Discussion Guide Zoë Week 5

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 Zoë, in which we study Jesus’s incredible claim that he came to bring us abundant life, even in the midst of our spiking cultural anxiety and fragmentation. We will explore how the life Jesus lived is the best way to tap into that promise as we seek to establish specific rhythms and practices to cultivate a life marked by a gospel-centered abundance of strength, health, and vitality.

Today’s Topic

Body/Soul

Discussion Questions

 

What’s the most challenging thing you’ve ever accomplished physically?

Psalm 84:2

My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

 

 

The Spiritual Longing of Body & Soul

 

Henry Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body’s deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body’s superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.

 

John Ortberg, Soul Keeping

The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God.

 

In what ways does your body cry out for God?

In what ways does your soul yearn for God?

Can you describe a time in your life when God met your body’s or soul’s need for him in a meaningful way?

The Spiritual Practice of Fasting

 

Dallas Willard, 

Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food.

 

St. Catherine of Siena

Nothing great is ever acheived without much enduring.

 

Can you share about a time when fasting has helped you grow spiritually in some way?

During the current season of Lent, are you fasting from anything in particular?

What have you found challenging about fasting in the past? What have you enjoyed about it?

The Blessing of Embodying Christ

 

Romans 8:10-11

Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.

 

In what ways can the choices and actions we make in our daily life reveal God to the people around us?

How can fasting help us become God’s hands and feet in the world?

If you knew that you alone would be the closest thing to Jesus your friends, family, and coworkers would encounter tomorrow, how would your body and soul enter into those interactions?

Closing Thought

Matthew 6:16-18

Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites. For they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting isn’t obvious to others but to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

 

Choose one day this week to fast as a group. Whether each of you chooses to fast from food, television, your cell phone, or something else, on that day, spend time praying for the specific needs of the people in your group. Ask God to strengthen their bodies and souls as they endure their fast. Share about your experience praying and fasting together at your next meeting.



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