What If... Series (What If... We Learned To Hear From God?)

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 Habakkuk 2:1-2

•   What do you know about Habakkuk or this book of the Bible that we read from for the sermon?
  • NOTE: This could be a tough question, but encourage your group! This is an important opportunity for us as leaders and for our group members to become more competent and confident Bible readers, especially when we’re reading from trickier books of the Bible, like those near the end of the Old Testament. (Habakkuk was a prophet for that nation of Judah, a nation that was rapidly turning away from God towards idols and paganism. Another nation, Babylon, was rising in power and it seemed like they would soon invade and conquer Judah. Habakkuk questions God why he would allow this to happen. God reveals that it is a consequence of God’s people turning their back on him, but he will use even something like this to draw near to his people and help them draw near to him again as well. Habakkuk learns to wait and trust in God, who will bring justice against evil and works all things for his glory.)
• What does this passage say about who we are? 
• What does this passage say about who God is? 

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

• If a non-Christian asked you, “What does it mean for someone to truly hear from God?” what would you say?
• What is a time in your life that hearing from God has changed your life? Be Specific. (How has it changed your marriage, relationships, the way you treat others, your finances, etc?)
• If we faithfully, obediently, and joyfully followed Habakkuk’s example of hearing from God what should we expect the results to be in our home, marriages, work, neighborhoods, schools, community groups, and church? 

Assessing the Heart: Identify and Address Sin

• Let’s be honest with ourselves: How is this looking in your life right now?
• What kind of things are getting in the way of you hearing from God? Where are you most likely to fail in your pursuit of hearing from God?
  • Getting Away?
  • Waiting?
  • Looking?
  • Remembering?
  • Reviewing?
• It is good for us to recognize these things, but we must see that there is a deeper issue at work. Not getting away, not waiting, not looking, not remembering, and not reviewing are all just symptoms of a much larger problem that keeps us from hearing from God. What is at play in your own heart, the heart of the unbeliever, the heart of everyone who has walked this earth? What is at the root of the barrier that stands between us and God, that keeps us from hearing from him? 
  • There is deep brokenness and sinfulness in our heart! (At the root for many people is pride (trusting in our own thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and decisions over God). It could stem from some kind of idolatry (worshipping and loving something much more than God, including our own self). It could simply be that we truly don’t believe in God or that we could ever hear from him.)

      

 Turn to God: Confess and Renew Belief in God

• When we realize that the reason we never truly hear anything from God is because we are so flawed and sinful at the heart level, what is the one and only thing that can truly offer us any hope and a way to change? 
  • Jesus. (There is nothing that we can go and try to do on our own to fix these issues, if we don’t first and foremost go to the only one who can fix the real issue: us.)
• How does he offer us hope and the opportunity to change so we can truly hear from God?
  • (Through Jesus we are offered grace and forgiveness for all the times and ways we didn’t desire to hear from him or failed to hear from Him. When we experience Jesus, we find our true and lasting motivation to get away, wait, look, remember, and review. Through Jesus alone do we find the power to do all of these things, whereas if we tried to do these on our own we’d be impossible failures.)
• Take a moment and reflect on the the results we said could happen if we faithfully, obediently, and joyful were people who heard from God. This hope becomes a reality through Christ Jesus.
  • Take a moment as a group to repent of the ways we’ve all fallen short of this calling, and invite God to help us become individuals, groups, and a church that truly hear from him.