The Price is Right: “The Actual Retail Price Is…”

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, “The Price is Right, we are looking at honoring God with the resources we are entrusted with as He provides for our own needs and gives us the capacity to “be blessed and be a blessing”. We will look at tithes and offerings as God’s intended way of reducing the hold that our ‘stuff’ has on our hopes, confidence and security. This week we looked at the question of “What exactly is a ‘tithe’?”

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 about a time you realized that what you believed and what you were doing were two very different things. Maybe it was about driving safely, or perhaps a mode of engaging people around you. Maybe it had more to do with fear of the future or dealing with conflict. What happened when you realized your beliefs <> actions were 2 very different things, and what did you end up doing about it?

  Group Discussion:

  1. Talk about the choice to give God our leftovers vs. offering Him the first fruits of our labor:

     1. Read Gen 4:3-5, Heb 11:4, Prov 3:9-10: Talk about the difference between Able’s and Cain’s offerings. How does trust in God, honor for God and our own attitudes towards God come out in our offerings?

     2. Read Malachi 1:8, Matt 23:23, Mark 12:41-44, and 2 Cor 9:6-7.

        1. What do we learn here about giving as worship vs obligation?

        2. What do we learn here about giving first fruits vs leftovers

        3. Scott mentioned, “We are challenged by zeroes”. Read Malachi 3:10 and discuss

  2. There is a world of difference between ‘spend, save, give” and “give, save, spend”. Let’s talk about that:

     1. Read Luke 6:38, Luke 12:15, Prov 11:25, Phil 4:19: If 10% off the top is essentially what is meant by ‘tithe’, how exactly are we supposed to survive that when we currently live with such razor thin margins already?

     2. Read Rom 12:1,2, Matt 6:20, Ps 95:6: How do these verses help us make sense of giving generously— what do we have to believe about God (and ourselves) in order to do that?

Application: 

What would it look like to reorder our priorities to give-save-spend; what would it take to actually do that?

Prayer:

Spend some time in prayer thanking God for His provision and presence, asking for His guidance and strength to walk with Him in this area of our lives.

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