Mosaic Church

04 Oct Discussion Guide: A Prayer For – Week 4

Posted at 14:00h in Community Group Resources by Brett Millican

Before We Get Started

For our discussion today we will be using the sermon series discussion guides. If you would like to follow along you can access this discussion guide on the website at mosaicchurchaustin.com and then select “community group resources” in the menu options.

Prayer

Because the main goal of our time together is to establish relationships and learn how to walk with one another in all that God has called us to be and do, we’d like to begin by praying for one another. So, does anyone have anything you’d like us to pray for, or anything to share regarding how you’ve seen God moving in your life that we can celebrate together.

This Week’s Topic

Today we continue our new series called A Prayer For…where we will be taking a look at the book of Psalms to learn not just what to pray, but how to pray. We see all through the Psalms a rawness, an authenticity, and a passionate love for God’s presence and God’s heart regarding the brokenness of the world around us. Over the next 6 weeks we will journey together as we focus on developing a life of prayer and seeking God’s Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Today’s Topic

A Prayer for Our Neighbors

Discussion Questions

What is your favorite place to go on vacation, or where is one place you’d lie to go if could? Why?

John 17:14-18

“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

This passage is where many get the idea of “being in the world, but not of the world.” What do you think it means to be in the world, but not of the world?

Why do you think God wants His people to be involved in culture but not conformed to the ways of our culture?

What happens if we slide into either ditch, being in the world to the extent that we don’t look any different, or not being of the world to the extent that we are completely removed from the people around us?

Why is it sometimes difficult to maintain that balance of being in the world but not of the world?

N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is

“Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion…The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even–heaven help us–Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way…with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, “if not now, then when?” if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, “if not us, then who?” And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?”

After reading that quote, what are some ways God might be calling you, or us as a church community, to “be at the leading edge of the whole culture?”

Why do you think the Church, or at least Christians, have been more on the back edge of culture in recent history? How can we change that?

Closing Thought

What’s something you can do over the next few months to impact your neighborhood/neighbors for the Kingdom of God?

How can this group come alongside you in that pursuit?