06 Sep Discussion Guide: Rise and Fall Week 6
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 finish part 1 of our series titled Rise and Fall: The Life of David. We will be taking a look at how David came to be Israel’s greatest king through the lens of the relationships he had with those closest to him.
Discussion Questions
”If you marry someone [get into a relationship with someone] expecting them to be like a god, it is unavoidable That They will only disappoint you. It’s not that you should try to love your spouse[that person] less, but rather that you ‘should know and love God more. ” – Tim Keller , Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
What does it mean to idolize someone?
Webster’s Dictionary defines the act of idolizing as worshipping someone as a god, loving or admiring them in excess. The way Scripture would lay out the idea of idolizing is when we look to someone to be our ultimate fulfillment and satisfaction. It is when we put our worth and value in the opinions of another person, when we give them the power to define who we are ultimately. It is when our hopes and value rest solely in the opinions or actions of another person. Their success makes you feel successful and their failure makes you feel like a failure. You know you are idolizing someone when you feel they can do no wrong in their success and when you demonize them, and feel they can do no right, when they fail to meet your expectations. Think, for example, of the teenage couple who is head over heels for one another when they first meet, and then after a few months have broken up and have nothing nice to say about one another…ever.
Who is someone you have idolized in your own life?
How do you think that affected your view of, or your relationship with, that person?
Proverbs 14:30
”A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.”
What does it mean to envy someone?
Envy is the painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage. Envy is that feeling that someone else’s success means you are a failure. It is looking to the advantage of another and feeling like it means you are disadvantaged. Rather than celebrating with them in victory you despise them for it because you feel in someway it means you are missing out.
When is a time that envy has affected your life?
How does envy affect our relationships with others? How does it affect us personally?
Envy prohibits us from loving others because we are not content with ourselves. If we feel, in some way, that we are lacking affirmation, worth, value, love acceptance, etc. then when we see someone else receiving those things we immediately assume they are taking from us that which we feel we must have in order to be whole. Therefore, every relationship essentially becomes a competition, a jockeying for position, a means by which you can predict your standing and worth in the eyes of others. Envy prevents us from loving others because to love someone is to sacrificially commit to their welfare and benefit, yet envy, by definition, requires that we commit to our own welfare and benefit at the expense of others.
Proverbs 18:24
”A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. .”
What kind of friendships do you think God wants us to have with one another?
God desires that we love one another with a God type Agapeo love. It’s an unconditional kind of love not based on what a person can do for you but on what you have committed to do for them for their welfare and benefit. Agapeo love can celebrate others in their success without placing the weight of glory on them, or feeling somehow lacking in their gain. It’s a love that confronts others in their sin in a compassionate and gracious way. It’s a love not based on title or position but on covenants like commitment. It is a love that even surpasses that of a natural sibling. A love that bears one another’s burdens, celebrates one another’s victories, and does not cast aside when things don’t go the way we want them to.
How do idolizing and envy keep us from those kinds of relationships?
Closing Thought
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. – C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
How does the Gospel of Jesus, His life, death and resurrection, free us from idolizing and envy, and empower us to love one another with vulnerability?
the Gospel tells us that the most important being in the entire Universe has come in pursuit of us to redeem us, reconcile us, and adopt us into His family because He loves us, affirms us, and desires us to know Him. This is the pinnacle of unconditional love. And when you see God’s love for you and understand that God has affirmed you and accepted you then you no longer need that kind of affirmation and acceptance from other people. And when you no longer need that from others then, and only then, can you truly love others with that same kind of unconditional love. As long as a person has something you need your love for them will always be conditioned. And when they withhold that thing, or take that thing, from you then you will withhold or take from that person as well. But the Gospel frees us from the need of approval or the need of saving because Jesus has already saved and approved us.