Mind Your Head:Poison or Fruit

For some of us, the problem doesn't feel so much like a deficiency, but an over-efficiency. We're able to be speaking intelligible words before we've even fully heard them in our minds. It's quite a feat, really. 

But our mouths, trained to fill dead air and to never let an opportunity for a joke, jab, sarcastic grenade or witty comeback pass, have caused most of the problems we have ever had in life. For some of us, it's so well trained, it seems to lead us.

Use this discussion time to talk about the power of words (or more precisely, the power we give words) and how the group might be a place where wisdom can flourish because we're getting our minds to work faster than our lips. 

Thaw

• Talk about your favorite TV characters. See if you can find a pattern in our favorites and the words they say. They probably always had a comeback or a way of speaking themselves bcd into the respect they had seemed to lose. Find out how this shapes us as individuals and as a society, over time. Don't forget to note the fact that these communication mentors aren't real and all their words were scripted. But their impact on us is real!

Read

• Discuss the major scriptural references from the message on Sunday, detailing how they speak to where each person is or has been in their life, and what they feel like God is inviting  each to do.
• Prov. 18:21 Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.
• Matt. 12:34 "…out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks."
• Rom. 2:4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?
• Prov. 26:18-19 Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I was only joking!”
• Prov. 15:1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
• Prov. 12:18 Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
• Prov. 16:24 Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
• Eph. 4:29  Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

Discuss

• Share times where members of the group have been either in the giving or receiving end of hurtful words. If desired, allow the group space to be therapeutic in an opened forum to say the words that created pain in the past. 
• Discuss how we continue to replay the words that hurt us, continuing to give them strength over us.
• Discuss the difficulty in not using words aggressively, even when you are fully aware that you can push people back on their heals, creating a sense of safety. (Proverbs 12:18)

Apply

• Allow people in the group who have a better knack at measuring their words and understanding the perceived power of words, to share. Be aware of the difference between learned wisdom and a quiet disposition. The latter isn't discounted, but for the flaming extrovert, someone who is by nature quiet is an unrealistic goal. Instead, see if you can find people who feel they have improved in this area, perhaps having been in the past someone with uncontrolled words, and find out how and why.

Mind Your Head. "What Wise People Know."

• "A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel." Prov. 1:5   

 In our second week on wisdom, work hard with your group to reinforce that "knowing things" isn't the point of life, but living is. Wisdom is a way of saying "we know what kind of life, in any given moment, we ought to live". Let us never forget that we can memorize all the original-language words for wisdom, preach compelling sermons and participate in an ancient philosophy discussion, all centers on what wisdom is and is not, and still be morons! If this doesn't do anything, it isn't anything.




Thaw

• How has "wisdom" and/or wise choice-making come up since last week?
• What did you learn?
• What old patterns tried to take over that are at odds with what you sense was real wisdom?
• What most stuck with you from our time together on Sunday morning?

Read

• "A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel." Prov. 1:5   
• "The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge; the ears of the wise seek it out." Prov. 18:15
• "The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice." Prov. 12:15 

• Thoughts?
• Are you surprised to find that the wise person is described as being a learner? Explain.

Leader note: The idea here is simple; fools and know-it-alls position themselves in a way that tries to communicate they already know. They already know the news. They already know about the best products. They already know the latest science and psychological and dietary scoop. They already know what's going on politically, who's involved and even why. You can't tell them anything. Their job, from their perspective is to tell YOU. Yet, it's the wise people in the scriptures who eagerly learn from everybody, comparing ideas, asking questions and follow up questions, and aren't letting their insecure hopes to be something special overtake their desire to know how reality actually works. Einstein was once quoted as having said "the difference between me and others is that when people find a needle in a haystack, they quit. After I find it, I keep looking through the haystack to see what else I can find."

• Were you raised in an environment that chiefly celebrated the power of knowing or the power of learning?
• How has thus affected how you interact with others and the information about reality today?
• Respond as a group to the first point in Sunday's message:

 "Wise people know when they don't know".

Read

• "The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." Prov. 27:12
• "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty." Prov. 14:23 

• Thoughts?
• How is Sunday at church, or even this LifeGroup a potentially dangerous environment when we consider that there's work to do outside the emotional experience of merely "agreeing".
• What do we learn about the role of wisdom when we see God sent the Christ to live among us rather than an updated set of rules?
• Respond as a group to the second point of the message: 

"Wise people know "should" won't get them there."

Read

• "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes..." Prov. 3:5-7

• Thoughts?
• Why would humility and wisdom go together like this?
• What kinds of things do we have difficulty entrusting to God, and what kinds of things are no-brainers? See if you can find a pattern.
• Respond as a group to the third point of the message: 

"Wise people know that trusting something you have control over to someone else is when trust gets real."

Apply

• There's no much that can be done about all this in the context of a group discussion. This must be enacted. How can this group help you this week in our continued journey toward being wise people?
• When this week can you, ahead of time, prepare yourself to acquire wisdom? Think about places, people, meetings that you'll be confronted with in the next several days. How can you plan now to be wise and glean wisdom from there?
• In what ways are you hoping discussing all this will be enough because to actually start making good decisions about a particular issue is far too difficult?

Prayer

• Consider ending in silent prayer, reflecting on the proverbs above, hoping to leave your time together slightly more open to God's wisdom (wherever you find it) than when you arrived.

MInd Your Head. "Wisdom's First Move"

For the next several weeks we will be discussing select proverbs, as well as the greater theme of how to find and apply wisdom. It will be helpful to bear in mind that these proverbs are not simply penned by the wise Solomon, but collected by him. Whenever he heard wise words in the market place, read them in texts, heard other kings or nobles share them, he would capture them. In other words, what we call sacred scripture both originated with faithful forefathers, and were identified outside the faith by same- and taken. Wisdom is, in part, recognizing truth and substance wherever you may find it. 


The wisest man in the world didn't become a faucet. He became a bucket!


And then, and for the ensuing millennia, these were phrases taught to children and traded as gems with other thinkers. Some brought on chin rubbing. Some brought on bursts of laughter. All of them were cherished as little insights to how people and reality actually worked.


You may consider committing some proverbs to memory as individuals or as a group during this series. Write them on index cards, text them to each other at points during the day and week. Be creative.


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Thaw

• Who do you think of when you think of wisdom?

Leader note: Point out, once everyone has shared, whether people listed real or fictional characters and what that might mean for our perception of wisdom.

• When is a time where you felt wise? What were you measuring against?

"That's all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate."

-JAMES M. CAIN, Double Indemnity

Read

• Proverbs 9:10
• Thoughts?
• How did the message agree or differ from your thoughts about the phrase "To fear the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"?
• What one thought about properly understanding "fear" most stuck with you?
• Why would wisdom start here and not somewhere else?

Leader note: Another way to ask this is, "why is it good for us that wisdom start here?" This isn't a question about God's ego being satiated first. This, like everything else, is for the good of his people. Explore why wisdom beginning with an appropriate, sober awareness of who God is, is best for us.


Read

• Acts 10:1-2

Leader note: The text may differ from translation to translation, but Cornelius is described literally as φοβούμενος ("phobo-menos" God-fearer). 

• How is Cornelius' God-fearing described?
• What does this tell us about what it really means to fear God?

Leader note: It's helpful to see that Cornelius' fear is detailed in his generous alms-giving to people in need and by his prayer. For a Roman centurion, indoctrinated into the idea that Caesar was god and was the source of true peace, and that poor people were literally less human, these two descriptors of his life tell a big story. He refused to inwardly conform to his culture's pattern of life, but remained mindful about what was actually true about God's universe underneath Caesar's. Terror and intimidation aren't listed. His wakefulness to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were.


Discuss

• What would it mean for you to begin fearing God is in a way consistent with what God wants for you?
• What baggage does this idea immediately come with?
• How can this group help sort through what works against you waking to the Christ and his way?

Meditation

• Each read Proverbs 8 & 9, silently. When finished, each share one thought.

Apply

• This week, regardless of where you think of yourself in relation to God, how can you begin fearing or taking seriously or living in knowledge of the Holy One?
• How can the group help?