Home for Christmas: Running from Home

Selected Scripture

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:

Christmas is the story of coming home. Through Scripture, we’ll see how God pursues us even when we wander, fulfills His promises in unexpected ways, and opens the door for every heart to be restored. No matter how far you’ve been, God is ready to bring you back where you belong. This week we looked at what happened all the way back in the Garden of Eden…

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?

Reflection:

Personal Experience:

• Group activity: Let’s say you were Adam or Eve. You are in the Garden of Eden, you have never known want, evil, pain or struggle… and that reality is the only one you have ever known. You literally walk with God in the cool of the evenings. Then one day, someone shows up and tells you there might be more; that you could be like God.

• Break out into pairs and discuss “Would I have bitten into that fruit? Why or why not?” After a few mins have a few people share back with the whole group

• Reflective Discussion:

  • We trust in God’s Word… but we still feel tempted by sin.

    • Read Genesis 3:2-7. The deception was that we could live our lives and “be like God”. Why was that so enticing?

    • Discuss the choice we all face every day between trusting in the goodness of God and giving in to temptation— What makes that choice so difficult? (2 Corinthians 11:14; John 8:42-44; Romans 7:14-23)

    • Read Genesis 3:9-22. Discuss:

      • Why was God asking questions about what happened?

      • Why do we try to shift the blame? We have all tried to do that; why do we do that?

      • Where do you see truth and grace, discipline and mercy, happening in this story?

      • Romans 5:12 says that “In Adam, all died”; What does that mean?

  • How does this story help with questions like, “How could a loving God allow suffering?”

Application: 

Jesus Christ was the One Who made a way for us to be reconciled to God; who is a person in your life who needs to hear that message this week?

Prayer:

Spend some time in prayer that God will be working even now to lead us to a person whose heart He has already prepared to hear of the hope we have in Jesus. Pray for that person and for the courage to share with them the hope we have in Jesus.

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