05 Mar Discussion Guide: Where Can Wisdom Be Found? Week 8
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 Where Can Wisdom Be Found. This week we will be taking a specific look at the Wisdom Literature of Scripture as it specifically pertains to building a diverse community. We will discuss what it takes to love, serve and grow in relationships with people who are not like ourselves, and in so doing, how it paints a beautiful picture of God’s Kingdom to the world around us.
Discussion Questions
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
What does the word “diversity” mean to you?
What is something you enjoy about being in a diverse environment?
What’s something that is difficult about being in a diverse environment?
Proverbs 18:21
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.
How has someone’s words either been life or death to you?
Why do you think words have such power?
What does it take to be able to speak the heart language of another person?
Nelson Mandela once said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” But, talking to someone in his/her language doesn’t just mean learning a foreign language in order to communicate with someone in another country. It also boils down to understanding the cultural languages, experiential languages, slang, etc. that differ from person to person. And, in order to do that, you have to know a person’s culture and experiences. You have to be willing to enter into their world, to understand their perspective, their pain, their joy. You have to go beyond what you see or assume on the surface and really get to know who that person is on an individual basis. You have to be willing to step out of your world and enter into theirs.
How can we use our words to create a community of equality?
Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage
“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
What’s the difference between knowing about someone and really knowing someone?
How different does it make you feel to not just be known about but to be truly known?
What makes a friendship with people not like you difficult?
What makes it worth it?
Closing Thought
Galatians 3:25-28
But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
How does the Gospel empower and influence diverse relationships?
The Gospel is the great equalizer in that the central message of the Gospel is that every human being, regardless of race, color, creed, age, language or socioeconomic status, is deserving of God’s just wrath for having rebelled agains His designed purpose for our lives. This means that all of us are in desperate need of God’s saving grace and therefore no one has any room to boast in anything in and of themselves. There is nothing in us that gives us any reason to elevate ourselves above any other person. But, the Gospel doesn’t just equal the playing field by keeping us from boasting in ourselves, it also tells us that what Jesus did for us was because of the unconditional love of God, which means that the Gospel doesn’t just tell us to not hate one another, but to pursue one another in love. We can now love, not just appreciate, one another’s differences.
How might a diverse community loving one another impact the city around us?