Jesus's first recorded words in the Gospel of Mark are that the News from the front is good. We are invited to turn back toward this news (Mark 1:15). Your group time will be another small step in believing this proclamation of the Kingdom, situated right in front of us, if only obscured by a few trees.
Imagine if your group became even more free and full of light as its members conned to awaken to what God really is, and the Love that's really there for them.
Imagine if, contrary to other reports from other fronts, we all began to see that there's goodness available to us and between us all right now!
Thaw
- What makes a person and optimist?
- What makes a person a pessimist?
- What does it mean to be a realistic, honest person while also being hopeful and positive?
- What most stuck with you from Sunday?
Read
- 2 Kings 2:19-22
- Thoughts?
Discuss
- Has there ever been a time in your faith journey where you felt like God "healed the waters" only later to revert back to a sense that things were as "undrinkable" as ever?
Read
- Philippians 4:4-9
- Thoughts?
Leader note: This passage is beyond familiar for many students of the Bible. Yet, to receive it as the writing of Paul, a man imprisoned, misunderstood, alienated from friends and family alike, unsure when he'd finally be killed for his alleged blasphemy, helps us to keep it fresh in our minds as a directive for our most pessimistic inclinations. Help the group understand that this wasn't written from a place of naive comfort, but from a co-laborer, co-struggler and one who understood just what it means to be rescued by God from being enslaved by our own negativity and victimization.
Apply
- Have you given this group, or any other group, the right to tell you whether you are person who lives as though the water is good or not? (In other words, have you made it safe to tell you if you are negative, if you complain disproportionately, if you are one looking to retain your victim energy?)
Leader note: Be cautious of real victimization within your members. Some in our groups have been mistreated in the worst way. We never, especially in the name of faith and spirituality, tell people that they need to "just trust God and get over it." At the same time, without any one person in the group being targeted, create an atmosphere that challenges the instinct to see circumstances as always against. To create a spirit in your group where members allow one another to push back on cynicism and an insistence that bad things are more likely to be real that good things. This is a big part of what it means to be free people of God- we can live in the world though it goes on being the world, with new, unmerited access to clean water.
- How would your life be different if you really began to believe that you are not at the center of misfortune, disappointment and negativity? What would you become freed of those waters?
- How can this group remind you of the freedom you already have so that you can begin to really live?
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