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.

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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.

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Themes

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

• The Parables of Jesus

• Wise & Foolish Builders

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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

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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.

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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.”

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Themes

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

• Easter

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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

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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?

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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.

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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

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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?
  

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