13 Aug Discussion Guide Stories: Everybody’s Got One: The Weak Warrior
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 titled Stories: Everybody’s Got One, in which we examine how to make sense of our own world without God’s story. Who are we? Where do we fit? How can we see ourselves in it and connect to it in a way that actually changes our lives for the better? Join us for a four-week look at four incredible stories of people who found their lives swept up in a story much larger than their own lives.
Today’s Topic
The Weak Warrior
Discussion Questions
What was one of your favorite stories as a child?
Judges 6:6-13
Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.
When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite,where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
Facing our Fears
Andy Stanley, Outreach Magazine, June 2022
Tough times expose tough truths. The political, social, economic and health crises of 2020 revealed a disturbing reality about evangelicals in America: What we say is most important is not actually what we consider most important.
For all our talk of revival and reaching the lost, our actions and reactions tell a different story. For a long time now, our words, thoughts and values have not aligned with what we claim we’re about. If there’s any doubt, consider the reactions of prominent pastors, Christian podcasters, television personalities and nonprofit leaders to the events that defined 2020. Their reactions—our reactions—made what we most value abundantly and embarrassingly clear.
Once you scratch the veneer off our Bible-laced rhetoric and faith claims, our sermons and songs, we value what everybody else does: Winning.
What do we fear? Losing.
Who did Gideon think he was at the beginning of this story?
Why do you think tough times expose our fears so easily?
How did you personally deal with the tough times of 2020? If you could travel back to that time and give yourself one piece of advice, what would you say?
Making a Difference
Judges 6:16
The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.”
Fred Rogers
In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.
Amanda Gorman
There is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it.”
Who did God say Gideon was?
How can listening to our own questions and to others’ questions help us understand the story God wants us to live?
What would you do to light the world if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Believing the Best News
Judges 6:20-24
The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened bread, place them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And Gideon did so. Then the angel of the Lord touched the meat and the unleavened bread with the tip of the staff that was in his hand. Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the Lord disappeared. When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, “Alas, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!”
But the Lord said to him, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.”
So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it The Lord Is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
Henri Nouwen
When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within me and around me.
Bono
Peace is the opposite of dreaming. It’s built slowly and surely through brutal compromises and tiny victories that you don’t even see. It’s a messy business, bringing peace into the world.
Why did seeing the Angel of the Lord face to face cause Gideon to trust God?
How can we cultivate a deeper connection with God so we can “see” God more clearly?
How ought we to live today if we truly trust that God uses the gospel to lead us to a peaceful, full-of-life future?
Closing Thought
Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses
We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don’t see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone.
Spend the last few minutes of your time together praying for any specific needs present, and for God to help you hear the story he is writing in your life and in the lives of the people in your workplace, school, family, and neighborhood. Open your hearts up to believe that God has a beautiful ending to the story you face, no matter how difficult today may be.