.

• Hope-determined actions participate in the future God is bringing into being. These acts are rarely spectacular. Usually they take place outside sacred settings. Almost never are they perceived to be significant by bystanders. It is not easy to act in hope because most of the immediate evidence is against it.

  – Eugene Peterson

• And God invited him to a demonstration and participation in hope. 

• And he put the record of that absurd hope into jars of clay. I hope the bells are ringing in your heart.

  • But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

  • – 2 Corinthians 4: 7–10

    • You are the record of this hope.

    • You carry the deposit.

• What fields are you buying?

• Where are you sinking resources into hope in God's promises?

• What are the places of darkness and defeat in your life right now? 

• What are the hope-determined actions you can do in the midst of the darkness? 

---

November 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 Corinthians 15: 1-11

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you,which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

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.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

---

Themes

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

• Built Up in love

• Equipped to be Ambassadors of Reconciliation

• Series Intro: 

  • So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

    Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

    From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 

    – Ephesians 4:11–16

  • The Kingdom of God is most accurately represented when all the saints are equipped and participating in the mission of God to love show his love to our world. 

  • The word EQUIP was used to refer to… 

    • THE SETTING OF A BROKEN BONE - things are are broken in our lives being healed.

    • THE TEACHING OF A SOLDIER TO FIGHT - to be made ready of for struggle of life and the way of love in Christ by the Spirit 

    • THE SUPPLY OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR ALONG JOURNEY - that we would have what is need for the long journey of life 

    • THE RESTORATION OF SOMETHING TO ITS ORIGINAL CONDITION - maybe its been worn out, beaten down, damaged, and it gets restored to like new…

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.” 

  – Matthew 17: 27

• In this story, Jesus is a son of the house and seems to think He is not subject to the house tax, but He pays it anyway.

• So Jesus is paying something for someone else that He doesn’t owe to take away the offense.

• But the thread goes deeper. 

  • In the biblical cosmology, the waters represent chaos. An undoing. Death. Fear. 

  • The waters were seen as place of unruly chaos and fear.

  • And Peter is told to pull a fish out of the chaos. And inside the fish’s mouth he will find coins that are exactly what he needs.

• Order out of chaos. Provision Out of fear.

• Order out of chaos. Provision out of fear. Abundance out of scarcity. 

• God is a storyteller.

  • Not first an idea sharer.

  • Not first a budgeteer or sin accountant 

  • Not a ted talk giver.

  • Not a ruler maker.

  • God is a storyteller.
    

• “In every experience of beauty we are being prepared for eternity.”

  – Martin Shaw

• When we reduce the Gospel down to a set of controllable propositions meant mostly to help you escape life into heaven one day - we do the story a bit a disservice.

• The Gospel of Jesus is a story of abundance in a world or scarcity. 

• We live in a world of reduction

  • We live in particular moment of history that has squeezed to drain the wonder out of the world.

• But it is recoverable.

• Identity is something that is more and more primarily understood as difference. Identity is to be different than whatever that you are in reference to. 

• Identity is defined in some sense by what you are rebelling against.

• You can trace this in our culture in so many ways.

• Christianity is an ontological structure - a way to understand the world. A way to understand reality

• “To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without:  It is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now.”

  – T.S. Elliot

• We have the best story. 

  • It’s not a machine.

  • It’s not a marketing scheme,

  • It’s a body made alive with love.

  • It’s story passing through darkness back into light 

  • It is resurrection from the dead.

• I want to invite us to recapture our confidence in Christ.

  • As our Savior and as the story of the whole world.

• We pass on what we have received … Listen ….

  • Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 

    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, i 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: 1-8

• We have a Storytelling God. We are a Storytelling People 

• You are equipped to live and speak the good news …

  • Honesty and Curiosity

    • Tell people what you believe and listen for what they believe 

  • Make and Celebrate Beauty

    • Get the stories in our you heart and mouth 

    • Make beautiful things

    • Pottery, a dinner table, a collage, a workspace, a hospital

  • Power of Invitation

    • learn the power of invitation  

  • Love in Action 

    • The Gospel has no credibility when we are selfish power grabbing photocopies of our culture 

    • Love lights the way. It points to the nature of God

  • Know the Story

• Remember the grace of God adds people to the story - grace is the change agent

---

November 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: Matthew 6:19–24

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

---

Themes

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

• Built Up in love

• Equipped to be Ambassadors of Reconciliation

• Series Intro: 

  • So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

    Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

    From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 

    – Ephesians 4:11–16

  • The Kingdom of God is most accurately represented when all the saints are equipped and participating in the mission of God to love show his love to our world. 

  • The word EQUIP was used to refer to… 

    • THE SETTING OF A BROKEN BONE - things are are broken in our lives being healed.

    • THE TEACHING OF A SOLDIER TO FIGHT - to be made ready of for struggle of life and the way of love in Christ by the Spirit 

    • THE SUPPLY OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR ALONG JOURNEY - that we would have what is need for the long journey of life 

    • THE RESTORATION OF SOMETHING TO ITS ORIGINAL CONDITION - maybe its been worn out, beaten down, damaged, and it gets restored to like new…

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Equipped for generosity

  • Starts with - a God of teeming abundance

  • Whatever else there is to discuss about the early pages of Genesis and there is quite a lot - one thing that sometimes gets missed is about over the top God is with the abundance of creation.

  • God doesn’t create a world of tiny rigid back yard play pens with animals. The wildness of the world made in God’s image is that it teems, and overflows, and surges, and swarms. 

  • “On the very first page of the Bible, then, power, flourishing and image bearing are connected. Power is for flourishing—teeming, fruitful, multiplying abundance. Power creates and shapes an environment where creatures can flourish, making room for the variety, diversity and unpredictability of coral reefs and tropical forests, but also the surprising biological richness of high deserts and ocean depths. And image bearing is for power—for it is the Creator’s desire to fill the earth with representatives who will have the same kind of delighted dominion over the teeming creatures as their Maker. Which means image bearing is for flourishing. The image bearers do not exist for their own flourishing alone, but to bring the whole creation to its fulfillment.”

    – Andy Crouch

• God could choose to use God’s power however, and God uses power to create and shape an environment where creatures can flourish.

• SO we have a God of teeming abundance inviting us to share in this - to share in a steward this abidance, to take raw materials and make culture, to be fruitful and multiply. 

• After the fall - we see a thread of scarcity woven through the story

  • We see scarcity and jealousy leading to murder. 

  • We see distorted competition leading to violence and corruption. 

  • We see world-altering greed.

  • We see the misuse of power and ambition and attempts to forget God.

• “[What was] put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

  – C.S. Lewis 

• A mysterious priest

  • And this mysterious priest comes out with bread and wine and blesses Abraham. And we may have forgotten these few throw away lines, but God brings them back mentioning them several more times in the story

    • This priest is called Melchizedek. And Jesus in Hebrews is called a priest according the order of Melchizedek. 

    • And what does this priest do. He blesses Abraham for this rescue and redemption of his family member. 

      • Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, 

         “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, 

         Creator of heaven and earth.

And praise be to God Most High, 

         who delivered your enemies into your hand.” 

– Genesis 14:18–20

• Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. 

– Genesis 14:20

• This is well before the Law of Moses, but God would certainly direct His people to generosity of exactly this kind - in particular to prioritize the community around God in the center

• Get this right and the rest will find its proper place. 

• God is finding in Abraham a man He can covenant with for the repair of the world. 

• Another example is in Genesis 18

• There is radical generosity and hospitality 

• And there is the promise of the covenant.

• “I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7 Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. 

  “But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’ 

  “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. 

  “But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’ 

  “In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.

  – Malachi 3:6-12

• Test me in this.

  • You have been so insistent on meeting your own needs in your own way. 

  • You have thought to get or stay rich by refusing to give 

  • But you haven’t trusted me and your resources are ruining you and are now ruined.

  • You have ignored my instruction and done things your own way.

  • But even still. Even at the last minute I invite you back. Learn the mystery of trust. Test me on this and see my faithfulness..

  • It has a similar ring to what Jesus says just down from what we read about where our treasure is and what that says about out hearts … Jesus says …

    • But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

      – Matthew 6: 33

• Mammon is a false god

• It is relying on your own resources to satisfy your needs. 

• At the heart of the gospel is God giving Himself away for us

• God is a generous God, inviting us to know the joy of becoming generous people 

  • It is woven through the entire story. 

  • It is an issue of our heart. 

  • It is an issue of our primary allegiance. 

  • It is an issue of the story we are living and the story we are telling.

• What we see in the New Testament and Jesus’ followers is an even more radical generosity of which 10% would be kind of like a baseline.

• And if you don’t have a tithing practice at all yet I am not heaping on burden on you to hit that tomorrow. I am saying you couldn’t make a better move than to turn over every aspect of your life to Christ.

  • To seek God’s direction, to grow in generosity.

• The Heart is the Issue 

• We really think God will take care of TGC whether you give here or not. 

• But we  will say there is so much joy in participating, so much enthusiasm in sharing in the heart of our generous God. And if God has put you here then this community needs your generosity to fully thrive in its mission of love to Brooklyn.

---

October 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 ‭16‬:‭ 16–22

Jesus went on to say, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.”

At this, some of his disciples said to one another, “What does he mean by saying, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?” They kept asking, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand what he is saying.”

Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

---

Themes

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

• Built Up in love

• Equipped to be Ambassadors of Reconciliation

• Series Intro: 

  • So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

    Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

    From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 

    – Ephesians 4:11–16

  • The Kingdom of God is most accurately represented when all the saints are equipped and participating in the mission of God to love show his love to our world. 

  • The word EQUIP was used to refer to… 

    • THE SETTING OF A BROKEN BONE - things are are broken in our lives being healed.

    • THE TEACHING OF A SOLDIER TO FIGHT - to be made ready of for struggle of life and the way of love in Christ by the Spirit 

    • THE SUPPLY OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR ALONG JOURNEY - that we would have what is need for the long journey of life 

    • THE RESTORATION OF SOMETHING TO ITS ORIGINAL CONDITION - maybe its been worn out, beaten down, damaged, and it gets restored to like new…

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Jesus is having a extended last conversation with His disciples. 

• He is trying to give them a sense of what they can expect for the future. You will weep, He says. But your grief will turn to joy and you will see Me again and no one will take away your joy.

  • “I’m going to die and you will be sad.  And then I’m going to be raised from the dead and you will be joyful again”

• And He’s making one thing very clear:

  • Certainty of tears and joy

    • That both weeping and rejoicing are certain. Whatever else happens in this world, we will have both grief and joy.  

• Weeping

  • We live in a world that is tinged with death.  The separation experienced in the fall was comprehensive—it spread to every area of life.

  • Consider the things in your life that is grief worthy right now… 

    • Pain

    • Loss

    • Take note of them 

  • You will weep over every thing in this world that is not yet fully redeemed. 

• Rejoicing

  • The most inexhaustible source of joy we have is God’s love for us.

  • In Tish Warren’s book, Prayer in the Night, she leans on the writings of Henri Nouwen. She writes:

    • Henri Nouwen described joy as “the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing–sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death–can take that love away.”... “It is a choice,” he says, “based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing… can take God away from us.” –Tish Warren, Prayer in the Night

• There are echoes of Paul here: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

  – Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭38‬-‭39‬ ‭NIV‬‬

• Just gazing for an extended period at a spring bulb pushing up from dark soil or a robin hopping across the lawn–or at anything in nature—will reveal God’s utter gratuity and the sacredness of every created thing.

  – Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things

• When Job has suffered the loss of everything in his life, God finally appears and begins speaking. He doesn’t comfort Job, but he speaks of all his creative work, sustaining the world in every way imaginable

• And I think God is pointing out:

  • (1) is that he is always working

  • And (2) that everything is a gift. 

• To choose joy is to see all existence as a gift, which is why the practice of joy is inseparable from the practice of gratitude. Gratitude gives birth to joy because gratitude teaches us to receive life as a gift in the moment we’re in, regardless of what lies ahead.

  — Tish Warren, Prayer in the Night

• Both of these authors brush up against this idea of joy as a choice.  For those of you who listen to Lectio 365, every morning there is an opening psalm that speaks to an aspect of God’s character that is being celebrated, and the reader says “I choose to rejoice in God’s steadfast love today, joining with the ancient praise of all God’s people in the words of Psalm”

• Both joy and grief are meant to be shared

• Paul says this: 

  • Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. ‭‭

    – Romans‬ ‭12‬:‭15‬ ‭NIV

• In the letter to the Galatians he writes:

  • Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

    – Galatians‬ ‭6‬:‭2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

• Ask your group:

  • What grief can we share the burden of with you?

  • What joys can we celebrate with you? 

• “Trauma is when severe emotional pain cannot find a relational home in which it can be held.”

  – Robert Stolorow

• A shared burden is lighter.

• Joy shared is multiplied and magnified

• The sharing of grief and joy requires vulnerability

• Weeping and rejoicing are bound together in love

• The psalmist writes:

  • Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.

    – ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭126‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭NIV‬‬

• Everything That Was Broken

Everything that was broken has

forgotten its brokenness. I live

now in a sky-house, through every

window the sun. Also your presence.

Our touching, our stories. Earthy

and holy both. How can this be, but

it is. Every day has something in

it whose name is Forever.

— Mary Oliver

• For When People Ask

I want a word that means

okay and not okay,

more than that: a word that means

devastated and stunned with joy.

I want the word that says

I feel it all all at once.

The heart is not like a songbird

singing only one note at a time,

More like a Tuvan throat singer

able to sing both a drone

and simultaneously

two or three harmonies high above—

a sound, the Tuvans say,

that gives the impression

of wind swirling among rocks.

The heart understands swirl,

how the churning of opposite feelings

weaves through us like an insistent breeze

leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,

blesses us with paradox

so we might walk more openly

into this world so rife with devastation,

this world so ripe with joy.

— Rosemary Wahtola Trommer

---

October 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: 2 Corinthians 5:14-21

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.

---

Themes

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

• Built Up in love

• Equipped to be Ambassadors of Reconciliation

• Series Intro: 

  • So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

    Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

    From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 

    – Ephesians 4:11–16

  • The Kingdom of God is most accurately represented when all the saints are equipped and participating in the mission of God to love show his love to our world. 

  • The word EQUIP was used to refer to… 

    • THE SETTING OF A BROKEN BONE - things are are broken in our lives being healed.

    • THE TEACHING OF A SOLDIER TO FIGHT - to be made ready of for struggle of life and the way of love in Christ by the Spirit 

    • THE SUPPLY OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR ALONG JOURNEY - that we would have what is need for the long journey of life 

    • THE RESTORATION OF SOMETHING TO ITS ORIGINAL CONDITION - maybe its been worn out, beaten down, damaged, and it gets restored to like new…

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• The missing “ands”

• And so just to be clear I don’t mean the ands really aren’t there. I just mean that when we read these passages we can sometimes tune out around the and and miss what’s next or sometimes feel like we can just make the ands into ors.

• So lets look at it again quickly so you can see what I mean….

  • 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

• One died for all AND therefore, all died - So Christ has given us His life and in trust and receiving that in faith we also die ourselves. Our old way of living on our own, out of our our old resources is dead. 

• We died with Christ and now we live with Him.

• And one of the first places this shows up, this resurrection life is:

  • How we evaluate each other

  • How we consider worth

  • Decide wether to love

  • Decide whether to include

    • Jew. Gentile, Slave, Free. Republican. Democrat. Rich. Poor. Artist. Banker. Teacher. Doctor. Citizen. Immigrant.

• These things may affect our lives in many ways, but they are not the basis of how we regard one another any more. 

• When we are united to Christ - we are living in a new type of world. 

• 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. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here.

  – 2 Corinthians 5: 16-17

• As we live this way, we are getting a glimpse of the new creation right here in the middle of the old.

• When we start to have this new way to regard one another that begins in Christ’s love for us, that goes to the lengths of Christ’s death and resurrection…

• Then we start that see the world of Shalom break into the fractured reality of life without God.

• 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.

  – 2 Corinthians 5: 18-19

• What is that ministry? Reconciliation

• God has been reconciling the world to Himself - not counting people’s sins against them - not because God doesn't cane about sin, but that He loves us so much that He died to free us from the power and penalty of it. 

• AND he has give us a message - What is the message? Reconciliation

• A ministry and message of reconcilation
  
  
  

• So is this what the church is carrying?

• Is this what we are carrying?

• “As a lifelong evangelical, I’ve been taught to hope, pray and work for revival. I’ve even experienced small-scale revivals — in my law school Christian fellowship and at a small church in Georgetown, Ky., where my wife and I served as volunteer youth pastors for a short period.

  I love the succinct description of revivals by my friend Russell Moore, an editor at large and columnist for Christianity Today magazine. “Revival,” he wrote in The Atlantic, “is a concept with a long history in American evangelicalism, rooted in the Bible, that says a people who have grown cold and lifeless can be renewed in their faith. It is a kind of resurrection from the dead.”

  In 2023, shortly before he died, Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and one of the leading evangelical pastors and theologians in the nation, wrote that genuine revival has three characteristics: It wakes up “sleepy” Christians, it converts nominal Christians into a more vital and genuine faith, and it brings non-Christians to Christ.”

  – David French 

• In other words, revival begins with the people proclaiming, by word and deed, “I have sinned.”

• [Certain streams of American Christianity] have a different message. It looks at American culture and declares, “You have sinned.”

• “And it doesn’t stop there. It also says, “We will defeat you.” In its most extreme forms, it also says, “We will rule over you.” That’s not revival; it’s revolution, a religious revolution that seeks to overthrow one political order and replace it with another — one that has echoes of the religious kingdoms of ages past.”

  – DAVID FRENCH

•  Humble yourself. Turn to God. Receive mercy. Be reconciled. 

• 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: 20-21

• We are talking this fall about the ways God has equipped us 

• And I want you to know friends 

  • That you are ambassadors of peace with God

  • You are agents of reconciliation

  • As though God were making His appeal through you

  • Passing the Kingdom through the relational lines of changes lives

• One of the resources that every lasting relationship needs that the church is meant to have in abundance is forgiveness

• If someone is our enemy, maybe we can start praying God help me love them.

• Who in your life do you need to ask God: God help me Love them

---

October 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: Matthew 10: 1-8

Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

---

Themes

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

• Built Up in love

• Equipped to Join in the Healing of God

• Series Intro: 

  • So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

    Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

    From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 

    – Ephesians 4:11–16

  • The Kingdom of God is most accurately represented when all the saints are equipped and participating in the mission of God to love show his love to our world. 

  • The word EQUIP was used to refer to… 

    • THE SETTING OF A BROKEN BONE - things are are broken in our lives being healed.

    • THE TEACHING OF A SOLDIER TO FIGHT - to be made ready of for struggle of life and the way of love in Christ by the Spirit 

    • THE SUPPLY OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR ALONG JOURNEY - that we would have what is need for the long journey of life 

    • THE RESTORATION OF SOMETHING TO ITS ORIGINAL CONDITION - maybe its been worn out, beaten down, damaged, and it gets restored to like new…

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Is healing really something we should expect from God?

• What do we see God doing in the very beginning?

  • Genesis 1:1-10

  • In these early mysterious movements of creation we see God bringing order out of chaos

• Sin, and more broadly a lot of what is wrong with the world, is also trying to manage the Chaos life in our own way, without God.

• Where in your own life are you trying to manage the chaos in your life without God? 

• “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, 

  because He has anointed me 

  to proclaim good news to the poor. 

  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners 

  and recovery of sight for the blind, 

  to set the oppressed free, 

  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

  Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” 

  – Luke 4: 14-21

• Here is the Word from Genesis, here is the hovering Spirit now anointing Messiah, here is Jesus saying what the Father has sent Him to do…and what is it??

  • To the chaos of desperation, He brings good news

  • To the chaos of being trapped, He brings freedom

  • To the chaos of a blind darkness, He brings light and sight - healing

  • To the chaos of oppression, He brings a lifted burden

  • To the chaos of fear and insecurity, He brings favor - to know God is for us

  • This is Jesus’ ministry
    
    

• If you trust in the gospel of Jesus for your salvation and seek to live as a follower of Christ - you are equipped my friends to join in the healing of God.

• Healing is what Jesus does.
  
  

• God doesn’t do a work in our lives that puts us in a place where we don’t need God anymore.

• Because God’s vision for you life is relationship - NOT I-never-need-anything-on-your-own-ness.

  • That’s a myth from our radical individualism.

• God wants us to know the joy of interdependence.

• We see Jesus healing.

• We hear Jesus saying I am here to heal.

• We see Jesus sending His disciples out to heal.

• WE see them healing.  

• We hear Jesus saying - you are going to do what I have done.

• Freely you have received, freely give.

• We hear Jesus say His followers will do greater things …

• And yet we struggle to believe that God really heals.

• The hurt or embarrassment around asking God for healing and not seeing anything is also real and painful.

• But friends. What if we just do it anyway?

• Some things that matter:

  • Obedience matters

  • Faith matters

  • Love matters

  • A combination of humility, character and endurance matters

• We need healing in many forms

• We need God to bring order to our chaos. THIS IS JESUS’ MINISTRY. He saves us. He heals. 

• But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 

  – Isaiah 53: 5

• In Jesus we find forgiveness and friendship with God.

• Where do you need healing?  How do you need healing?

  • Sickness, Injury, Addiction, a Fearful Way of Doing Things, A Destructive Habit, A Childhood Coping Mechanism that No Longer Serves Us

  • The wounds from rejection, the ache of loneliness, the trouble of intrusive thoughts, a sprained ankle, cancer, an ongoing shoulder pain

• Friends, as followers of Jesus we are equipped to join in the healing of God. 

• Where do you want prayer for healing?

---

October 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: 1 John 3: 11-24

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

---

Themes

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

• Built Up in love

• Equipped for Sacrificial Love

• Series Intro: 

  • So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

    Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

    From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 

    – Ephesians 4:11–16

  • The Kingdom of God is most accurately represented when all the saints are equipped and participating in the mission of God to love show his love to our world. 

  • The word EQUIP was used to refer to… 

    • THE SETTING OF A BROKEN BONE - things are are broken in our lives being healed.

    • THE TEACHING OF A SOLDIER TO FIGHT - to be made ready of for struggle of life and the way of love in Christ by the Spirit 

    • THE SUPPLY OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR ALONG JOURNEY - that we would have what is need for the long journey of life 

    • THE RESTORATION OF SOMETHING TO ITS ORIGINAL CONDITION - maybe its been worn out, beaten down, damaged, and it gets restored to like new…

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• 1 John 3:11-17

• Jesus' message got Him killed because He contrasted the way of the Kingdom with the way the world was governed. 

• He was less known for what He was against than what He was for…  He spent most of His time and energy critiquing the powers of this world by showing a different and better way. 

• Through His example, we learn, power comes through service and particularly through sacrificial love. 

• “Greater love has no one than laying down his life for a friend” 

• No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.

• He is willing to pay a price to gain something that cannot be gained otherwise. 

• Jim Elliot well understands this when says:

  "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

• Practicing sacrificial love is not the same as practicing self-neglect.

• The late Tim Keller - Freedom of Self Forgetfulness:  it's not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. 

• “For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”

• The message was always the same. This is not a new gospel. 

• What is this love? Who defines it?

  • “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”

• We measure love through the lens of the cruciform example.

• Every time I pay a price of sacrifice for someone else… I am showing a little picture of the love of Jesus to them. 

• I am telling them their life is worth it. I am saying, “You are loved.” In a believable way. 

• A R Bernard makes the desperately needed point in the midst of political gameplay and the commandeering of scripture to gain political power, from both sides, that: 

  “One can be very biblical and at the same time not at all Christlike.”

• Then, still describing the nature of love, John gives an example and an explanation: 

  “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? “

• What would John write to you if he was giving you an example to live by? 

  • “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”

Serve:

• John 15-17, John has his last address to his disciples and he gives them the example of a servant washing their feet. This was his object lesson when he gave them a new command… to love one another. 

Forgive: 

• Forgiveness is costly. Its an act of sacrificial love, in the example of Jesus. 

• On the cross.. The ultimate expression of love he said “forgive them…”

Trust:

• Paying the price for others through sacrificial love takes trust that God will take care of you. 

• In what areas of your life to you need to practice Trust, Forgiveness and Service?

---

September 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: 2 Peter 1:3-11

FHis 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. 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.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

---

Themes

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

• Built Up in love

• Equipped to Live the Promises of God

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

  Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

  From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 

  – Ephesians 4: 11–16

• The Kingdom of God is most accurately represented when all the saints are equipped and participating in the mission of God to love show his love to our world. 

• The word EQUIP was used to refer to… 

  • THE SETTING OF A BROKEN BONE - things are are broken in our lives being healed.

  • THE TEACHING OF A SOLDIER TO FIGHT - to be made ready of for struggle of life and the way of love in Christ by the Spirit 

  • THE SUPPLY OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR ALONG JOURNEY - that we would have what is need for the long journey of life 

  • THE RESTORATION OF SOMETHING TO ITS ORIGINAL CONDITION - maybe its been worn out, beaten down, damaged, and it gets restored to like new…

• TODAY - 2 Peter 1:3-11

• And SO this passage is an old and seasoned saint taking our hand and walking us through how it works…

  • Don’t forget you have everything you need

  • Don’t forget where to find it: in union with Christ and in the promises

  • And Don’t Forget that it’s through the promises of God we grow in such a profound way that we become participants in divine nature.

  • We actually have a share God’s life.

  • We actually have a share in what is true about God’s character growing up in us.

• 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. 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 1:3–4

• In a world that plays up scarcity, can we really believe that we have what we need?

  • What areas of life do you feel like you are experiencing scarcity? Not enough? 

• God is not lacking - remember in Psalm 23 when David is giving us this classic picture of walking with God through life. 

  • “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”

• The promises of God are doorways for us to participate in God's very nature

• The first temptation and every one thereafter: 

  • Maybe God is keeping something Good from you. 

• The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. 

  – John 10 :10

• Now if we’re making our way through our lives without drawing on the power of these promises to get us participating in the God’s nature, in God’s way and character in the world, then we are leaving this tremendous resource of abundant life untouched and unused.

• How? 

• MAKE EVERY EFFORT

  • How does this line up with God’s free gift of grace? 

• We come in on Christ’s accomplishment.

• But Peter says MAKE EVERY EFFORT to add to your faith and then he gives this list.

• I love what Dallas Willard says..

  • God is not opposed to effort, He is opposed to earning

    – Dallas Willard

• AFTER YOU BELIEVE…

  • Virtue is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something which is good and right, but which doesn't come naturally. And then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do what's required automatically. Virtue is what happens when wise and courageous choices become second nature.

    – NT Wright

• Its not ramping up our willpower, its turning our will over and over again to God with the help of the Holy Spirit so that we grow in the life of God.

• At the end of this journey of maturity that Peter highlights is LOVE.

  • That we share in the active, anti-selfish, sacrificial, enduring, world changing love of God.

  • There is a GOOD NEIGHBORS FAIR TODAY. Each both is a way to practice love…

  • GOD HAS NOT LEFT US WITHOUT WHAT WE NEED.

Practice

Offer prayers together of:  

• Gratitude for the promised of God 

• Gratitude for the provision of God 

• Gratitude for for the person(s) of God

---

June 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.

---

Love

Teaching Text: Ephesians 5:8-20

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the lightbecomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said:

“Wake up, sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you.”

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 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.

---

Themes

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

• Pentecost

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• The phrasing of this passage we read today can run past your ears and you might change it without noticing because it is not exactly what you expect. 

  • When it can easily make it say something different from what it actually says because its close to what you would expect it it say but it then its not.

• The passage does not say, “You were living in darkness, now you are living in light.”

• For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 

  – Ephesians 5:8

• We think it’s going to say you were living in darkness, but it says you were darkness. 

• We think it’s going to say you are now living in the light, but it says you are light. 

• Live as children of light.

• This letter that was first directed to a city church in a bustling crossroads, cross cultural, pluralistic city was also passed around to other cities.

• It was written to people who were trying to understand and to live the staggering change that Jesus was bringing into people's lives.

• Pattern of the letter

  • Here is who you are. Now here is how you live.

  • You were once this. You are now this.
    

• The chapter begins:

  • Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. 

    – Ephesians 5:1–2

• You were darkness, You are light.

• Your life once made it harder to discern reality, to grasp what is really there.

• You weren’t just living in a dark place, you were contributing to it.

• You may have had no nefarious intentions and you weren’t setting out to harm, but the self disconnected from God is confusion. 

• Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them. 

  – Ephesians 5:6–7

• “‘God’s wrath’, in fact, isn’t just a punishment waiting for people at the end of the present age. It isn’t an arbitrary thing whereby God makes up some rules to stop people enjoying themselves and then threatens to get angry with them if they go ahead anyway. God’s wrath is built in to creation itself. There are certain ways of behaving which are so out of line with the way God made the world, and humans in particular, that they bring their own nemesis.”

  – NT Wright

• He is saying there are spiritual laws that are just as real and consequential as physical laws.

• To live apart from God is like trying to ignore gravity. 

• It’s like pretending you don’t need water to live.

• It’s like having no regard for how you feed yourself.

• You may have moments or days where you get away with it, but the trouble is built in.

• It carries its own consequence.

• Sin is a flight from reality. 

• Light is visible and makes things visible - live in a way that accords with the truest truth of reality

• For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 

  – Ephesians 5:8–9

• There is a way of life that produces anxiety, loneliness, disconnection, frantic search with no light, anxiety, even death.

• And there is a way of life that accords with God’s love and light. It’s not a trouble free life, but it does produce certain fruit … (the three mentioned here are … )

  • Goodness - character growth 

  • Righteousness - actions of justice and shalom 

  • Truth - a lived expression of actual reality

• But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: 

         “Wake up, sleeper, 

         rise from the dead, 

         and Christ will shine on you.” 

– Ephesians 5:12–14

• HOW?

  • “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 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 5:15–20

  • Recognize the gift of every day (and every moment)

• Be filled with the Spirit (and not the substitutes and short cuts) 

• Soak your life in gratitude and worship.

• In a world of scarcity overflow.

• In a world of fear, live connected to your courage 

• In a world where selfishness is expected, shock with kindness 

• In a world of alone, be together

• In a world of lies that shroud in darkness, be light.

---

June 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: Acts 2: 1-24

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.

---

Themes

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

• Pentecost

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What is life?

  • An unchosen gift where we find ourselves experiencing existence and possibility in a relational world. 

    • Unchosen - your life is something you received, not something you began

    • Existence - your awareness of being alive comes with certain natural and spiritual laws outside of your control.

    • Possibility - inside of your existence you have many meaningful choices to make 

    • Relational - Human life cannot begin or survive alone. It can barely be sustained alone at any time. Life thrives most in relationship.

    • World - The physical/natural world is full of immense beauty and danger and so is the world made by human cultures.

• A Relational framework:

  • God - Self - Others - World 

• Impacts: Identity, Relationships, Physicality, Emotions, Community, Culture, Resources, Work, Power

• What if God wants to be known?

• What if God wants to heal and restore all that was lost in our disconnection?

• What if God wants the renewal of all things?

• How?

  • The gradual and love soaked disclosure of a God who is FATHER, SON, HOLY SPIRIT

    • Father - YHWH

      • Working in covenant for repair and renewal 

      • Hints at other members of Trinity 

      • God defines reality 

    • Son - Promised Messiah + Kingdom Bringer

      • Lamb who takes away the sin of the world

      • “I have called you friends”

      • Life, Death, Resurrection

    • Holy Spirit - makes people alive spiritually by uniting them to Jesus

      • Our experience of friendship with God 

      • Filling and leading a redeemed life 

• “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly”

  – Acts 2: 1-2

  • This day has been coming for centuries.

• The unifying translator - our primary problem is relational brokeness at the places of most importance

• Making sense of the impossible

• The Spirit who brought order our of chaos in creation does so again 

• Are these people drunk? What is happening?

• The Spirit helps locate them in the story of the ancient promises. This is happening NOW!

• The Spirit lifts up Jesus.

• The Spirit translates God’s rescue to our hearts.

• Cut to the Heart - gets to the very center and nature of reality and our lives

• Repent and be baptized - reorient your entire lie around this new reality and be immersed into relationship with God 

• Be clean and be filled

• This is your invitation

• Be cut to the heart - the center of things

• Come ready to surrender to love

• Be clean and be filled

---

May 18: 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 10: 25–37

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

---

Themes

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

• The Parables of Jesus

• Good Samaritan

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• We ask some big question in life and we ask some big questions of God: 

  • Among all that’s important, what is the most important?

  • What matters most to God?

  • What should matter most to us?

• In this story:

  • This lawyer asks Jesus what must I do to inherit eternal life?

    • It was actually a pretty common theme of question put to Rabbis - How can I be sure that I will have a share in the age to come?

    • That’s actually an important question at any time even if we may prefer to keep in out of our minds…

  • Kenneth Bailey who is an absolute Maestro on the Parables of Jesus - has a book called Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes and it’s a classic 

  • Not every parable has all 4 levels, but many do and this one does.

    • Compelling Story 

    • Instructive Example 

    • Revelation of the Secrets of the Kingdom of God

    • Hints at the Nature of Jesus 

• Entertainment 

• Ethics 

• Theology 

• Christology 

• Jesus shocks them by making the despised enemy, the hero of this story. 

  • The man is not recognizable - the two ways you could tell who someone was and where they were from was their clothes and their speech. 

  • This guy is unconscious (that’s what half dead means here)  and stripped.

  • These first two men cannot touch him without risking breaking the law

• 3 Groups served in the temple in Jerusalem…

  • Priests

  • Levites

  • The Delegation is Israel - laymen

• Jesus has had a priest and a levite come by, so He is going to make the hero of His story a Jewish laymen.

• He shocks them

  • He makes a despised enemy the hero - a Samaritan

  • The despised Samaritan makes up for the failures of the priest and the Levite and shows compassion at great personal cost.

    • He risks his safety, he gives his time, he gives his money.

• Ethics - Here’s the shock of the story to the man …

  • Your neighbor includes your enemy - that is the widest possible reach

• A fundamentalist is most worries about their own heart not the heart of the other

• God does not see insider and outsider the way we do 

  • He loves the world

• Jesus says I can tell you the whole law while you stand on one foot. 

  • It’s love.

• Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength

• And love your neighbor as yourself 

• Many of us have seen American expressions of faith that you can have a ornate systems of personal devotion, prayers, Bible readings, conferences, and not love your neighbor

• We often measure our spiritual well-being in personal devotional terms, but God keeps putting the emphasis on how we love.

• You can do a ton of religious activity and never confront the real Jesus here or never let Him confront you.

• “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

  – Matthew 7: 21

• “For if the world could have been saved by providing good examples to which we could respond with appropriately good works, it would have been saved an hour and twenty minutes after Moses came down from Mt. Sinai.

Salvation is not some felicitous state to which we can lift ourselves by our own bootstraps after the contemplation of sufficiently good examples. It is an utterly new creation into which we are brought by our death in Jesus' death and our resurrection in his. It comes not out of our own efforts, however well-inspired or successfully pursued, but out of the shipwreck of all human effort whatsoever.”

– Robert Farrar Capon

• You cannot reach eternal life (now or forever) without the rescuing love of Jesus, and that is all.

• Once changed by that love we learn (with Jesus) to love our neighbor who includes our enemy.

• The world is not renewed by people who only love the other people who like them and are like them.

• The Kingdom of God looks like loving your enemy. At its heart is a man dying for his enemies

---