May 12: 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: Numbers 6: 22-27

The Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:

“‘“The Lord bless you
    and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you
    and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you
    and give you peace.”’

“So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

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Themes

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

• Blessing prayer

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• How would the world be different if God answered all your prayers?

• If everyone prayed the way I pray, what would the prayer life of our church life be like? 

• Prayer is our participation with God in making the word right.

• God can do whatever God wants

  • But God shows us over and over that God wants relationship 

  • God invites us to participation and cooperation 

  • God insists on involving us through love 

• But it’s even more than that. God is committed to distributing the resources of Heaven in the world through His sons and daughters in Christ.

• God has said you are My sons and daughters. Here is My Ring.

• It’s all by grace. Distribute the resources of My Kingdom in the world through your prayers and love.

• God’s entire plan has always been participation - Joining/Sharing - Friendship - Love

• A blessing is more than a well wish. It is to use our spiritual authority to confer something to another. It is to partner with God in declaring a present identity or a future good into someone's life.

• To really bless someone is to conspire with God for their good

• To ignore or belittle a blessing is a profound mistake.

• When we pray for one another - we practice blessing one another.

• A blessing confirms our identity - one loved by God

• A blessing invites us into good - may a light shine on how to live out who we are

• A blessing announces the security of our future - reminds us that we cannot be taken out of God’s love 

• When we bless - we are not only offering the Good News of Christ to others. 

  • We are offering our lives as well. 

  • We say I will join in in giving you what God intends in your life.

• “Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, 8 so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.“

  – 1 Thessalonians 2 v 7-8

• Who needs you to pray and enact blessings in their life? 

• What moments in the lives of those around you require you to represent and disperse the blessing and resources of God?

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May 5: 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 10: 1-10 and 27-30

“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

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Themes

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

• Hearing God

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• When God began to set the world right after the fall, God initiated a conversation ...

  • Abraham heard a calling - an invitation 

  • Moses drew near to something he has seen everyday for years before

  • Samuel was sleeping as a child when he began to sense God's voice

  • Mary, Paul, Augustine, Martin Luther, Thersea of Avila, Brother Lawrence, and Jackie Pullinger

• Redemptive History is shaped by God's children hearing His voice and responding in faith and love.

• In a relational world and a relational Kingdom of God, there is little that rivals the importance of communication. It is at the heart of every deep relationship.

• God speaks. God is active in revelation. We can learn to discern the voice of God in our lives. 

• Jesus gives us this incredible promise that His sheep will hear His voice. 

• It comes at a moment where His very identity is being questioned. Jesus locates who He is in the reality that His sheep, His disciples, those He has saved, who apprentice under Him WILL HEAR HIS VOICE.

• HEARING FROM GOD IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR LIFE AS FOLLOWERS OF JESUS

• Hearing from God is your spiritual birthright in the Gospel 

• But as in so many things, what is important is not without challenges.

  • It can take time to discern how God speaks to us

  • It can take some wisdom and consideration as to why that is so very rarely in human history in an audible voice

  • It can be humbling to know we may get it wrong sometimes when discerning God's voice

  • I have four children and communicating with them over the years has taught me that different ways of communicating are needed based on the situation and on who they are. There are shared principles, but ways and settings of talking and listening that are unique to each of them.

  • God has children beyond number, but we can be confident that we can learn to hear God's voice, especially if we ask to and commit to seek God's voice.

• Experiencing God study in college

  • 4 of the primary ways - SCRIPTURE, GOD'S WHISPER IN THE SPIRIT, COMMUNITY, CIRCUMSTANCES
    

• Which of the 4 ways of hearing God have you found most prevalent in your life?

• Which of hearing God do you want to grow in? 

• How can you learn/practice that?

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April 28: 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: Song of Songs 2: 14-15

My dove in the clefts of the rock,
    in the hiding places on the mountainside,
show me your face,
    let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet,
    and your face is lovely.
Catch for us the foxes,
    the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
    our vineyards that are in bloom.

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Themes

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

• Little foxes that ruin your prayer life

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

• On the scale of discipline to delight where would you plot your prayer life right now? 

Discipline –----------------------------------------------------– Delight 

Song of Solomon 2: 14-15 – My dove in the clefts of the rock,
    in the hiding places on the mountainside,
show me your face,
    let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet,
    and your face is lovely.

Catch for us the foxes,
    the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
    our vineyards that are in bloom.

• Prayer is about relationship with God. 

  • When Jesus teaches we should pray for His kingdom to come, He is not just trying to keep us busy, and out of trouble. 

  • He invites us to cultivate and share His heart for putting the world right. 

• It is intended to cultivate a communion between us and God. 

  • There are ways we can approach prayer that harm the relationship it was intended to cultivate

• In our text, we see that the lover acknowleges the threat of disruptors of intimacy. 

  • They are called little foxes. 

• Disruptors of intimacy can take on many shapes … little things that you don't think have meaning, or big, looming, glaring, violent things. 

• Foxes chew at the vines and break off the ability for the life-giving nutrients to make their way to the branches. 

• There are little foxes, intimacy disruptors, that are right now at work in breaking down your vital connection to the Jesus. 

• Before prayer changes our circumstances, its intent is to change us. 

  • “Whether prayer changes our situation or not, one thing is certain: Prayer will change us!”

    – Billy graham 

  • It changes us because it has us encountering the living God. 

• Then it does change our world…

  • “It would be of course a low voltage spiritual life in which prayer was chiefly undertaken as a discipline, rather than as a way of co-labouring with God to accomplish good things and advancing his Kingdom purposes.”

    – Willard

• The goal is to restore relational connection and, through that, affect all of life. 

  • “The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God. Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me. ' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father.”

    – Ortberg

1. Exchanging a relational offering for a bowl of soup

2. A Misrepresentation of the character and nature of God 

3. Superficial Formality

4. Lack of Honesty

5. Paralyzing Guilt and Shame

6. Spiritual Laziness

7. Neglecting Prompts from the Holy Spirit

8. Sensationalism

9. Unrepented sin

• Which of these affect you prayer life? 

• Who can you partner with to work on this? 

• What action can you take to combat each of them?

Confess it

Share it 

Schedule it

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April 14: 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: Luke 11: 1-13

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
    for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
And lead us not into temptation.’”

Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

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Themes

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

• Praying the Psalms

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

Did you recite the Lord’s Prayer growing up? 

• If yes, what did you think when you did that? 

C.S. Lewis lost the love of his life, his wife Joy, to cancer after only being married for 4 years. Afterwards he wrote A Grief Observed - at first published under a pseudonym.

Here is the brutally honest way Lewis described some of his prayers in that time…

“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

– C.S. Lewis

Prayer doesn’t work, or doesn’t always work like pulling a lever and getting what we want from God. The wild part is sometimes it does, but because we don't always know when we develop all these THEOLOGIES OF UNBELIEF to protect ourselves and to protect God.

Either we can’t bear being disappointed, or we don’t think God would bother, or we just want to leave it to a sense of mystery of whatever life reveals.

But Jesus wants to tell us to keep going with prayer. Even if we don’t like how it goes at first, especially if we don't like how it goes at first.

• What about the practice of prayer makes you want to give up or not even try? 

The invitation and the instruction is to just keep knocking even when it looks like we aren't getting what we need.

And in the shameless audacity of the continuing knock - you will find yourself provided for. 

Tim Keller said God answers our prayers exactly as we would if we had all the information.

• But of course we don't have all the information. Or the same degree of Love or Power. We often don’t know the prayers of our neighbors, or the way all the longings of our heart relate to the wider world.

• We are often aren’t aware of resistance to our prayers. 

So we have to trust God. And it's building that loving friendship and trust and confidence in conversation with God that we realize our whole lives are held. And even what we lose is held by God.

So Jesus teaches us:

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” 

He said to them, “When you pray, say: 

“ ‘Father, 

hallowed be your name, 

your kingdom come. 

– Luke 11: 1-2

The Kaddish was one of three important prayers in the first century Jewish worship liturgy and it began like this…

“Magnified and hallowed be His great Name

In this world which He created according to His Will.

And may He establish His Kingdom during your life.”

Look at the two of them side by side… (this is also in Pete Greig’s book)

“Magnified and hallowed be

His great Name

in this world which He created

according to His Will.

And may He establish His Kingdom

during your life.

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your Name,

Your Kingdom come,

Your Will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

The utter crucial difference is the personalization of Jesus’ prayer…

• Call Him Abba. OUR ABBA. 

• Call Him Abba and then speak to Him like you would to a good Father….

You can call the God of the Universe, Abba - Father - Friend. 

"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 Greig

There are some important things to say about this prayer, but the most important thing is to pray it.

• Get it in your mouth and mind and heart.

• The one who asks receives.

• The one who seeks finds.

• To the one who knocks the doors is open.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” 

– Luke 11: 9-13

PERSIST

• What does it mean to persist in prayer? 

• What stops you from persisting in prayer?

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April 7: 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: Psalm 147: 1-11

Praise the Lord.

How good it is to sing praises to our God,
    how pleasant and fitting to praise him!

The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
    he gathers the exiles of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars
    and calls them each by name.
Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
    his understanding has no limit.
The Lord sustains the humble
    but casts the wicked to the ground.

Sing to the Lord with grateful praise;
    make music to our God on the harp.

He covers the sky with clouds;
    he supplies the earth with rain
    and makes grass grow on the hills.
He provides food for the cattle
    and for the young ravens when they call.

His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
    nor his delight in the legs of the warrior;
the Lord delights in those who fear him,
    who put their hope in his unfailing love.

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Themes

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

• Praying the Psalms

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Formation 

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

What has the easter reality of the resurrection of Jesus changed for you personally? 

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

What should we do? What was the resurrection for? 

“A restored relationship with Jesus” 

We should talk with Jesus. We should listen for what Jesus has to say to us.

• We should participate relationally in His Life, Death and Resurrection

I can talk with Jesus.

Our hope for the Resurrection of Jesus is not simply about verifying a past event. It is about experiencing the ongoing reality of a conversation with Christ, a friendship with Christ.

“The resurrection is not just something that happened to Jesus two thousand years ago and will happen to each of us sometime in the future, after we die, when our own bodies will be raised to new life. It is that, but it is much more. The resurrection is something that buoys up every moment of life and every aspect of reality. God is always making new life and undergirding it with a goodness, graciousness, mercy, and love that, in the end, heals all wounds, forgives all sins, and brings deadness of all kinds to new life.”

– Ronald Rolheiser

Our life becomes a prayer, becomes a sensing of God's presence, becomes worship, becomes talking and listening to God.

• Mary Magdalene who was first human to tell of Jesus resurrection. How did she begin? She talked with Jesus. She heard Him say her name, and her eyes were opened.

• Peter was an erratic mess, in shambles, buried in shame. And in talking and listening to Jesus after the resurrection, his life was reasssmbeld stronger than before.

• Thomas was full of doubt. He wouldnt believe his friends’ account of Jesus being alive. He has to see Him for himself too talk with Him.

• A couple on the road to Emmaus - they were leaving dejected and confused. They talked with a man as they left town. And then they finally recognized Him in the breaking of bread.

As they recounted their time with Him they said, as we were talking....

• Did our hearts not burn?

• Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

• What should we do?

But the reality is many of us find prayer challenging.

• We struggle to get started 

• We struggle to keep it going 

• We struggle to make it a regular part of our day 

• Many of us feel we don't pray very well

• We wish we prayed more 

Caleb says:

“And the least part of the challenge from my experience is that many of us have a primary way we have thought about prayer that is basically EYES CLOSED SPIRITUAL IMPROV”

Have you experienced prayer this way?

How would you describe your experience of prayer?

Is your idea of prayer helpful for or hindering to your prayer experience? 

And if that is intimidating, then hear this:

• You are not alone

• That’s not the only way to pray

“The great and sprawling university that Hebrews and Christians have attended to learn to answer God, to learn to pray, has been the Psalms. More people have learned to pray by matriculating in the Psalms than in any other way. The Psalms were the prayer book of Israel; they were the prayer book of Jesus; they are the prayer book of the church. At no time in the Hebrew and Christian centuries (with the possible exception of our own) have the Psalms not been at the very center of all concern and practice in prayer.”

– Eugene Peterson

In Jesus’s most trying moments, He prays a pre-written prayer that He is familiar with. He was praying the psalms.

“My God my God why have you forsaken me”

“Into thy hands I commit my spirit”

– Psalm 22 and Psalm 36.

We learn to pray by praying other prayers. 

The Psalms is an amazing place to learn to pray. 

Our vision as a church this year is to expand our prayer life.

For every person in TGC to talk and listen to God every day.

“The Psalms model ways of talking to God that are honest, yet not obvious – at least, they are not obvious to modern Christians. They may guide our first steps toward deeper involvement with God because the Psalms give us a new possibility for prayer; they invite full disclosure. They enable us to bring into our conversation with God feelings and thoughts that most of us think we need to get rid of before God will be interested in hearing from us. The point of the shocking psalms is not to sanctify what is shameful (for example, the desire for sweet revenge) or to make us feel better about parts of ourselves that stand in need of change. Rather, the Psalms teach us that profound change happens always in the presence of God. Over and over they attest to the reality that when we open our minds and hearts fully to God who made them, then we open ourselves, whether we know it or not to the possibility of being transformed beyond our imagining.”

– Ellen F. Davis: Getting Involved with God  

Easter tells us God’ve love will not fail.

Unfailing love is a pretty good foundation for prayer  - God is not disappointed in you. 

For conversation - for talking and listening

God is always previous - you don’t have to start it all

God is in conversation - you don;t have to sustain it all

Praying the Psalm is a way to being when you can’t work out how to begin

“I need a language that is large enough to maintain continuities, supple enough to maintain nuances across a lifetime that brackets child and adult experiences, and courageous enough to explore all the countries of sin and salvation, mercy and grace, creation and covenant, anxiety and trust, unbelief and faith that compromise the continental human condition. The Psalms are this large, supple, and courageous language.”

– Eugene Peterson

Praying the Psalms this week:

• Like Mary, you may hear your name called 

• Like Peter, you may sense a lifting of your shame 

• Like Thomas, you have have your doubts confronted 

• Like those leaving town going to Emmaus, you may find your heart burning.

The Psalms lift our spirit before they lift our circumstances. 

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