Throw Back Series, Pt. II

This guide is a tool to help you facilitate discussion with your rGroup. Use it to lead your group in discovering, owning, and applying God’s Word. This is a flexible tool, not a rigid task list. Follow the Holy Spirit’s lead as you lead your group. You don’t need to ask every question.

  Understanding God’s Word: Know and Understand the Truth

READ 1 Peter 2:1-3

• What is the "spiritual milk" Peter refers to? 
• Is this spiritual milk that Peter writes about something that Christians move on from? 
• What does it mean to "taste" that the Lord is good?
• Is there any possibility to grow deep as Christians if a person has never "tasted" the goodness of the Lord? Why?

  Living and Applying God’s Word: Give a Vision of Life With God

• Can you describe a time when you've truly "tasted" and seen that the Lord is good?
• When you are truly longing for God, are you more or less likely to be marked by malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, or slander in your heart? Why?

 Assessing the Heart: Identify and Address Sin

• From the list of things that Peter tells us to put off, which one(s) do you find yourself struggling with the most? 
  • Malice, Deceit, Hypocrisy, Envy, or Slander
• How do you see these sins affecting your relationship with God, the way that you experience him on a daily basis?
• As Nathan said, all of these sins are relational. How have you seen these things work themselves out in the relationships that you share with people around you? 
• Even though we know these sins are bad and destructive, and even though we know that we should be people who long to taste the goodness of the Lord, how easy is it for us to switch? 

      

 Turn to God: Confess and Renew Belief in God

• Putting away these sinful behaviors and putting on godly ones is not like us deciding to take off filthy clothes and put on nice new ones. There is no switch we can flip that will simply cause our desires to change. Our behaviors and our longings and our desires are not external choices. They rest deeply in our hearts and flow out of them. We don’t need outward change, we need inward change. We are all people who are desperately in need of heart change. 
  • READ 1 Corinthians 15:1-2, 10 = As Paul writes to the Corinthians who are called to live differently, what does Paul say ultimately changes us? (Answer: The gospel is saving us / God’s grace transforms us)  
    • The way that Christians look like newborn infants is to long for "spiritual milk,” the gospel, the Word of God. And ultimately John 1:1 tells us that Jesus Christ is the Word of God. If we are longing for Jesus Christ, then by Him we “may grow up into salvation.” (1 Peter 2:2)  When we are finding our satisfaction in Him, then we will naturally from our hearts grow deeper. From the inside out, we will shed our old ways and become something new. We are being saved. 
• Take some time as a group to pray, confessing how we so often try to make these changes on our own. Pray that God would help us seek and believe that His Spirit would change our hearts through the power of Christ’s love, grace, and the gospel.