Relationships worth Fighting For: What is Marriage?

Genesis 1,2

Connect:

• Share how you have seen God in the Highs and Lows of your week.

Prayer:

Pray that God would lead your discussion time and bring fresh insight, conviction, and hope through your time together.

Review:

We are moving into a series called “Relationships worth fighting for”. Last week, we looked at the topic “Fighting for your family” and Bible-based strategies that help us do that. This week the focus is on marriage as the Bible talks about it!

The Grand Tour of the message: Thinking back on what you heard this Sunday…

o What did you learn about God?

o What did you learn about people?

o What did you learn about yourself?

o What do you want to commit to putting into practice?

Reflect:

Experience:

• Let’s say that you travel to Mars, and meet a Martian queen… who has absolutely NO background at all in human relationships… and she asks you (because she speaks English), “What is marriage for?” How would you respond? (Try to use the terms “Consumer” vs “Covenant” in your response)

Read Genesis 1:26-28, 2:18-24

• Why is it not good for man to be alone?

• Let’s say you are talking to someone who really wants to know (not antagonistically) why marriage is between 1 man and 1 woman. How would you use this Scripture passage to talk about that?

• What other Scriptures can you think of that would affirm marriage as between 1 man and 1 woman? Mark 10:6-9, Matthew 19:3-9, 1 Cor 7:2, Hebrews 13:4, Eph 5:33, 1 Cor 7, Matthew 5:27-28, Lev 18:22…)

• Reflect on the definition of biblical marriage that Scott talked about: “Marriage is a covenant relationship between one man and one woman for a lifetime, reflecting the image God and bringing children into the world for his eternal purposes.” How would you build on that having looked at all these Scriptures?

Respond: 

Marriage is a place where we have a distinctive opportunity to let the work of God’s Spirit in us SHINE out to the world around us— to our spouse, our family, our neighbors, our community. Spend some time praying that God would strengthen the marriages in our church, and that the attention of a watching world would be drawn to Jesus because of the character of our relationship with each other!

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