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.

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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.

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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…

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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Themes

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

• Pentecost

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Themes

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

• Pentecost

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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

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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.

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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.”

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Themes

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

• The Parables of Jesus

• Good Samaritan

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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

---

May 4: 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 15

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

---

Themes

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

• The Parables of Jesus

• The Lost Coin, Sheep, and Son

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• In Luke 15, Jesus tells 3 stories of lostness and being found.

• We will look at the the why of the stories and what those together tell us about reality

• The Why is found in the first verse of Luke 15 …

  • Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Then Jesus told them this parable

    – Luke 15: 1-3

  • Question from the pharasees and teachers: “Why do you welcome sinners and eat with them?” (2 big offenses)

    • And Jesus as a true Middle Eastern rabbi doesn’t simply being a conceptual debate with them. He tells 3 stories:

STORY 1 | THE LOST SHEEP

• Jesus is saying, you are shepherds who have lost the sheep 

• And now you are witnessing the cost of bringing them back and you resist.

• There is a tremendous cost to go after this lost sheep and then to find it, place its 70 -100 lbs on your back and make the long arduous trek back.

• But the now good shepherd rejoices, and celebrates with his community.

STORY 2 | THE LOST COIN

• Luke does a particular work at highlighting a powerful and unique aspect of Jesus’ ministry for His time.

  • In that He does just tell stories that address the world of men and mens’ cultural expectations, but the world of women as well.

• The woman here has been entrusted and is responsibly for the resources for her home.

• A coin is lost and she will search diligently and not give up until it is found. 

• The sheep would not simply return on its own and the coin certainly is not simply going be found on its own.

  • The coin can show no initiative whatsoever in being found. 

  • But again the search is all too worth it once what has been lost is found and the priority of Heaven is to rejoice over what is lost being found.

  • Any person turning to God.

• Jesus is confronting these leaders with how they were a block to others finding and being found by God.

STORY 3 | THE LOST SONS

• “Any Middle Eastern son who requests his inheritance from a healthy father is understood to want his father to die. Such a son is indeed dead to the family.”

  – Kenneth Bailey

• He humiliated his father and wished him dead and went off his part of the family’s money and came to ruin.

• But the younger son comes to the end of himself in his own humiliation and he’s reduced to feeding pigs and longing to eat the pods the pigs ate.

• Finally the Pharisees may have begun to think Jesus took sin as seriously as they did.

  • And in this way he invites them in for the shock of the rest of the story.

• The son begins to return home with a prepared speech of how he would simply be a hired worker in his fathers home, no longer a son.

• There was a formal ceremony where a pot would be broken in front of a son like this to say to the whole community, he is cut off.

  • This is the expectation he should have returned home to.

• Instead we see this absurdity …

  • RAN - experienced disgrace himself and interrupted the speech

  • ROBE - heir to the kingdom, identifying him as a member of the family.

  • RING - authority to speak and act as an heir to the Kingdom.

  • SANDALS - freedom to move uninhibited about the father’s land and business.

  • PARTY - celebration of the best kind.

• It is then we see the lostness of the older brother. There are more parallels than we can go into right now.

  • But he comes in from the field and humiliates his father by refusing to go into the banquet that his father has thrown.

  • And in the speech he does share we learn that he has been close in proximity but far in heart from his father.

  • He has been lost by keeping all the rules, perhaps even worse than his brother who broke them all.

• Jesus boldly confronts these leaders who are convinced they are diligently seeking God but have lost touch with God’s heart.

• God’s heart is to go after the lost and there are many ways to get lost.

  • We can wander off accidentally 

  • We can be lost and not know it and not have an ounce of ability to return 

  • We can with God was dead and go utterly do our own thing 

  • We can follow all the rules and have a heart hard as stone 

• Heaven celebrates what is lost being found.

  • Be careful when you become certain in your exclusions

  • if God hates everyone you hate, its a pretty sure sign you’ve tried to make God in your own image.

• There is a cost to be born in restoration

  • The burden and the long walk back 

  • The difficult and diligent search 

  • The bearing the cost to welcome in 

  • The offer of grace at personal expense 

• Lets Celebrate today - celebrating the heart of God in restoration.

• Lets remember the tremendous cost God has paid for our restoration

• Lets be those who love grace - not those so comfortable in our own place (or insecure in our own place ) that we despise grace.

---

April 27: Groups Guide

About This Guide

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

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

pdf download

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

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

more Resources

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

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

---

Love

Teaching Text: Matthew 13: 1-13

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heavenhas been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

---

Themes

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

• The Parables of Jesus

• Wise & Foolish Builders

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• There is a place, a quick line you could miss if you weren’t looking for it in the book of Acts that says in the 40 days after the resurrection Jesus spoke with the disciples about the Kingdom of God.

  • Think about that. Hadn’t Jesus been talking with them about the Kingdom of God the whole time?

• The disciples had seen partially. But now, His death and resurrection put His life in a new clarity, a new understanding.

• This Eastertide we are also going to take these 40 days after Easter and listen to the teachings of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.

• Parables lay two things beside one another so that in understanding one, you can better understand the other.

  • So they reveal the Kingdom of God, especially if you carry the story with you and let it work on you. But they also cloak the meaning to some degree and provide a way to say some very provocative things in public without being able to be immediately arrested.

  • No one parable shows us everything of the Kingdom of God but as we hear them and reflect on them, more and more of the reality of God in our midst becomes clear.

  • Jesus didn’t invent parables. It was a popular rabbinic teaching tool in a culture that valued a learner coming to a discovery from considering a teaching rather than simply having information laid out to them to repeat back.

    • But His disciples are worried that He may have cloaked too much. They ask why are you teaching like this?

    • I am teaching this way because this way is a heart revealer. It will show where people are at. Some will listen and listen but not hear. They will look and look and not see.

    • They many be present but they are not seeking God’s Kingdom. They have too much riding on their own Kingdom.

    • But for those who follow up, who ask questions, who keep the conversation going, who carry the story away and mediate on it, let it confront them, don’t hide from it, approach with humble and receptive heats it can bear the most precious fruit in all the world.

• 4 Categories of Responses to the seed that is sown:

  (HOW IS YOUR HEART TODAY?)

  • Is it hardened?

  • Is it shallow?

  • Is it crowded?

  • Is it tender and open?

• Jesus tells us ... The seed is the message of the Kingdom of God.

  • The Kingdom of God is where God’s heart is being expressed and known and experienced.

  • “When we speak of the kingdom of God, we are speaking of a kingdom which works more like a family or a well-functioning neighborhood, where people really do love one another and care for each other. This kingdom is the range of God’s effective will—or simply God acting in this world—where what He wants done is done. Jesus’ teaching showed us that the kingdom of God is not a thing of times and places; it is a thing of the heart. It is a life that is lived in vital connection with God himself. Unlike the kingdom of God, human government functions on principles of force, deception, brutality, and the power of death. All human governments have the power of death, but what they lack is the power of life. This is what the kingdom of God has: the power of life. Human governments can kill. God’s government gives life. This life is based upon the new birth that is an entry into the kingdom of God.”

    – Dallas Willard

HARD HEART:

• Our hearts can become hardened when we become certain that our understanding of the evens of our life is all there is.

• But also our hearts can be hardened simply by too much traffic there. We indiscriminately let too many things into the deep places of our life.

• Our heart can also be hardened by the many messages of the world that enthrone the self, glorify selfishness, and keep us isolated in the pursuit of project self.

• This parable is reminding us that we aren’t just hearing the message of the Kingdom of God in a neutral space.

• How do you measure the hardness of your heart in light of these three descriptions of hardness?

SHALLOW HEARTS:

• In this condition, it is received with joy, but there is no root, and the initial fast-growth withers when trouble hits.

  • I often see people mistake agreement for participation or mistaking on the spot resonance or actual obedience

  • We receive with joy but we are so used to only led by our feelings that the response lasts as long as the feeling.

• “In the stony ground, the people hear the Word and say, “[T]his is wonderful!” But they don’t receive the Word at the deep level of their soul where it can penetrate the depths of their personality. The seeds don’t take root because there is nothing within the person’s character to take hold of. A person’s character is the internal, overall structure of the self that is revealed by long-running patterns of behavior and from which actions more or less automatically arise. It’s what runs our life. It shows itself in our thinking and choices and in our habitual ways of behavior that are built into our bodies and become obvious in our relationships. What we will seriously think about is one of the strongest indications of how our character has grown. The way our thoughts are directed affects our feelings before and apart from the point where they settle into the habits of our body and our social relationships. Receiving good news can make our bodies jump up and down with joy because our feelings are largely determined by our thoughts. That’s why people jump up and down when they win the lottery. But then very often their winnings ruin their life because their feelings were one thing and their character was something else.”

  – Dallas Willard

• How difficult do you find it to follow an emotional moment with obedience?

CROWDED HEARTS:

• Received the word but the worries of this life and deceitfulness of wealth chokes out the world

• There is an initial growth, but life is so full of other things.

• Our old ways of meeting the deep needs of our life out of our own resources do not just vanish in a flash.

• We keep making our way through life by worry as our functional guide instead of faith.

• Fear leads our life more than love.

• We begin to take the security of things like wealth as if that is the true abundant life.

  • “Western culture today is so powerful and alluring that it often swallows us whole. Its beauty, power, and promise generally take away both our breath and our perspective. The lure of present salvation—money, sex, creativity, the good life—has, for the most part, entertained, amused, distracted, and numbed us into a state where we no longer have a perspective beyond that of our culture and its short-range [salvation story].”

    – Ronald Rolheiser

• This is the first era in human history, you can reach in your pocket, check the stocks, check the news, see if someone liked your photo. You see your aunt dyed her hair a new color, right along the side of a tragic explosion, and then a filtered photo of your friends vacation.

• What habits and patterns of life crowd your heart’s openness and receptivity to the kingdom of Jesus?

UNDERSTANDING HEARTS:

• To understand here is beyond simply grasping the information. Understanding the implications of the Kingdom and surrendering to its reality in friendship with God.

• I can change!

• If you can be honest about where you are, you are ready to have your heart changed from there

  • “If you won’t hear the bad news about yourself, you can’t know yourself. You condemn yourself to the maintenance of an exhausting illusion, a false front to your self which keeps out doubt and with it hope, change, nourishment, breath, life. If you won’t hear the bad news, you can’t begin to hear the good news about yourself either.”

    – Francis Spufford

• Name where your heart is

• Offer it to God - The Gardener

• Obey what you do understand

• Allow the miracle of growth - 30 - 60 - 100

PARENTS:

• Read the parable of the sower to your kids

• Talk, ask your kids what they think the difference is between hearing/understanding and doing something?

• Ask them what it means for Jesus to be the Seed (the Word) of God

• Pray with them for God to prepare their hearts to receive Him openly

---

April 20: Groups Guide

About This Guide

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

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

pdf download

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

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

more Resources

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

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

---

Love

Teaching Text: John 20: 1-23

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved,and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

---

Themes

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

• Easter

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• “You get out of bed, wash and dress; eat breakfast, say goodbye and go away never maybe, to return for all you know, to work, talk, lust, pray, dawdle and do, and at the end of the day, if your luck holds, you come home again, home again. Then night again. Bed. The little death of sleep, sleep of death. Morning, afternoon, evening—the hours of the day, of any day, of your day and my day. The alphabet of grace. If there is a God who speaks anywhere, surely he speaks here: through waking up and working, through going away and coming back again, through people you read and books you meet, through falling asleep in the dark.”

– FREDERICK BUECHNER

• Buechner goes on to define the grace of God as if God was speaking....

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.” 

– FREDERICK BUECHNER

• Where are you living in the story of the world?
  

• Look at 3 questions this Easter…

  • Why did Jesus die?

  • What does Jesus’ resurrection mean?

  • How could you find yourself in the story?
    
    

• So first, Why did Jesus die?

  • We mark and commemorate this death of Jesus, in all its brutality, in all of its psychological trauma, in all its poetry and grief because we are saying this death is a part of the most important stretch of events in all the world. 

  • The way the Scriptures understand the problem that is behind all the other problems of the world is a relational fracture.

  • C.S. LEWIS in one of the great descriptions of the framework of faith in Christ called Mere Christianity

    • “What the [enemy of our souls] 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 human beings trying to find something other than God which will make them happy.”

      – C.S. LEWIS

  • Lewis goes on to say… paraphrasing…

    • “The reason why it can never work is. God made us: deigned us inside of a relational framework as an overflow of God’s own character. You and I we made to function properly on and in the love of God. Without that, our spirits will burn through any other option looking for what is our true home. We will live always with a searching restlessness. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without faith. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

• The problem behind the problems of the world is that we are living separated from God.

• The Scriptures say this fracture is caused by sin. A difficult and maybe seemingly old fashioned word, but its…

  • Going against the nature, character, and choices or God. We go our own way.

  • But if God is the source of life then to be separated from God means death. 

  • Death has ripped though and is ripping through the world.

• There is no way to simply ignore this separation from God and the death it causes.

• God cannot simply act as if it isn’t there. But God also refuses to simply leave us stranded without Him.

• God says I will show you the cost of our separation, but then I will bear the cost of our separation.

• What does Jesus’ resurrection mean?

  • Resurrection means it worked.

• Again Jesus said peace.

  • Shalom. Well being. Hope. Unstoppable Life.

• Everything Jesus had said about the Kingdom of God has been proven true by His resurrection.

• Jesus says receive my Holy Spirit in the inner sanctuary of your heart and soul.

  • Share in the resurrection
    

• How could you find yourself in the story?

  • Start where you really are.

    • Mary came in the dark. Devastated, grieving, crushed.

    • Peter raced in his shame on the wild possibility of the impossible 

    • Jesus’ friends were hiding behind locked doors.

  • How did any of this group become the small force of loving people who change the known world?

    • That’s an unimpeachable historical fact. 

    • These untrained, regular folks changed the face of the Roman empire and the world 

    • They saw something. They saw Someone. They heard their name called.

    • They were embraced by the risen Jesus.

  • This is your Easter invitation.

    • Allow yourself to be embraced by the risen Jesus.

• All you have to bring is nothing.

  • But we really wanna add something.

  • Bring nothing and receive Peace, Shalom.

  • Bring Nothing and receive utter forgiveness 

  • Bring Nothing and receive the Holy Spirit - God’s very presence in your life.

• What do you think keeps your from relating to Jesus? 

  • Guilt? 

  • Sin?

  • Busy-ness? 

  • Distraction? 

  • Doubt? 

• Jesus welcomes us to bring all these things to Him in exchange for peace.

---

April 6: Groups Guide

About This Guide

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

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

pdf download

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

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

more Resources

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

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

---

Love

Teaching Text: Mark 11: 12-25

The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs.Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”

“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

---

Themes

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

• Walking the Way of Jesus | Exploring the Practices of Jesus

• Humble Courage in Confrontation

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• We have looked during Lent at the Walking in the Way of Jesus - looking at the specific practices we see in Jesus life in the Gospels

  • Fasting 

  • Resisting Temptation 

  • Withdrawing in Prayer 

  • Engaging in Prayer 

• Today: Humble Courage in Confrontation

  • Jesus is not just our patient life coach for project self.

• Love has a spine, Goodness requires conviction and often courage, Faithfulness means enduring in God's way in spite of great resistance.

• There are many moments in Jesus’ life -  publicly with the crowds, with the leaders, and even with His friends and followers that Jesus shows humble courage in confrontation. 

• He keeps confounding expectations. He is both a Lion and a Lamb.

• At first blush the whole thing seems a little out of character for Jesus. We have this hangry moment with the fig tree where Jesus seems a little harsh and we can almost see the disciples exchanging glances, like “someone hasn’t had their coffee.”

• Jesus Curses a Tree

  • Jesus declares the true reality of the tree’s condition and then it is miraculously seen for what it is

  • Like a prophet in the Hebrew tradition He says - This thing that appears to have life is really dead

• It turns out He was simply naming a sad reality that was about to be realized.

• Jesus Cleanses the Temple

  • Jesus had been into Jerusalem and the temple the night before and looked around, but because it was late we went back out to Bethany.

  • I think that’s important, and the other account where He makes a whip of chords by hand is important, not because it makes this easier to understand right off hand, but because it means this is something Jesus has been thinking about.

  • He is not simply losing His temper and being carried away by anger. 

• Israel’s Messiah was calling Israel back to its vocation to be a blessing to the whole world and it cost Him His life.

• Part of Jesus’ charge against His fellow-Jews was that Israel as a whole had used its vocation, to be the light of the world, as an excuse for a hard, narrow, nationalist piety and politics in which the rest of the world was to be, not enlightened, but condemned. We can see something of this attitude both in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the tendency to violent revolution throughout the period in which Jesus lived. The Temple had been intended to symbolize God’s dwelling with Israel for the sake of the world; the way Jesus’ contemporaries had organized things, it had come to symbolize not God’s welcome to the nations but God’s exclusion of them...

• “Violence towards outsiders; injustice towards Israel itself; that was what the Temple had come to mean. As with the fig tree, Jesus’ only word for the place was one of judgment”

  – NT Wright

• Jesus is standing up for those who are being taken advantage of 

• Jesus is crying out that the nations have a place to seek and find God. 

  • That His Father’s house will be a house of prayer for all nations

• And Jesus is prophetically saying this sacrificial system is over.

• The bustling market kept the Gentiles from having a place to meet with God.

• What Happens to the tree and the temple?

  • The tree dies and the temple is destroyed.

• Jesus says when we act in true faith we could say to a mountain to go into the sea. In the context it’s hard to imagine He could just mean a random mountain, but He had just prophetically said enough to the Temple Mount. 

• You are the temple, friends 

  • And we are built together as the temple.

• The same disciples whom Jesus speaks to hear would write…

  • “As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

    –  1 Peter 2: 4-5

• Unthinking Outrage. Anger with out compassion will not do. Self-absorbed zingers to just score points or get clicks is not our way.

• But our first allegiance is to Jesus and the Kingdom of God. 

  • A Kingdom of LOVE JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, SELF-CONTROL.

PARENTS:

• Ask your kids: 

• What makes you angry? Why? 

• What is worth being angry about?

• How should we act when we are angry?

---

March 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: John 17: 1-16

After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal lifeto all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you,the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

“I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power ofyour name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.

---

Themes

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

• Walking the Way of Jesus | Exploring the Practices of Jesus

• Engaging in Prayer

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• God teaches us to ask for things in specific ways and times through scripture, specifically through the words of jesus. . 

THE SUGGESTION

• I want to suggest at least one thing that can happen to us in this type of prayer discussion is we mix up God's love and God's power.

• God's love is available to all of us without reservation in Christ, but the experience of God's power does not flow equally in all of us.

• Francis Schaeffer - a Christian thinker, and apologist, author, philosopher was was speaking and writing late in his life about the greatest threats to the church and the way of Jesus.

  • He said the church was at great risk of losing their passion, inheritance, calling, zeal, love to kneel down before the two twin idols of personal peace and affluence.

  • Schaeffer was worried in 1982 that the current and next generations of Christians were going to simply be concerned about getting their tickets arranged and stamped for heaven but have very little concern for living a life of love in the way of Jesus.

  • He was worried their main concerns were going to be personal peace and affluence.

  • “Personal peace means just to be left alone, not to be troubled with the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city–to live one’s life with minimal possibilities of being personally disturbed. Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren. Affluence means an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity–a life made up of things, things, and more things a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance.”

    – Francis Schaeffer

• Do you feel way more comfortable with withdrawing in prayer than with engaging in prayer for God to move and change things? 

• Jesus when He is teaching His disciples to pray in Luke 11 kind of tells a wild story. Right after He gives them this model prayer we call the Lord’s prayer.

  • He says sometimes when you pray it will feel like knocking on a door late at night and no one is coming. In fact it will feel like your friend is directly refusing your request. 

  • You will be desperate and the door will be shut. 

  • What do you do? Walk away and say some prayers just don’t get answered?

    • No. Jesus says KEEP KNOCKING.

• How would you say you are doing in the area of persistence in prayer? 

• To help think about how to grow in spiritual power I’m going to suggest a little device I call the power equation. And just so you know I’m totally embarrassed by the name of it.

  • It sounds so cheesy, like one of those lame money-making programs you see on a late night infomercial, “With the proven Power Equation system, you’ll get out of debt now and earn thousands by working part time in your own home, all while melting inches off your waist.” 

  • The name also suggests a sort of mathematical precision that doesn’t really apply. But I’m going with it because the concept of the equation actually helps to illustrate how several different elements can combine together to increase our power in the Spirt. 

  • Plus, a little embarrassment is probably good for the soul. So here’s the power equation in all its glory. 

  • Authority + Gifting + Faith + Consecration = Power

    – Jordan Seng

• Seng is identifying 4 Categories from Scripture and his own experience where we see God developing followers of Jesus as they grow in power in prayer.

  • Authority - We grow in authority as we gain experience in obeying God.

  • Gifting - the New Testament is clear that everyone in Christ is given gifts in the Spirit. They aren’t all the same or too the same degree and they help us see our need for one another in the Christian community. 

  • Faith - in so many of the miracles of Jesus we see the activity of faith. 

    • It often comes down to a confidence in the generosity of God. A confidence in the authority of Jesus.

    • Faith is both a gift and something we can cultivate. 

  • Consecration - Seng says is the way we dedicate ourselves to God through sacrificial acts. 

• Perpaps Seng’s equation has some things to teach us. 

  • Authority + Gifting + Faith + Consecration = Power

• Perhaps also  there is still some mystery to it. 

• There are WILD CARDS. Times when God answers or moves in prayer and none or very little of any of this is present.

• Jesus taught us to pray that GOD’s KINGDOM would come ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN 

  • That means engaging in prayer in contested spaces.

• Jesus is regularly confronting the contested nature of this world.

• JESUS IS ENGAGING IN PRAYER

• Pray for breakthrough from strongholds. Things that dont seem to be changing, that are beyond mere willpower to transform.

• Praying for protection against spiritual attack.

  • Jesus seemed to think we would be praying for this all the time, as much as we worship and ask for daily bread.

• Pray for what otherwise seems impossible. - Giving in prayer what you may not be able to give any other way. 

  • what can I give them in prayer than I cant give them any other way.

• Pray for healing.

• Pray for Freedom. Justice. Peace. Salvation.

PARENTS:

• Ask your kids: 

  • What is one thing Jesus has asked you to obey? 

  • Why is it difficult to pray sometimes?

  • What can you pray for that only God can give?

---

March 23: Groups Guide

About This Guide

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

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

pdf download

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

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

more Resources

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

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

---

Love

Teaching Text: Mark 1: 29-39

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

---

Themes

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

• Walking the Way of Jesus | Exploring the Practices of Jesus

• Withdrawing in Prayer

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What is your first impressions about fasting? 

• Have you fasted before?

  • What was your experience? 

•  "If we knew what happened when we prayed we would pray all the time."
  
  

• This highlights these two broad aspects of prayer

  • What we see and experience or think or feel as we pray, what happens that we are aware of.

  • And what happens that we aren't aware of, that is hidden, sometimes draped in mystery, responses or answers to prayer, changes in other places, or over time that we don't see?

• We want to ask and answer this question: What does prayer do?
  

• People ask does prayer work? And what we often mean is WILL I GET WHAT I ASK FOR IN PRAYER?

• This is the measure of a good negotiation. “Did I get what I want?” 
  

• And thats not an unimportant question, but there may be a better one... DOES CONVERSATION WORK?
  

• We have seen Jesus fasting, we have seen Jesus resisting temptation, and today we see Jesus Withdrawing in Prayer
  

• Jesus made a priority to talk and listen to the Father. 

• Jesus made a priority to get away and to commune with the Father.

• Jesus made a priority to let prayer direct his life and ministry. 
  

• Right before the passage we read, we see this:

  • “The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him. 28 News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.” 

    – Mark 1: 27-28

  • Jesus is having success. Jesus has been through an exhausting day. Jesus knows the feeling of having to be “on” all the time.

  • And so…

    • “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.”

      – Mark 1: 35
      
      

• Threats to our spiritual life

  • To base our identity on vocational achievement 

    • “Jesus before any miracles had begun his public ministry hearing the Father say “THIS IS MY BELOVED SON IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED.

  • The crippling of our lives by distraction 

    • Withdrawing in prayer is a way to pay attention. To God, to your relationships, to the world 

  • But many of us are becoming wondrously accomplished at things that don’t matter

  • The uncontested inner monologue of shame and lack

    • One of the most crucial things we encounter in prayer is just how much God loves us. 

    • Without that we can often slip back into an inner monologue of shame and deficit, of past mistakes and future worry.

    • Many of us are in a fight with voices of shame.

      • Withdrawing in prayer is a rebellion against shame

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

  – Pete Grieg
  
  

• The exhaustion of prideful self-sufficiency

  • Somewhere along the line some of us picked up a deadly weakness disguising itself as strength 
    
    
    
    

• Each of these threats …

  • Basing our identity on our achievement 

  • The pervasiveness of distraction 

  • Our inner monologues of shame 

  • Or pride and self- sufficiency and the exhaustion that comes with it 

• These are the very things we press back against when we get on our own to pray.

• We offer these to God. We invite God in. We hear God speak in these areas. We often experience a kind of reset. 

• So Look at Jesus’ pattern 

  • Very early in the morning (there may be sacrifice in making time to pray)

  • Left the house | Solitary place (there may need to be some intentionality in location) 

• “God alone knows the selfish motives behind my every act, the vipers’ tangle of lust and ambition, the unhealed wounds that paradoxically drive me to appear whole. Prayer invites me to bring my whole life into God’s presence for cleansing and restoration. Self-exposure is never easy, but when I do it I learn that underneath the layers of grime lies a damaged work of art that God longs to repair.”

  – Philiip Yancey

• We can guess what He prayed

  • The Lords Prayer 

  • The Psalms

  • From His own heart for Himself - John 17

  • For others - John 17 

• You can pray this way

  • Remember who you are 

  • Pray through what you want

  • Adjust how you live in response to God’s love

    • Identity 

    • Desires 

    • Rhythms 

• What would need to happen for you to move your understanding of prayer to move from fixing things to conversation? 

• Rate yourself 1-10: (1=not vulnerable at all, 10=totalaly vulnerable, I’m toast)

  How vulnerable are you to these threats:

  • Basing our identity on our achievement 

  • The pervasiveness of distraction 

  • Our inner monologues of shame 

  • Or pride and self-sufficiency and the exhaustion that comes with it 

• What is your vulnerability score out of 40? 

• How can you adjust your prayer life to mitigate these vulnerabilities? 

• “Maybe we are becoming wondrously accomplished at things that don’t matter”

  • Ask God to help guard against this. 

PARENTS:

• Ask your kids: 

  • What do you think is the purpose of prayer? 

  • What happens when we pray?

  • Why is it difficult to pray sometimes?

---

March 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: Matthew 4: 1-11

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    and they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

---

Themes

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

• Walking the Way of Jesus | Exploring the Practices of Jesus

• Resisting Temptation

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What is your favorite movie? 

• Why is it so valuable to you? 

• What about it, do you want everyone to experience? 

• The stories we repeat help us know who we are

• Certain stories have a disproportionate influence on our lives if we have believed the Gospel and become followers of Jesus.

• Jesus is tempted, and He resists.

• We live in a world that philosophically muses whether sin is really a thing? 

• And it often seems intelligent or sophisticated to suggest that sin is just a construct we’ve made up. 

• But also if most of us are honest we struggle to keep up even our own standards all of the time, let alone Gods.

• It’s a deeply human question to ask 

  • How do I keep from doing something I don’t want to do?

  • Why do I break my promises to myself and others about how I’m going to live?

  • How come even if I throw out the rule book or change the lines, I still have a sense of dis-ease?

• “What I and most other believers understand by the word [SIN]…has got very little to do with yummy transgression. For us, it refers to something much more like the human tendency, the human propensity to f(oul) up. Or let’s add one more word: the human propensity to f(oul) things up, because what we’re talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. 

  It’s our active inclinations to break stuff, ‘stuff’ here including moods, promises, relationships we care about, and our own well being and other people’s, as well as material objects whose high gloss positively seems to invite a big fat scratch. Now, I hope we’re on common ground. In the end, almost everyone recognizes this as one of the truths about themselves. You can get a long way through an adult life without having to acknowledge you own personal propensity; maybe even all the way through, 

  if you’re someone with a very high threshold of obliviousness, or with the kind of disposition that registers sunshine even when a storm is howling all around. But for most of us the point eventually arrives when, at least for an hour or a day or a season, we find we have to take notice of our HPtFtU (as I think I’d better call it)”

  – Francis Stufford
  

• Consider the ways that you experience temptation.

• How Jesus gets out there to be tempted

• How Jesus resists temptation

• How can you and I resist temptation?

• He is led by the Spirit.

• Facing temptation doesn’t mean we are not loved. 

• It means we live in a broken world and that its a contested space. 

• Flesh - internal struggle with selfishness and sin, the pull to be our own god, go our own way, our personal contribution to the brokenness of this world 

• World - the way culture bends away from God, the stories, messages, powers, and norms that enforce a way of life apart from God. These are can get engrained in systems of injustice and oppression. So we have personal and systemic evil 

• Devil - but we also have real spiritual entities that are the enemy of the ways of God. We will contending with actual temptation, accusation, and deception (just as we see here)

• These temptations are all things Jesus needs. 

• And they are all deeply connected to His vocation and purpose. 

  • Temptation for His body and appetites (being take care of)

  • Temptation around being seen for who He really is - approval, recognition

  • Temptation around what He has come to redeem and receive - status, significance, purpose

• Jesus is loved and led by the Spirt 

• Jesus needs the things being offered

• So what is the issue? They are being offered in a false way, a short cut, not from the Father way.

• “You will be tempted exactly as Jesus was, because Jesus was being tempted exactly as we are. You will be tempted with consumption, security, and status. You will be tempted to provide for yourself, to protect yourself, and to exalt yourself. At the core of these three is a common impulse – to cast off the Fatherhood of God.”

  – Russell Moore

• Sin is trying to meet the deep needs of our life out of our own resources without God.

• This matters because we lose touch with the source of life.

• And we lose the sense of relational connection to God. THE LOVE.

• How Jesus resists temptation

  • First Temptation | Stone to bread

    • Jesus answered with scripture

    • Eve: She saw the fruit was good for food, pleasing the eye, and desirable to make one wise.

      • It was a way to get what you need in your own way.

  • Second Temptation | Throw Yourself down (and be caught)

    • Basically go to a very public and prominent place and do an undeniable sign to show people who you really are

    • And this time the devil uses Scripture. So this has to clue us in that not every time we see Scripture used is it being handled rightly or used with God-centered motives. 

      • We need discernment from the Spirit and soaking in God’s word. We can ask “What is the Spirit of what is being said using the Word.

    • Jesus answers with scripture

    • Again, the temptation is ‘get something you need in a short cut way’ with you being in control.

  • Third Temptation | The glory of the world for worship

    • The question is what will have your deepest allegiance, greatest affection, and devotion?

    • Jesus answers with scripture (aggressively) 

• From Jesus’ example we can see…

  • Temptation will have its limits

  • God will send comfort
    

•  How can you and I resist temptation?

  • Trust God to Know and Meet Our Needs

  • Trust God’s Varying Timelines of Satisfaction

  • Know the Story 

  • Replacement Over Only Avoidance 

  • Two Types of Resistance - In the Moment and Ongoing Formation

PARENTS:

• Ask your kids to identify times they feel tempted 

• Illustration: taking what I want now, compared to waiting for God’s reward

---

March 9: Groups Guide

About This Guide

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

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

pdf download

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

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

more Resources

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

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

---

Love

Teaching Text: Matthew 3:16 – 4:2

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

---

Themes

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

• Friends of God | The Kingdom of God Moving Along Lines of Friendship in the Life of Jesus

• Exploring the Practices of Jesus | Fasting

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What is your first impressions about fasting? 

• Have you fasted before? What was your experience? 

• This world, in some very real ways, is truly broken. Sometimes the pursuit of only comfort does not align with reality. 

• Sometimes the pursuit of only comfort blinds me and numbs to what is really happening with others, with God, and with myself.

• There will be times we will meet God and our neighbor in discomfort. 
  
  

• The Gospels tells us Jesus has come to be forgiveness and salvation for all who believe and bring us into the Kingdom of God, and yet Jesus works for 30 years in almost total obscurity and when He starts His public ministry HE STARTS WITH A FAST
  
  

• We see He is led and filled by The Holy Spirit. 

• And we hear the Voice of the Father’s love and affirmation. 

• From that place of secure love, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness where He fasts and prays for 40 days.

• Jesus teaches on fasting in the Sermon on the Mount

  • Look at what he says…

    “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
    – Matthew 6: 16-18
    

• When you fast (not if you fast) 

  • Actually there are three things right in a row in the Sermon on the that Jesus says “When you” do this, make sure you do it this way.

    • When you give to those in need

    • When you pray

    • When you fast

• Practice in secret. Don’t post about it. 

  • And in each one, your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
    

• In Mark 9 and Matthew 17 there is a story of a father who brings his son, who is suffering terribly, to the disciples.

• And then Jesus comes and tells the father to have faith. The father famously and very relatably says “I believe. Help me overcome unbelief.”

• And at the end of the moment, Jesus’ disciples ask why they couldn’t cast out the demon and Jesus says.

  • This kind only come out by prayer (and fasting).

• I think it’s safe to say the issue here is faith. Jesus says as much. Not how many hours someone has done a spiritual discipline to earn God’s attention or power.

• But also right along side that Jesus knows that there is little else in the world that can grow your faith and sense of authority in Christ like the combination of fasting and prayer.

• Jesus knew the power of fasting and prayer to attune us to the Father, the Father’s Voice, and the Father's Will.
  

• We fast to say no to the flesh and yes to the Spirit. 

• We deliberately say I will be weak in the flesh so my Spirit will be strong in God.

• We pray with our body – I am hungry for you God.
  

• We fast to say no to our bodies, minds, and will that insists we can do things on our own. The New Testament calls this very human operating system THE FLESH.
  

• During Lent we are going to be looking at 5 specific practices of Jesus that we can take up as followers of Jesus before we get to Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

  • Fasting in grief and petition (as David does for an ill son) 

  • Fasting in repentance - to turn back to God (as we see in the city Nineveh)

  • Fasting in desperation and for favor (with God and others as in Esther) 

  • Fasting to prepare (Jesus shows us this) 

  • Fasting has a promised reward (Jesus teaches this)

  • Fasting for breakthrough, deliverance, healing (Jesus shows us this) 

• Communion - we fast to commune with God not simply to communicate our needs 

• Promises - we fast to step into and be more aware of all that God is offering us by intentionally becoming aware of our need 

• Reward - our reward is God Himself but we also will see many changes in our lives as we learn to fast and pray.
  
  

HOW TO FAST: 

• Begin by praying and asking God to guide you. (Use Wisdom and Gospel) - God doesn’t love you more because you fast.

• Choose a time to give up food. One Meal, One Day. Three Days, One Week. Ten Days. 40 days.

• Start small. 

• Fast from to Feast On.

  • “God has given us incredible tools, practices, and disciplines to help our whole beings on our journey of maturing into Christlikeness. Fasting is a preparatory tool that helps us pray as we ought to. In fact, fasting is never really mentioned in the Bible outside the context of prayer. In humbling our souls (our reasoning agents), fasting elevates our spirits, through which we commune and communicate with God. There is truly a grace for prayer released when we fast.”

    – Reward Sibanda

• Use your hunger as a prompt.

WHAT TO EXPECT?

• Hunger 

• Irritability 

• Discomfort

• Concentration and Ease in Prayer 

• Sensitivity to God’s Presence 

• Discernment 

• Calm 

• Over Time, Resilience
  

PARENTS: 

• How can you help your kids understand fasting? 

• What is something they can fast from and how can you replace that with a feasting on Jesus practice?

---

March 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: John 11: 1-44

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.)So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you,and yet you are going back?”

Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God,who is to come into the world.”

After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind manhave kept this man from dying?”

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

---

Themes

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

• Friends of God | The Kingdom of God Moving Along Lines of Friendship in the Life of Jesus

• Martha and Mary of Bethany - The Miracle of Seeing the Coming of the Kingdom of God

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What do your friends think about identifying as a Christian in this moment? 

• What about our faith seems absurd? 

• What do you find you listen to most that shapes your worldview? 

• What do you do with your grief? 

• What of value do you offer to God in worship? 

• Martha and Mary of Bethany, and the 3 times Mary ends up at Jesus’ Feet

• Luke 10: 38-42

  • So this is the first moment: we find Mary at Jesus feet | Listening.

    • Martha says “Dont you care”

• The second moment #2 I want to call your attention to is in the much longer and more dramatic account of the sister brother Lazarus dying

  • John 11: 32-35

    • And so here again we find Mary at Jesus’ Feet | Grieving
      

• The last moment #3 I want you to notice comes in the very next chapter.

  • John 12: 1-8

  • Its a compelling scene for many reasons but once again we find Mary at Jesus feet | Worshipping
    
    

• So we have seen Mary, this friend of Jesus, at Jesus’ Feet listening, grieving and worshipping.
  

• In the first instance, it is not just that Mary is not pitching in with the chores, it’s that by sitting at Jesus’ Feet she is taking the position of a disciple.

  • She broke convention and took the place of a Rabbi's disciple.

• In the second instance, both Martha and Mary think if Jesus had been there, their brother would not have died.

  • Mary falls down and weeps.

    • But this leads to a miracle 

    • It’s a miracle that locks Jesus in as a target. If it was dangerous before, they are all out coming for him now. 

    • Jesus does the unthinkable miracle, but it doesn’t take all the pain away. It closes the trap on Him almost all the way.

• In the third instance, the controversy is right there – Martha and Mary are from Bethany. 

  • Bethany literally means House of the Poor.

  • Many believe there was a home there that Mary and Martha and their family may have served in that helped the poor and destitute

  • Mary breaks a jar worth a year’s wages and annoints Jesus’ Fee

  • And it’s Judas who asks how do you have such waste in the house of the poor?

  • Worship of Jesus in this moment looks absurd. Let me tell you it may not look much less absurd now to some.

  • But Mary is saying something. This person Jesus is worth it all. It is no waste to pour out everything.

• Everyone is worshipping. Whether they admit it or not. Everyone is giving away the most valuable thing they have to something. 

• These things we worship inadvertently, cannot forgive us, restore us or love us as we are… they demand more. Always more. Never enough. 

• - Mary says I pour it out to Jesus, and it is not lost.

• - Mary establishes something in sacrificial praise that will go on forever..

  • I want to tell you, worship has power like that. 

  • I want to tell you that Mary is showing us how to live at Jesus’ Feet

    • Keep returning there whatever life throws at you. Even in the embarrassment, the delays, the grief, the scandal, the second guesses. 

    • Keep coming back to Jesus feet - LISTEN - POUR OUT YOUR HEART - GRIEVE - WORSHIP  (repeat) 

• The Revelation 

  • Jesus is a eacher with the words of life. Worth abiding with even if the religious establishment around you is confusing and painful. Keep coming back to Jesus’ Feet. Keep finding a way to hear Jesus’ Words 

  • Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life 

    • The world has death, and our wrenching delay, and grief that collapses us 

    • Come back to Jesus who let the trap be set and clamp down 

    • He limited His options for the sake of love all the way to the Cross

  • Jesus is worth it all and has given all.

    • The high priest Caiaphus, after the Lazaurs moment before the anointing moment, is trying to justify his conspiracy against Jesus 

      • Without knowing how prophetic it is, He says…”You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

• Come to His Feet to listen 

• Come to grieve and pour out your heart 

• Come to worship and offer the best of our lives. 

• What do you find you listen to most that shapes your worldview? 

• What do you do with your grief? 

• What of value do you offer to God in worship?
  

---

February 23: Groups Guide

About This Guide

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

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

pdf download

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

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

more Resources

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

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

---

Love

Teaching Text: Luke 5: 17-26

One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

---

Themes

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

• Friends of God | The Kingdom of God Moving Along Lines of Friendship in the Life of Jesus

• Friends of Friends - The Miracle of Those Who carried Their Friend to Jesus and Put Him Through The Roof

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• How are people affected when they meet Jesus?

• How have I been affected by my walk with Jesus? 

• How are my friends, colleagues, and neighbors affected because I shoe 

• His message was the good news of the kingdom. 

  • Mark 1:14-15 – “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’.” 

  • Good news: Wright:  “The good news is the announcement of something that has happened, as a result of which everything will now be different.”

  • Of the Kingdom of God - what we gotta know: from the other encounters we’ve studied…

    • The kingdom is not just an opposing way of doing things. 

    • It's a whole new existence (Nicodemus)

  • It's important to note that scribes and Pharisees were present. The spiritual elite. Those who hold power in society. There Seems to be many of them:

    • “as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal.” – Luke 5:17

      • Why did Jesus forgive the man's sins when they asked for healing?

• He uses our immediate reality to help us understand our eternal condition

  • “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.””

    – Luke 5: 23-24.

• Forgiving sins was not verifiable. Healing a lame man was. 

• God is not unsympathetic to my need for tangible evidence that He cares. - He meets us in the daily bread needs we have. 

• But every healing of this body - every miraculous meal provision and every dead person raised this body, in this life, is only temporary and at best a momentary comfort - pointing to a transcendent need.

• The point Jesus is trying to make through the healing of his legs was:

  • In my kingdom, you don't have to do anything to earn your forgiveness. 

  • End of the day their response is: 

    • “We have seen extraordinary things today.” 

      – Luke 5:26.

  • The power of faith, with the commitment of friendship

    • Creates the perfect conditions for extraordinary things. Kingdom of God things 

      • It requires patience 

      • It requires consistency 

      • It requires perseverance

      • It leads to hope 

• We measure the kingdom in years. Not in days. Its like a mustard seed 

  • It seems small and insignificant. Until it's not.

• The Pharisees had a healthy skepticism, social status and power. THEY witnessed extraordinary things

• The four friends had an actionable faith. THEY experienced extraordinary things. 

• Pharasees held power by demanding the law be obeyed for righteousness. 

• Jesus forgives this man, without him even walking there himself, and takes power from the pharasees and gives it to the man by forgiving his sins. 

  • This is why Jesus’ primary goal was the forgiveness of his sins and not the healing of his legs that would be temporary. 

• Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor –

  "Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion - which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the will of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own."

  • It was shocking that Jesus in forgiving sins, claims divinity

  • It was more shocking that He didnt require this guy to jump through hoops to forgive him. 

• What about my current circumstances points to a greater reality that Jesus wants to bring into fruition in my life? 

• Irony of the request:

  • They asked for healing: a temporary reprieve that Jesus is not disinterested in

  • They received forgiveness: the healing of their souls to experience eternal life

• The irony of the obstacle: 

  • The obstacle wasn't only the roof.

  • The initial obstacle was the religious teachers and leaders of the day who didn't make space for them to be with Jesus. 

• It's kind of fascinating: When faced with asking the crowds to make way for a sidelined member of society to encounter Jesus… they figured we had a better chance of going through the roof

• It is crucial to admit that there is a chance that I could be the obstacle. 

• It's possible that we are the ones who hinder people from experiencing Jesus. 

  • Sometimes, this is because we obscure Jesus (like the religious leaders) 

  • Sometimes, it is because we are not willing to pay the price and take the risk of bringing people to Jesus, like the four friends. 

• What about my life could be an obstacle to people seeing Jesus? 

• What lengths am I willing to go to to share Jesus's transforming love with my friends and neighbors? 

• It's time for the church to stop using the loudhailer of correct theology to drown out our poor example of Christlike love.

• Let our lives be such that others see and experience Jesus because they know us. They encounter Jesus because they encounter us

• There is a lot of actions we can and have to take in times and places where we dont see the kingdom.

  • But one thing that will never not be needed is bringing people to Jesus in prayer. We're soon to launch our lent prayer room. 

  • But weekly we invite you to take communion and come forward for prayer. Sometimes its hard to find space on the rugs, but they’re here. 

• “We have seen extrordinary things today”  -whether you are here for a few months ths, a year or 20 years. My prayer is that through this combination of faith and incarnate love of Jesus, you’ll look back on your time in New York and say we saw some extraordinary things.
  

---

February 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: Mark 4: 35-41

That day when evening came, He said to His disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took Him along, just as He was, in the boat. There were also other boats with Him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, don’t You care if we drown?”

He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

He said to His disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him!”

---

Themes

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

• Friends of God | The Kingdom of God Moving Along Lines of Friendship in the Life of Jesus

• Napping God - The Miracle of Jesus’ Presence and Peace Speaking in the Midst of a Storm

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• Read the text a couple of times.

• What stands out to you about the account of Jesus in the storm?

• Here, crossing the sea of Galilee. This was their territory, their area of expertise. They know storms could come up quickly on the water.

• Squalls were part of life on the Sea of Galilee. But one comes up that is more than they can handle.

  • They were fishermen... this was their territor

• Jesus was asleep.

• God in this case was napping.

• But God not acting as they hoped or expected in this situation as understandable as it might have been to think that was not a sign that He didn’t care.

  • It was just a sign that He saw the moment from a different perspective. He knew more than they knew. He wasn’t worried in the same way.

• And as much as we may have moments where we want God to be freaking out with us, aren’t you ultimately glad that He doesn’t.

• He rebukes the storm and His disciples - it wasn’t a kind word.

• And He says to them - “Where is your faith?”

• It’s a very raw moment. We can empathize with their fear. But Jesus is like “Hey don’t forget what story we are in here.”

  • “Don’t forget who I am.”

• And the wild thing is, the disciples are more terrified once Jesus has calmed the storm than they were when they thought they were going to drown.

• What do you think they wanted Jesus to do when they woke him?

• Why are they more afraid after Jesus calms the storm?

• You will need resources beyond you momentary interpretation of what’s happening. You will need faith in who God is and the larger story He is telling.

• Mark is using language that is very similar and parallel to the story of Jonah...

  • Both Jesus and Jonah are out on the sea in a boat.

  • Both Jesus and Jonah's boat are overtaken by a storm - the description of the storm is almost identical

  • Both Jesus and Jonah are asleep in the storm

  • The sailors come to the sleeper and they say “we are perishing” - its the exact same word in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures and what we find in Mark. - The Sailors say do somethin

  • There is a miraculous intervention by God and the seas is calmed

  • In both stories the sailors are even more terrified than they were before the storm is calmed

• So we have these almost identical stories except the obvious one major difference – Jonah in the midst of the storm, says to the sailors, "there is only one thing to do, throw me in."

  • If I die, you will live.

• In Matthew 12, there is this rather cryptic moment where some authorities are demanding Jesus give them a sign, and Jesus says no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.

• There is more than one thing to take from this story.

  • One is... YOU WILL GO THROUGH STORMS - YOU WILL NOT BE ABANDONED IN THE STORMS

    • We often don't know how the storm fits into the timeline of our lives

    • We are invited to an ultimate trust of Christ that goes beyond how we can interpret a given moment out of our resources.

    • The storms of life sometimes cause people to say I don't want God anymore. But the reality is even if you don't believe, you still have the storms. You may just be ignoring that there is someone who loves you in the middle of the storm with you.

• "I don't believe in God, but I miss him" - Julian Barnes

  • Two..CHRIST HAS GONE INTO THE STORM TO BRING US PEACE

    • If God is not acting how you hoped God would act in a storm in your life. Take heart.

    • You are not alone.

Ask your children

• “Why could Jesus sleep when everyone else was fearful?”

• “What does it mean that the storm stopped when Jesus spoke to it?”
  

---

February 9: Groups Guide

About This Guide

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

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

pdf download

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

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

more Resources

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

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

---

Love

Teaching Text: John 6: 60-69

On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before!The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

---

Themes

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

• Friends of God | The Kingdom of God Moving Along Lines of Friendship in the Life of Jesus

• Peter and the Moment of Many Departures

---

Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• What has changed about you since having a relationship with Jesus?

• What was the most difficult thing?  

• You cannot encounter Jesus and not be faced with a call for personal transformation.
  

• H. G. Wells said…  “after two millennia, a historian like myself, who doesn’t even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centering irresistibly around the life and character of this most significant man…. The historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is “What did he leave to grow?” Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him? By this test Jesus stands first.”
  

• You cannot encounter Jesus and not be faced with a call for personal transformation.

• You cannot be transformed by Jesus without somehow wanting to see your public world transformed as well.  
  

• What happens when you encounter Jesus?

• More personally:

  • What will happen to me if I encounter Him?  

  • What would God say to you if you could just hear hHm speak right now?
    
    

• Jesus feeds the 5000 with 12 baskets full left over

• He walks on water and meets the same crowd on the other side of the lake

• They want more signs from Him… but only because He fed them. 

• They recall manna in the wilderness as God’s provision and think Jesus is doing the same 

  • I do want to satisfy you but not in the way you think… and not by the means you prefer.

• Jesus says I’m giving you something better: spiritual bread from heaven. 

• They ask for this bread

• He says that He is the living bread. 

• They are disappointed by this and leave Him behind

• He asks His closest disciples if they want to leave as well

  • They respond, “where will we go, for you have the words of life”

• Very often, we want the benefits of the kingdom without wanting the authority of the kingdom or the process of the kingdom. 

• Thus, it should be evident that discipleship in John is far more than a matter of saying the right words or belonging to a group. It is a matter of obediently following Jesus

  – Gerald L. Borchert,
  
  

• The way of the disciple is the way of Jesus

• Maybe a good measure at the end of our day is: ”Where did I have to die a little bit to myself today?”

  • All these deaths require trust. 

• What does trust look like? 

  • Trust that what Jesus is saying is true

  • Trust that He will make good on His promises

  • Trust that ordering your life around the promise of the kingdom is worth it.

• Trusting in God is a choice to believe in God's promise, character, and ability, even when your feelings, circumstances, or other voices want to lead you to believe otherwise. 

• Take stock of your anxieties, fears or other stand-out emotions.

  • What circumstance, person or situation brings you anxiety/worry?

  • What fears are active in your mind? 

  • What thoughts dominate your thought life? 

• Pick one of those situations and ask God to speak to you about it. 

  • What does He want to say to you?

  • What does He require of you in this situation? 

  • What does trusting Him look like regarding: 

    • His promises in the situation, 

    • His ability to redeem it

    • The price you need to pay to trust him?
      

---

February 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: Luke 19: 1-10

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

---

Themes

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

• Friends of God | The Kingdom of God Moving Along Lines of Friendship in the Life of Jesus

• Tax Collectors and Sinners - The Miracle of a God Who Eats with the Outsider - Zacchaeus

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• When did you obey Jesus/scripture and the result did not look like you thought it would or wanted it to? 

• How did you feel when you obeyed, and it didn’t work out the way you thought? 

• Jesus was accused of being a Friend of Sinners

• He keeps getting in trouble for eating and talking and welcoming and being welcomed by types of people that religious people in the day thought he should have known better than to be friends with
  

• Zacchaeus in the text tells us was a chief tax collector. So the bad guys reported to him. They got their share, and he no doubt exponentially got his share.

• He was a wealthy man. He was a powerful man. He was a hated man.

• In Luke 19, he is also a desperate man.

  • Yes, he is short and he urgently wants a view of Jesus, but why would a powerful and wealthy man climb a tree.

  • Zacchaeus is willing to compromise his dignity and suffer embarrassment to get even a glimpse of Jesus. 
    
    

• In your own personal expectation: Is experiencing Jesus worth being embarrassed for? 

• What have you done that may be embarrassing in order to experience Jesus? 

• What shapes your understanding of the reputation of Jesus?

  • Is it what Christ himself does or those who insist on making themselves better than others?

• Zacchaeus climbs a tree in broad daylight. He seems to be beyond caring about his reputation compared to the chance to see this Jesus?

• What had he heard about Jesus?

  • Maybe he had heard that Jesus had a tax collector in his close group of followers. His disciples.

  • Maybe he had heard of the many times Jesus seems to welcome someone who others thought should have been run off, or judged, or not welcomed.

• Zacchaeus is willing to humble himself to the point of risking his dignity and reputation to really see Jesus.

• Seeing Jesus for who He really is still often requires this. You will need to humble yourself to get a real look, whatever you have heard. 
  

• What happens when we seek Jesus in this manner? 

  • Jesus calls him by name.

  • We get a picture of salvation. 

  • Goodness flows into the world.
    

• What do people learn about Jesus by looking at my life?
  
  

• “I have a word for you. I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship. And my word is this: I dare you to trust that I love you just as you are, and not as you should be.”

  – Brennan Manning
  
  

• Zacchaeus gives us A PICTURE OF SALVATION 

  • There is an invitation 

  • There is a glad response 

  • There is a new life 
    
    

parents:

• How can people see who Jesus is by looking at your life?

• How do I change when I see Jesus’s kindness to me?
  

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January 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 3: 1-21

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we knowthat you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

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Themes

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

• Friends of God | The Kingdom of God Moving Along Lines of Friendship in the Life of Jesus

• Seekers - The Miracle of Rebirth in the Secret Conversation with Nicodemus

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• How do people respond to knowing you are a believer in God? 

•  “If 20 years ago people were worried that belief in God would make them an idiot, today I run a across a mentality that belief in God will make me a bad person.  If 20 years ago people thought I might wish I could believe in God, but I would have to check my brain at the door. Now its something like I might be curious about God, but I could never let myself become like.  And so the conversation has shifted some. I find people leading with moral objections to Christianity as often or more than intellectual ones.”

• Quite often the unwillingness of our hearts and minds to find life in God is not just an information problem. It’s intended to remain a control problem.

•  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

  • This famous verse that gives us the Gospel in one sentence and tells us of the great love of God and how far God is willing to go to share His love is found in a conversation between Jesus an influential religious leader of His time.

  • it answers for us some crucial questions. Among them…

    • How one might come to God

    • How you can know God

    • How God shows us His Heart 
      

• How One Might Come to God

  • People come to Jesus in all manner of conditions and circumstances and timing in the Gospels and each of these is instructive for us because it shows us ways that we might come to God.

  • And Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night

    • By "at night” I mean…

      • Curious but unsure, intrigued but unconvinced, questioning but reluctant 

      • I’ve seen something things but I don’t know how to explain them

      • In a posture of negotiation - keeping your dignity and offering terms

  • Jesus has been doing miracles - showing the power of God, but Nicodemus puts Him in a category he can understand….

    • “He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 

    • He is ready for Jesus to be a teacher.  Give us the instructions.  We will take what we can use and it may make our lives better.

• Do you feel shame or reticence to engage with Jesus because of how you come to him?

  • Jesus was ok with Nicodemus coming the way he did. 

  • And later, he is willing to acknowledge his change in perspective publicly. 

  • But Jesus answers in a totally different way. Nicodemus says we’ve seen some good things out of you. Jesus says you can’t see anything unless you find a new way to be alive…

    • “Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.’” 

    • Nicodemus comes to negotiate with Jesus and he starts by saying he we can admit you are a great teacher… 

• I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

  – C.S. Lewis

• Nicodemus says we think you can lead some good devotionals. Jesus says you are going to need a whole new life.

• How you can know God | Be Born Again

  • “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 

    Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 

    – John 3: 4-8

  • The tragedy of the fall of humanity in Genesis 3 is that we all come equipped with starting place of false gods, either ourselves or some other substitute…

    • We are born physically but we need to made alive spiritually

  • “We are not begotten by God, we are only made by Him: in our natural state we are not sons of God, only (so to speak) statues. We have not got Zoe or spiritual life: only Bios or biological life which is presently going to run down and die. Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man to spread to other[s] the kind of life He has…Every Christian is to become a little Christ.

    – C.S. Lewis

• How God Shows Us His Heart | Rescuing Love

  • God loves giving life 

  • God loves removing condemnation 

  • God loves things being seen for what they really are (truth)

  • Very often, we believe that what will bring us closer to God is just a few small behavioral changes. 

    • How often do you believe this? 

    • How true is this thinking? 

Parents:

• Consider what language you use to describe a relationship with Jesus. 

• Does it lean towards a moral construct that leads to eternal life? 

• How can you help your kids know that it’s not about being good, but about accepting an invitation to friendship from Jesus?

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January 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:  John 2: 1-12

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom asideand said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

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Themes

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

• Friends of God | The Kingdom of God Moving Along Lines of Friendship in the Life of Jesus

• Neighbors - The miracle of the Abundance and Specific Provision at the Wedding of Cana

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• John tells us … What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which He revealed His glory; and His disciples believed in Him. 

• This is Jesus’ opening sign.

• Context can help us see.

  • The stress of the moment

  • The scandal in the solution 

  • The abundance of the miracle

• The Stress of the Moment

  • Why is this His opener?

    • Jesus often works in ways that are initially unexpected and this story is no different. He keeps showing us that the Kingdom of God is something different than you have seen before.

  • “My hour has not yet come”.

    • My hour in John’s Gospel doesn’t mean miracle time. IT means the hour of Jesus death.

  • IN ISRAEL’s most famous miracle water was turned to blood to begin the rescue of God’s people.

  • Jesus is going to hand a cup to His friends in the upper room before His arrest and say this cup of wine is My blood shed for you.

  • Jesus is feeling a weight, some stress.

• The scandal in the solution

  • The water He uses - He uses the water that people wash in before they go into the presence of God

  • The Hands He passes it through - the master of the banquet and the bridegroom have no idea what has happened with the water and the wine

    • Maybe if they knew where it came from they would be more hesitant to drink it 

  • The miracle is passed through the hands of the servants

    • God passes the revelation of his Kingdom through the servants who know the true lack

  • The credit received - The bridegroom is out and the bridegroom gets credit for what Jesus has done 

  • This is a picture of how Jesus’ salvation works.

• The abundance of the miracle

  • This is between 150-180 gallons of wine.

  • God is not just meeting the need. He is being extravagant in His generous provision. 

  • His care is about our lives big and small.

  • John tells us this took place on the third day

  • You and I are meant to be brought into union with God

  • Admit you are out 

  • Receive credit for what Christ has done 

  • We are invited to taste and see - this is not mere cognition, this is experience 

  • Being filled with the spirit is compared to being intoxicated 

  • God cares about our shame

  • The glory of God is reveals - His friends believe

  • The Character of God shows through in this story in a particular way.

    • Christ is willing for His hour to come so you can be invited to the feast of abundance

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