Break & Build: Break the Cycle

Judges 6

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, Break and Build, Pastor Luke is leading us through a 2-week series on breaking patterns of thought and action we have internalized from our past and choosing a different path for our own mind and our own families in accordance with God’s Word and in the strength of His Spirit. This week, we looked at breaking old patterns…

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:

• Share a time where you were surprised by your own reaction to a situation. Maybe it was getting unreasonably angry or fearful, maybe it was hearing a parents voice in your own interaction with your children. Maybe it is a persistent, vague sense that you cannot survive uncertainties and so must stay in control of all things at all times. When have you heard yourself talk, or seen yourself react, and thought, “Woe, where did that come from?!?”

  Group Discussion:

  1. Read Judges 6:1-10

     1. In this passage, it is clear that God is using a nation that does not know Him to discipline a nation that has rejected Him. If a child asked you, “Why God did that?”, how would you respond?

     2. If the discipline is this severe, and yet God is still willing to provide a deliverer, what does this tell us about the nature of our sin and the depth of God’s grace? (Gen 3:17-18, Gen 6:5-7, Is 59:1,2, Is 64:6, Col 3:5-7, Rom 1:18-19, Eph 2:8-9, Rom 5:20-21, John 1:16-17, 1 Cor 15:10, Titus 2:11-14, Rom 7:14-24)

     3. There were 2 radically different narratives of what was happening in Israel at that time, one in Judges 6:7-10 and another in Judges 6:13. Compare these 2 versions of “What’s going on?!?” What is missing, what is the emphasis, and where does the burden of responsibility lie in each one?

  2. Luke made the point that the patterns of the past can stop with us. Read the following sections and discuss what you see in that passage that gives us clues on what it takes (from our side and God’s) to change our future so we do not repeat the past:

     1. Judges 6:11-16: (hint: where do you see Authenticity, Humility, Help from God’s presence…)

     2. Judges 6:22-27: (hint: Where do you see worship, repentance, willingness to obey courageously…)

     3. Judges 6:36-40: (hint: Where do you see persistence, God’s affirmation of His presence and call)

  3. Without faith it is impossible to please God, and yet Gideon seemed to have so desperately little faith! From burning up an offering to having direct words from God to giving signs through a wet and dry fleece… why was God so very patient with Gideon? (Matt 17:20, Matt 13:31-22, Ps 9:9,10, Ps 42:1-7, Mark 9:21-24)

  4. When you think of ‘trauma-formed habits’ (negativity, reactiveness, anger/fear, etc.), what are the points pastor Luke made that resonate most for you :

     1. “You cannot defeat an enemy in the valley if you have idols in the backyard” (Judges 6:25-27)

     2. “God calls the unlikely ones to lead the breakthrough” (Judges 6:15)

     3. “Courage is not the absence of fear but the presence of God that empowers us” (Judges 6:27-34)

     4. “Obedience is the first step in breaking generational cycles” (Judges 6:25-27)

Application: 

What alters need to come down in our own lives to break the cycles of generational pain and sin that so easily grabs us in the moment?

Prayer:

Spend some time in prayer committing ourselves to take that first step of obedience, asking for God’s presence and power to do so in the moment that it is needed.

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