05 Nov Discussion Guide: Living Out of a Living Hope Week 4
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
Today, we continue our series from 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Living Out of a Living Hope. In life’s ups and downs, the frailty of our human bodies, and with the time that we have each day, the resurrection of Jesus offers us what it offered for the early church in Thessalonica: a living hope.
Today’s Topic
Good News
Discussion Questions
What is some “good news” you have heard recently?
1 Thessalonians 3:6-13
But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you. Therefore, brothers and sisters, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith. For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
Good News About God
Psalm 100:1-5
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his[a];
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy
We must understand that God does not “love” us without liking us – through gritted teeth – as “Christian” love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core – which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word “love”.
What do you love and like about God?
Can you share about a time in your life when turning toward God’s goodness improved your perspective or circumstances?
What does God love and like about you?
Good News About You
1 John 3:1-3
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Matthew 18:3
And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
George MacDonald
I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.
Madeleine L’Engle, Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life
We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.
How is the invitation to come to God as children good news for humanity?
How can a Christian’s life become a light to people who do not know God?
Can you share about a Christian whose humility and faith in God has provided light for you in a dark time?
Good News About Us
2 Corinthians 9:6-8
Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work
Helen Keller
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Vincente Bacote, The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life
Holiness is not supposed to be cloaked in the chambers of pious hearts but displayed in the public domains of home, school, culture, and politics…. If we heed this call and continue down the path of transformation, our private and public practice will produce more amazement than exasperation, and even our enemies will see that we act like those who are…human.
How essential are generosity and hospitality in the spreading of the good news about God?
What is place or “public domain” where you hope to shine some light and sow some good news?
How can your group support or join you in your efforts to be a light to those in darkness?
Closing Thought
Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart
There is no force in the world better able to alter anything from its course than love.
Take some time to pray for God to fill you with his love as he helps you offer good news to your friends, family, classmates, and coworkers.