Doors: The Door to Belonging
Selected Scriptures
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:
God often works through moments of transition — thresholds, turning points, and decisions that invite us to move from where we are into something new. Throughout Scripture, doors represent opportunity, invitation, and response. Some doors God opens. Some doors he closes. And some doors require us to choose whether we will step through. Together, these doors tell a story — not just of what God offers us someday, but of the life He desires for us now. This week, we looked at the critical choice of the ‘door to belonging’ in the relationships God designed us for…
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 & Discussion:
We have a hunger to relate, to know and be known, to love and be loved. We also want to be safe and avoid hurt. It’s not safe to love, so we “substitute the presence of connection for the absence of rejection”. C. S. Lewis once said, “The only place to be safe from the hurts and perturbations of love is Hell”. Discuss: If we MUST choose between “feeling safe” and “knowing love”, which is the right choice? Why?
Reflective Discussion (Remember to look at the context of the verses as you are reading!):
Life in relationships changes how we experience and interpret life. Read the following Scriptures and DISCUSS: How does openness to relationship transform our perspective on life? Ps 139:13-14, Eccl 4:9-12, Prov 18:1, Mark 3:13-14, Luke 8:1-3, John 13:35; 1 Cor 12:9-10 and 12-27, Gal 6:2, Eph 3:14-21, Heb 13:1-7, 1 Peter 5:7, 1 John 1:7 and 4:19)
Do a deep dive on Hebrews 10:24-25:
Why do we need others to ‘spur us on”?
When we make a choice whether to give time/effort to “meet together”, what are we choosing between?
Why is it easier to form a habit of “not” meeting than to maintain the habit of meeting?
if meeting is to “encourage each other”, what does that look like practically?
So “the Day [of Christ’s return] is approaching”— so what? Wy would that affect the importance of connecting with other believers?
Sometimes, it takes courage to be a “door opener” for someone who is “not us”. Read the following clips from Barnabas life and ministry from the following Scriptures and DISCUSS: What were the character traits that made Barnabas a “door opener”? (Acts 4:36-37, Acts 9:26-27, Acts 11:22-26, Acts 15:36-39).
Application:
It is not simply a matter that “love is worth the risk”; Love is the way that disciples are identified to a watching world. What are specific relationships where that commitment is hard, but necessary? Let’s commit to living that out this week.
Prayer:
Spend some time this evening committing to love others with the love we have received from God.
____________________________________
Get more resources to go deeper through Commentaries and Bible Study helps HERE