28 Jun Discussion Guide: How God Grows Us
Prayer
Take the first 10 minutes of your time together to listen to what God is doing in one another’s lives and pray for any specific needs people in your group may have.
This week we continue our series titled Sons and Daughters. We will be taking a look at how the Gospel transforms our lives and gives us a new identity as children of God.
Discussion Questions
“If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions—if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before—then I think we must suspect that his ‘conversion’ was largely imaginary; and after one’s original conversion, every time one thinks one has made an advance, that is the test to apply. Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better; just as in an illness ‘feeling better’ is not much good if the thermometer shows that your temperature is still going up. In that sense the outer world is quite right to judge Christianity by its results. Christ told us to judge by results. A tree is known by its fruit; or, as we say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The war-time posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world taking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.” – C.S. Lewis
What is your favorite kind of fruit? Why?
Where does that fruit come from?
The point we want to make here is that the fruit of a tree comes from the essence, or the DNA code, that is found in the seed that the tree came from. Fruit isn’t something the tree chose to produce or can change at some point in time when the tree gets bored with producing the same fruit season after season. Fruit is the natural manifestation of what is in the essence of the tree’s nature.
What kind of fruit should we as Christians produce in our lives?
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. It should be the kind of fruit that reflects the image and likeness of God.
Where should that fruit come from?
From the same place as the fruit of a tree comes from. It should come from our nature, from the seed in our heart. And here is the point we want to get to as this discussion continues. In our sinful nature we are incapable of producing this fruit and therefore are in need of a new nature that only the Holy Spirit, through faith in Christ, can produce.
Galatians 5:19-23
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
What is the difference between ”work” and ”fruit”?
Work is something that results from your doing while fruit is something that comes naturally out of your being.
What kind of heart condition produces works of the flesh? What kind of heart condition produces the fruit of the Spirit?
What produces each of these heart conditions?
“Humility is the only soil in which the grace of God can grow.” – Andrew Murray. The heart of sin is pride. Both idolatry and self-righteous religion are rooted in this kind of heart. Idolatry says I don’t need God because I can define my own good and evil. Religion says I don’t need God because I can define my own righteousness. It is only a heart that recognizes how desperately we need the grace of God that is transformed into the kind of heart that produces fruit rather than works.
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is… A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Why do you think it is so tempting to overly desire things and let them dominate our lives?
How does the love of Christ, through the Gospel, guard us and save us from giving into that temptation?
How might we live in such a way that others can taste this “fruit of the Spirit in our lives and see the goodness of God?
Closing Thought
Matthew 5:14-16
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.