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

Family Matters

Today’s Topic

A Sad Story, A Mad Story, and a Glad Story

Discussion Questions

John 17:1-9, 20-23

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 life to 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^[a] 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….

 My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

We Want to Honor the Words of Jesus

John 17:20-21

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you…

 

Martin Luther King Jr, The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr

Worship at its best is a social experience with people of all levels of life coming together to realize their oneness and unity under God. Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously caters to one class it loses the spiritual force of the ‘whosoever will, let him come’ doctrine and is in danger of becoming a little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

How does the Trinity model relational unity for us?

Why is unity and “oneness” challenging for people to create in our relationships?

When have you witnessed unity in the lives of Christians?

We Want to Experience the Heart of Jesus

John 17:22

I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment. Wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of almighty God. Not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.

 

Jesus commanded us to love one another in John 13. How do we see love as the foundation of the relationship shared by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit?

In what way does the gospel (and the relationship shared by the Father, Son, and Spirit) reveal that loving others can be costly?

How is unity related to peace?

We Want to Share the Person of Jesus

John 17:21

May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

 

 John 17:23

Then the world will know that you have sent me.

 

How is the gospel a story of God sharing himself with the world?

How could our corporate unity help non-Christians believe that God the Father sent Jesus?

How is our corporate unity the fruit of our willingness to believe in the “glad” story of the gospel?

Closing Thought

Philippians 2:1-4

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

 

Spend some time praying Philippians 2 over our church family and the body of Christ in Austin, that God will help us walk with one another in humility and love.