WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? 2.

Hopefully enough life has happened in the last week for your LifeGroup members to ask What Happens Next? And how they've answered it has a lot to do with how fear and anxiety play not their existence.

As we become less fearful, and more at peace, our stories and our relationships become better and better. Drill down a bit more this week with your group members and see if you can't find more ways to grow into the men and women God has called us to be.



Thaw

• If you found yourself at a fork in the road on an important journey, would you choose the path with numerous venomous snakes or the one with a bear and her cubs? Why? 

Leader note: See how many people get stuck with the idea that they are walking. If they are driving, either should be fine. If early on the conclude they could be in a car, take the car away and see what they decide and why.

• What stuck with you most from Sunday morning?

Read

• John 18:1-11, 15-17, 25-27
• Thoughts?

Discuss

• Why do you think Peter thought violence toward these soldiers was justified.
• If you had to put it in a few words, what made Peter lie about knowing Christ, and what part of him was in control?
• How does this relate to how you make decisions and behave when under stressful situations?

Leader note: see if you can get to the different parts of the mind at work here in your discussion of the John 18. Peter is obviously upset and is using very simplistic, base, reactionary thinking. He is emotionally overtaken and therefore fights in the face of threat and then runs in the face of danger. Higher thinking would have likely led Peter to peacefully follow Christ's lead, telling the truth in the face of danger, not answering violence with violence, recognizing his internal upset but not allowing it to hijack the higher ways which Christ has taught. This is not to say that defending the self when in real danger is a sin. It is to uncover that the disciplined mind is on display here against the poise of the Christ, and is instructive for our day-to-day lives as we face insult and upset, and the choice to be people of wholeness and peace rather than reactionary liars.

Read

• Jeremiah 17:5-11
• Thoughts?

Discuss

• How would you describe the progression of thought in this passage?
• What does it mean to you that God searches the heart and tests the "kidneys" or the seat of consciousness and decision making?

Leader note: Bear in mind that God is speaking in Jeremiah 17. The passage is about trust in God affecting the individual and then how a lack of trust leads to unjust social behavior. Try to avoid simplistic understandings of "trust the Lord" as you talk about it, and dig more deeply into what it might mean. Often, this phrase means "be a Christian," when clearly one can be a Christian and still be bound up inside with all sorts of anxieties that lead to all sorts of trouble. Find ways of understanding trust in the Lord as meaning what the tree planted by the river signifies, not the absence of difficulty, but strength and self control in the face of it.

Read

• James 1:19-22

• Thoughts?

Apply

• Think of a recent time you have been insulted, mistreated, ignored and treated badly. A time when you didn't handle it as well as you would like. How would James' words have helped?

Quick to listen.

Slow to speak.

Slow to get angry 

(because human righteousness does not bring about God's righteousness)

• How can these principles help train the mind and the decision making that we do?
• How can pausing, considering, resisting the urge to let the undeveloped toddler mind take over help any tensions and stress you are currently facing?