19 Jul Discussion Guide: The Sower’s Dilemma
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 the end of the book of Galatians and how the Gospel transforms our lives and gives us a new identity as children of God.
Discussion Questions
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
How would you explain the Law of sewing and reaping?
.The law of sowing and reaping is simply that whatever you put into the physical soil of the ground, or the spiritual soil of your heart, is what you will get back in the form of fruit or behaviors. You cannot plant a tomato seed and expect bananas as a result. Likewise you cannot sow seeds of lust, greed, fear, pride, self-centeredness and expect to reap healthy relationships, a strong marriage, or any kind of intimacy with God as a result.
What are some negative ways you have experienced the reaping of bad choices you have made in the past?
What are some positive ways you have reaped from wise choices you have made in the past?
1 Corinthians 10:31
”So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
What is the difference between those who are good at what they do and those who are great at what they do?
.The difference between those who are good and those who are great is that those who are great are willing to make the necessary sacrifices, commit to the needed discipline, to make the pursuit of their task a priority, and even more than a priority, almost an obsession, to become the best they can be at what they are doing. Athletes, business owners, musicians…all the great ones have chased after their profession like a dog on a bone. To be good simply requires skill and talent, but to be great requires unwavering perseverance to do whatever it takes to get better.
How does that principle apply to our spiritual lives as well? ?
.It’s a bit of an upside down version of the world’s idea of greatness. In the world, athletes will train their bodies, business owners will train their minds, artists will train their hands, to become great for the sake of their own fame and glory. Spiritually speaking, our goal is to live life in such a way that God gets all the glory. However, though the end goal is different, the principle of how you achieve that goal is the same. In the spiritual sense, we as Christians ought to aim at being great at glorifying God. And that means we have to have that same kind of unwavering perseverance and obsession for God’s glory being put on display in our lives. In the same way an athlete will avoid putting junk food in his/her body because it will make his/her pursuit of greatness that much more difficult, so we ought to passionately avoid putting junk into our hearts knowing that it will make God’s greatness that much more difficult to be see in and through our lives. We have to pursue God’s glory in our lives with a reckless abandon, not to earn His love, but because He has so graciously lavished us with His love already.
What obstacles tend to make it difficult to pursue our spiritual lives in that way?
.Discomfort. Pain. Sacrifice. Ridicule. Rejection. Pride. Selfishness. Lust. Greed. We tend to not really trust that God has our best in mind, that His way of life is actually better for us than our way of life. It’s the same lie Adam and Eve believed, and it’s what keeps us sowing to the flesh rather than to the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 5:21
”For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
What kind of seeds did Jesus sow in His Life? Yet, what did He reap?
.Jesus sowed only seeds of righteousness, and yet He ended up reaping the fruit of rebellion, death and destruction. Yet, He willingly did so. He willingly ate the fruit of the seeds we had sown so that we might eat the fruit of the seeds He had sown.
What does that mean about the sewing and reaping we experience in our own lives?
.It means that we will not have to reap the harvest of our own rebellion. However, it also means that when we do sow to the flesh as Christians there will be the consequences we reap practically, and God allows us to reap those consequences because that is how He disciplines those whom He loves.
Closing Thought
“The inner life is bruised by a running against the laws of the Kingdom. The bruises are guilt complexes, a sense of inferiority, of missing the mark, of being out of harmony with God and with oneself, a sense of wrongness. Divine forgiveness wipes out all that sense of inner hurt and condemnation. Brings a sense of at-homeness- at home with God and oneself and with life. The universe opens its arms and takes one in. You are accepted- by God, by yourself, and by life. All self-loathing, self-rejection, all inferiorities drop away. You are a child of God; born from above, you walk the earth, a conqueror, afraid of nothing. Healed at the heart, you can say to life: “Come on, I’m ready for anything.” ― E. Stanley Jones, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person
How does the love of Christ empower us to sow seeds of righteousness that we might reap the experience of seeing God’s Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven? ?