-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?
0 comments:
Post a Comment