Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Invite Night
Food, friends, and fire pits. This is your week to hang out with your group and invite people outside of the fold to join you for a good time!
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Once Upon a Time: The Landowner and Tenants
BE SURE TO SHARE THESE ANNOUNCEMENTS THIS WEEK WITH YOUR GROUP!!
1. Backstage pass is next week from 10:35-10:55. Spread the word, get plugged in, and go All-In!
2. Next week is communion, which means that the rGroups for next week will be an invite night. Remember, invite night is not just a time to throw a party and have fun. It's designed to bring friends over to your house that may not know Jesus and aren't plugged in to a local church. Love on them, have a good time with them, and use that as an opportunity to invite them back to your group, invite them to church, and shine the light of the Gospel!
Let's reread the story together from Mark 12:1-12. To put it on more of a personal level, let's change the names up. Instead of landowner, say God. Instead of tenants, use personal pronouns (I, we, us). Does it read any different to you now? Does the meaning hit home when you start to verbalize this crazy story?
1. Compare and contrast yourself and God in this passage. List out some characteristics that you see from God. (patient, loving, caring, compassionate, pursuing, merciful, gracious)
Now, how do those contrast with who we are. (impatient, defiant, hateful, turning away from God, merciless, self-centered)
So what does this passage say about us, and what does this say about God?
2. If the above characteristics are true of God, then how should we be responding to Him? Remember that our viewpoint of God dictates how we respond to Him. Let me ask it another way.
Examine how you are responding to God with the areas of your life (time, energy, resources, finances, worship, evangelism, discipleship). Now, based on your response to Him, what does that say about what your viewpoint of God really is. If your life isn't showing that He is Lord, sustainer, savior, and owner, then is that really who you think God is?
Who would others say God is if people simply looked at your life and how you respond to Him?
3. After reading this story, what makes more sense: heaven or hell? Which one do you think you deserve? Is it really that hard to fathom that there are dire consequences for our actions?
4. What would you have done if you were confronted with the killer of your son/daughter? How would you have reacted? How does it make you feel when you find out how God reacted? What are your emotions when you realize that you are the guilty tenant in this story? And what do you think when God looks at you and offers forgiveness, adoption into his family, and writes you into the will?
1. Backstage pass is next week from 10:35-10:55. Spread the word, get plugged in, and go All-In!
2. Next week is communion, which means that the rGroups for next week will be an invite night. Remember, invite night is not just a time to throw a party and have fun. It's designed to bring friends over to your house that may not know Jesus and aren't plugged in to a local church. Love on them, have a good time with them, and use that as an opportunity to invite them back to your group, invite them to church, and shine the light of the Gospel!
Let's reread the story together from Mark 12:1-12. To put it on more of a personal level, let's change the names up. Instead of landowner, say God. Instead of tenants, use personal pronouns (I, we, us). Does it read any different to you now? Does the meaning hit home when you start to verbalize this crazy story?
1. Compare and contrast yourself and God in this passage. List out some characteristics that you see from God. (patient, loving, caring, compassionate, pursuing, merciful, gracious)
Now, how do those contrast with who we are. (impatient, defiant, hateful, turning away from God, merciless, self-centered)
So what does this passage say about us, and what does this say about God?
2. If the above characteristics are true of God, then how should we be responding to Him? Remember that our viewpoint of God dictates how we respond to Him. Let me ask it another way.
Examine how you are responding to God with the areas of your life (time, energy, resources, finances, worship, evangelism, discipleship). Now, based on your response to Him, what does that say about what your viewpoint of God really is. If your life isn't showing that He is Lord, sustainer, savior, and owner, then is that really who you think God is?
Who would others say God is if people simply looked at your life and how you respond to Him?
3. After reading this story, what makes more sense: heaven or hell? Which one do you think you deserve? Is it really that hard to fathom that there are dire consequences for our actions?
4. What would you have done if you were confronted with the killer of your son/daughter? How would you have reacted? How does it make you feel when you find out how God reacted? What are your emotions when you realize that you are the guilty tenant in this story? And what do you think when God looks at you and offers forgiveness, adoption into his family, and writes you into the will?
Monday, May 13, 2013
Once Upon a Time: The Purpose of the Lamp
1. Why do people chose to hide the lamp?
a. Nervous about what people will say and how you will be viewed
b. Nervous about not being able to answer their questions if they ask (How long will you let that be an excuse? Are you willing to study, learn, dig deeper so that you can answer questions and see them come into a relationship with Jesus?)
c. Being a hypocrite (knowing that shining the light will not match the life you live in front of them already)
d. The gospel really hasn't changed your life (it's going to be hard to tell others about a Gospel that changes lives when by your own attitude/actions/speech it's hard to even tell that it's changed yours).
2. What are the consequences of hiding the lamp for long? (God will take the blessings/resources that you are wasting and give them to someone else who is wiling to use them to advance the kingdom of God).
3. How does it make you feel that you are not the one responsible for life change? How does it make you feel that your only job in the process is to tell people about Jesus and what he has done for you and then wait on God to change their hearts? In the entire process, we have really been given the easiest, simplest, and most rewarded part of the process!
4. Share some mustard seed stories together. In your faith and life, what started as a small seed (decision/habit) that grew and produced great results? (Maybe it was the decision to follow Jesus for the first time, to pray everyday, to read your Bible daily, to join a church, to give financially, to join an rGroup, to share your faith, to invite friends to church).
REMEMBER:
Who you are determines what you do. -Jesus
What you do determines who you are. -Other religions
Followers of Jesus (who you are) means that you shine the light and scatter the seed (what you do).
Monday, May 6, 2013
Once Upon A Time: The Sower
Mark 4: 1-15
-As followers of Jesus, what is our responsibility as laid out in this parable? (simply cast the seed. We don't water, we don't make it grow, we don't produce the light and warmth, and we don't make it germinate. Our role is to simply be faithful with the seed!) I hope that helps eliminate any pressure that you may feel about sharing the Gospel. Just tell people your Jesus story. It's not your job to save them or convince them or change their heart. So don't worry about that! The only way to fail is to not cast the seed!
-One way to do a self-examination of our lives is to look at our relationship with Jesus in relation to this parable. When you gave your life to Jesus, you were given a bag full of seeds.
a. What do you see when you look in your bag right now?
b. Is it full? (aren't really doing anything with the Gospel or telling anyone about Jesus).
c. Is it running low? (then you've probably got stories of fruit in your life and in the lives of people around you).
d. Did you even know you had a bag? (Is the Gospel all about you, all about fire insurance, all about a ticket into heaven?)
e. Do you see times in your life where God gave you a straight row and lots of little holes to throw seed in, but for some reason you didn't do it?
-What are the top "thorns and weeds" in the world today? Some of them seem to be harmless initially, even good in small doses. So how do you talk to someone that has "pretty, flowery weeds" in their life? How do you talk to someone about the Gospel whose life is going really well? Is their room for Jesus in the life of a prosperous life?
-What can we do to make sure our hearts are prepared to hear and receive the Word everyday? (Pray and ask God to prepare our hearts, listen intently to help eliminate distractions and keeping the bird from stealing the seed, set up times in our lives where we look back over the notes that we take and the sermons that we hear, attend rGroup and share with others, do a regular check for weeds and thorns before they grow up too high in our lives).
-A reminder as you go out the door:
a. You are as spiritual as you choose to be. Your intimacy and closeness to God is a direct reflection of how intimate and close you really want it to be.
b. No one can make you grow. No one can grow for you.
They're back!
-What did this text teach you about God?
-What did this text teach you about yourself?
-What are you going to do about it?
-As followers of Jesus, what is our responsibility as laid out in this parable? (simply cast the seed. We don't water, we don't make it grow, we don't produce the light and warmth, and we don't make it germinate. Our role is to simply be faithful with the seed!) I hope that helps eliminate any pressure that you may feel about sharing the Gospel. Just tell people your Jesus story. It's not your job to save them or convince them or change their heart. So don't worry about that! The only way to fail is to not cast the seed!
-One way to do a self-examination of our lives is to look at our relationship with Jesus in relation to this parable. When you gave your life to Jesus, you were given a bag full of seeds.
a. What do you see when you look in your bag right now?
b. Is it full? (aren't really doing anything with the Gospel or telling anyone about Jesus).
c. Is it running low? (then you've probably got stories of fruit in your life and in the lives of people around you).
d. Did you even know you had a bag? (Is the Gospel all about you, all about fire insurance, all about a ticket into heaven?)
e. Do you see times in your life where God gave you a straight row and lots of little holes to throw seed in, but for some reason you didn't do it?
-What are the top "thorns and weeds" in the world today? Some of them seem to be harmless initially, even good in small doses. So how do you talk to someone that has "pretty, flowery weeds" in their life? How do you talk to someone about the Gospel whose life is going really well? Is their room for Jesus in the life of a prosperous life?
-What can we do to make sure our hearts are prepared to hear and receive the Word everyday? (Pray and ask God to prepare our hearts, listen intently to help eliminate distractions and keeping the bird from stealing the seed, set up times in our lives where we look back over the notes that we take and the sermons that we hear, attend rGroup and share with others, do a regular check for weeds and thorns before they grow up too high in our lives).
-A reminder as you go out the door:
a. You are as spiritual as you choose to be. Your intimacy and closeness to God is a direct reflection of how intimate and close you really want it to be.
b. No one can make you grow. No one can grow for you.
They're back!
-What did this text teach you about God?
-What did this text teach you about yourself?
-What are you going to do about it?
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