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

The Gospel of the Kingdom

Jesus’s Kingdom, as He himself taught, is not of this world. While His Kingdom influences and transforms people and structures, fundamentally, it does not belong to an individual or ideology. His is the kingdom and the power and the glory, as he taught us to remember in prayer.

Today’s Topic

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Discussion Questions

Matthew 6:25-34

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The Curst & Cause of Anxiety

Matt Haig

It is very hard to explain to people who have never known severe depression or anxiety the sheer continuous intensity of it. There is no off switch.

Corrie Ten Boom

Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.

What kinds of things increase your tendency to worry or feel anxious?

How do worry and anxiety feel like a curse?

Why are worry and anxiety difficult to overcome, given that we know they are not productive or helpful in the long run?  

The Cost of Anxiety

George Bernard Shaw

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.

Unknown

Worry is the advance price you pay, for troubles that may never come.

Can you name some of the costs worry makes you pay?

How does worry affect your life and relationships?

Given Jesus’s words about worry in Matthew 6, how do you imagine God regards our worries?

The Cure for Anxiety

Michael W. Smith, The Hand of Providence

Providence, Providence
See it laying down the cornerstone
The Hand of Providence, it’s evident
For we could never make it on our own
Apportioning the power
Weighing all that it entails
Giving us the fulcrum
And a balance to the scales

Providence, ever since
Any thesis ever entered man
The Hand of Providence
Has been our best defense
Tho’ his ways are sometimes hard to understand
From the dying of a heartbeat
To another soul reborn
From in between and circling
Our thoughts of love and war

 

How can thinking more about God (and less about ourselves) help us have hope despite our many worries?

What spiritual practices lighten the load of anxiety and worry?

What help does the gospel offer us when we face difficult circumstances or seemingly impossible odds?

Closing Thought

Jeremiah 17:7-8

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.

 

Share any prayer requests you might have and spend some time praying for one another.