Home for Christmas: Longing for 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 the longing we have for the place God has prepared for us, even while we honor and acknowledge Him in the here and now…

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:

• Have someone share about the first time they experienced home-sickness— maybe it was going to college, maybe on an extended trip.

  • What was happening, and how did home sickness affect you when you were away and needed to [study, work, negotiate…] at the place you had moved to?

  • How did the hope of getting home again motivate you while you were away?

• Reflective Discussion:

  • Read Is 35:4-6, 8-10; Matthew 11:2-6.

    • John has spent his life in radical service to God, and is now in a roman prison with rats, no food, no friends and the constant threat of torture and/or death at the whim of a literal king. If that was you, how would you be feeling in that moment?

    • Isaiah says, “It will be be called the way of holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way… they will enter Zion with singing…”

    • Read the following Scriptures and for each passage discuss, “How does this passage help in directing a godly longing in a godly direction rather than making “Babylon” home? (Eccl 3:11, Ps 63: 1-5, Ps 42:1-2; John 6:35; Romans 8:22-30; Heb 13:14)

    • There was so much waiting involved, both before and after Jesus came. Read the following passages and talk about how faith was expressed in the waiting time. (Luke 2:25-33; Luke 2:36-38)

Application: 

In what ways have you been making Babylon your home, and how acn we change that?

Prayer:

Spend some time in prayer that God will give us the longing for home by the power and leading of His Spirit!

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