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 primary 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

Arise

Today’s Topic

How to Count Two Ways At Once

Discussion Questions

Counting What We Love

Romans 6:11-12

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 

 

 James K.A. Smith 

“[Where] our love is aimed is not a list of ideas or propositions or doctrines…Rather, the reason [a] vision of the good life moves us is because it is a more affective, sensible, even aesthetic picture of what the good life looks like.”

What does it look like to live a “good life”?

How can improperly “counting” (or considering/reckoning) what we love make us vulnerable to sin?

Whose life has been an example for you of how to aim your heart in the right direction?

Choosing What We Worship

Romans 6:13-14

Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

 

Rebecca Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker

Whatever controls us is our lord. The one who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the lord of our lives.

 

What are some ways we can offer ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life?

What practices or perspectives help you to worship Jesus as Lord?

What is the best thing about living under grace instead of under the law?

Closing Thought

Cs Lewis, The Four Loves

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. It is probably impossible to love any human being simply ‘too much.’ We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God, but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy.

Take turns sharing one thing you love most about God’s nature or character and one meaningful experience you’ve had as a result of following him.