Doubting God: When One Way Seems too Narrow
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:
This series, Doubting God, looks at the many questions that we all have about God and His ways. This week we looked at the difference between being “spiritual” and having a living relationship with Jesus because we are born again and growing….
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:
What are some key differences between creative writing and an algebra problem? Would you teach or attempt them in the same way? How might you grade these 2 subjects differently?
Read this quote from CS Lewis and discuss: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” -C. S. Lewis
Group Discussion:
Don’t bank your eternity on your sincerity
Someone asks you, “Why do you think Jesus claimed ot be the only way? Don’t all religions have something good to say about how to live? Don’t all religions help us find God if we sincerely follow them?” How might you respond?
Read Isaiah 35:8, John 14:6, Matthew 7:13-14, Acts 4:12. All 3 of the identifiers Jesus uses in John 14 are exclusive: the way as opposed to any other route, the truth as opposed to any competing statement, the life as opposed to death. How does this help us understand the Matthew 7 passage here about the broad and narrow ways?
Read Romans 8:34, Hebrews 1:3, Mark 16:15-19, 1 Corinthians 15:17-20. Why would our faith be useless if Christ had not been raised from the dead? He died for us… what difference does it make that He also rose and sits at the right hand of God?
Grace is getting what we do not deserve because the work is DONE— Jesus. Let’s talk about that:
Read Eph 2:8,9, John 3:16-18, Gal 2:16, Phil 3:7-11. All other religions require man’s effort to access deity. What is so unique in these passages when compared to other world religions?
Let’s say you meet a Buddhist monk on the streets of NYC who has absolutely no concept of the Judeo-Christian worldview or of Scripture. How would you share about the “grace” of God with him in a way he could grasp and respond to it?
God is patient with us, even in our seasons of doubt. He meets us there! Let’s look at that:
Read Hebrews 4:14-16, Romans 5:8. How does this speak directly into our hope in seasons of doubt?
Read Phil 1:29, Romans 10:17, John 6:44, Eph 2:8,9. While God is patient with us in our doubts, we must believe before we are born again, saved, reconciled to God. When we are dead in our sins, where does our ability to believe come from?
Application:
WE have received tremendous, lavish grace. Are there people in our lives this week who need that grace extended to them? Let’s commit to that this evening.
Prayer:
Spend some time acknowledging God’s amazing grace in our lives and committing to extend that grace to those around us.
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