Doors: The Door to Joy

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 call to ‘choose joy’…

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:

• Thinks back to a time when you were younger and you experienced joy without the adult limitations on your expression of joy. What was happening, how did you respond, and what did it feel like to simply experience joy without the need for a “tough” outer demeanor or fear of embarrasment over getting really excited about something?

• Reflective Discussion (Remember to look at the context of the verses as you are reading!):

  • Pastor Scott talked about the difference between joy that is ‘produced’ from the inside outwards vs. joy that is manufactured (to act like we’re joyful when we are actually not). Read the following passages and DISCUSS: What is the source of joy spoken of in these passages and how are we supposed to access that joy? (Gal 5:22-23, Rom 15:13, Ps 16:11, John 15:11, 1 Peter 1:8-9, Neh 8:10, Is 55:1-2, Ps 4:7-8)

  • When we live life “FOR” God ratehr than IN Christ, we can shift into a transactional mode of relating with God. Let’s talk about that:

    • Share about a time when you felt yourself thinking, “I obey, so God is obligated” or “I perform, so I deserve”. Characterize what that kind of relationship with God was like— how did it feel, what thoughts/actions/ modes of relating characterized that state?

    • Compare that transactional mindset to what the Scripture passages in our first question talked about. What’s the difference?

    • Review some of the following Scriptures and DISCUSS: What are some of the ways we miss Joy. (Luke 10:38-42, Gal 3:1-3, Phil 3:7-9, John 5:39-40, Hosea 6:6, Ps 51:16-17)

  • The beautiful thing about God’s truth is the way His truth connects! DISCUSS: How do trust, perseverance, submission and contentment all work together to produce the joy of the Holy Spirit in us with reference to the following passages (John 10:9-10, Ps 84:10-11, Acts 3:19-20Phil 4:11-13, Lam 3:22-24, Ps 37:3-7, 1 Tim 6:6-8, Rom 12:1-2)

Application:

At some time this evening, spend some quiet time sitting with the Lord and simply asking, “Lord, what needs to happen in my life for me to more fully now the abundant joy that is my inheritance in You?” Commit to doing what He puts on your heart to do, even if that is simply to worship Him.

Prayer:

Spend some time thanking God that He made us to experience the kind of joy we can only have in Him, and asking Him to form us in a way that our lives increasingly produce the fruit of Joy by the presence of His Holy Spirit in us as we acknowledge Him.

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