We will be having an important meeting on March 30 at 4:00. Please do your very best to be there. There will be door prizes and snacks.
Topics of discussion will include disciplinary issues, future bible studies, and anything else you want to talk about. I will send out a reminder to everyone a couple of weeks before that day, but mark your calendars now!
For the next three weeks along with the whole church we will be "clarifying our vision" by studying the process that our church follows in making disciples. This process can be described using three words: Celebrate, Connect, and Contribute.
This Sunday, Josh will be leading our time together. Here are some things Josh has given me to be studying and preparing for:
Ice-Breakers (Introduction Q’s to get em’ talking)
- What has been a time in your life when you felt God’s presence in a particularly strong way?
- What is the goal of missions? (This is a good one to get them thinking, but that will need some direction from you as a group leader. The ultimate goal of missions is to see worshippers created out of the lost. Missions exists where worship doesn’t and for the purpose of inspiring worship in new hearts.)
- What picture do you get in your head when you think of “worship”?
Lesson-Builders
Worship/Celebration in the church is primarily a “corporate” act; something we think of doing as a group instead of thinking about it as if we were individuals worshipping in the same room.
o Read: Colossians 3:16, Hebrews 10:24-25, Exodus 7:16 (God’s purpose in freeing Israelites from Egypt was so that they could worship Him, Hebrews 12:18-29
o Possible Discussion Questions: based on those passages, what should be different about our corporate worship gatherings? What should be some of your goals when you go to WOW or come on Sunday morning? Based on these passages, what could you do to enhance our Student Ministry’s worship gatherings?
We should Celebrate/Worship in “Spirit and Truth” (John 4:26)
o This means worshiping God inwardly (in spirit) is more important to God than exterior things such as raising our hands or closing our eyes and that worshiping God for who He has revealed himself to be in the Bible (in Truth) as opposed to who we’ve made him out to be or wish that He was is of the utmost importance.
o Read and Discuss: John 4:23
o Possible Discussion Questions: What does it mean to worship God “in Spirit”? How could someone fail to worship God “in truth”?
Worship is an action and not a feeling
o Possible intro question to this point: Is worship something that we do or something that we feel?
o Scripture: point out to them that in every passage concerning worship in the Bible worship is a verb that is often described as being accompanied by feelings, but not as a feeling – ever.
o Possible Discussion Questions: What does it mean if your worship isn’t accompanied by emotion? What emotions are most prominent during your worship? Are these feelings unique to times of woship?
(The Love of God study for this Sunday has been posted under this post.)
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10.
The love of God is uniquely expressed through Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins in dieing on the cross.
When we speak of the love of God we are not talking about the love of God expressed only in him providing clothes, shelter, food and friends and family. These provisions are wonderful provisions and we should praise God for them. But when we speak of the love of God what we are talking about is different from how any other religion on earth talks about the love of God. As Christians when we talk about the love of God we talk about it as being expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
"But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8.
God's love for me, you and the many students you will be teaching Sunday is expressed in the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ. God's love is very unique and his expression of his love is one of a kind. It is like no other love. And a rejection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is a rejection of God's love; a rejection of God.
This Sunday help the students to see the Big Picture. God has created us for himself; for His glory. Because of sin we are separated from Him and cannot please or glorify Him. Sin has made us enemies of God; children of wrath. But God has demonstrated his love for us in sending His son to die for our sins that we may have peace with God and be in the family of God if we would only repent of our sin and put our faith in Jesus Christ.
Help the students to see God's love as not giving them what they want on earth and making their lives easy but to see God's love as giving them what they most desperately need now and for eternity for their good and God's glory; His Son Jesus Christ.
Attribute Focus
God is love. Love is an essential attribute of God. When we look at the other attributes of God we recognize things about His love. “We see that because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed.” (Tozer) Because God is holy and righteous we might stand in fear and think it unthinkable to enter into his presence. But God’s holiness and justice are counterbalanced by the fact that He is a God of love. The death of Christ is the greatest expression of God’s love toward us. In His life and death for us we see clearly that God loves us.
Quote
One of the words used in the Old Testament is “the verb habab, it is translated ‘to love,’ but it also has the connotation of ‘having in the bosom’. Thus it speaks of a tenderness and closeness of feeling toward the object of love. The verb hasaq appears more frequently in relation to divine love than does habab. This word emphasizes that which attaches to something or someone. When used in regard to emotions it speaks of a love which is already bound to its object. Such inward attachment is true of God’s love for Israel (Deut 10:15), and yet that happened because of his own free will, not because Israel did anything to deserve it (Deut 7:7). This is the love that won’t let go of the object of love.” John Feiberg.
Another Quote
“No tongue can fully express the infinitude of God’s love, or any mind comprehend it: it ‘passeth knowledge’ (Eph. 3:19). The most extensive ideas that a finite mind can frame about Divine love, are infinitely below its true nature. The heaven is not so far above the Earth as the goodness of God is beyond the most raised conceptions which we are able to form of it. It is an ocean which swells higher than all the mountains of opposition in such as are the objects of it. It is a fountain from which flows all necessary good to all those who are interested in it.” John Brine, 1743.
Key Scripture
1 John 4:8, 1 Corinthians 13, Hosea 11:1-4, Jeremiah 31:3, Zeph. 3:17, Hosea 3, John 15:13, 1 John 3:16, 1 John 3:1, Romans 8:35-39, 2 Corinthians 13:11
Respond
1. Read through some of the passages and get a sense of what is being said. After each one talk about how it relates to God being a God of love.
2. What is unconditional love? Does this kind of love mean loving someone for who they are with no desire for them to change?
3. Is God’s love unconditional? Why or why not?
4. How did God show his love for us?
5. How can we show our love for others?
6. How can one know if they really love God?
We often neglect the person and work of the Holy Spirit. We think God the Father was present during the Old Testament. Jesus, God the Son began his ministry in the New Testament. And the Holy Spirit gets left out.
Actually the Holy Spirit is just as much God as Jesus and the Father. I believe the best way to explain the trinity is God is three persons, each person is fully God, there is one God.
In general the work of the Holy Spirit is to manifest the presence of God in the world. We learn from scripture that the Holy Spirit was present during creation, Genesis 1:2 and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
God the Holy Spirit didn’t just show up after Jesus ascended into heaven, He is eternal and He has always been. The work of the Holy Spirit is different now than in the Old Testament, not in action but in numbers of people.
In Old Testament times the Holy Spirit worked in different individuals lives such as Moses, David, the Kings, and the prophets. It wasn’t until the New Testament work of Christ that the Holy Spirit would become available to all believers.
In fact Joel predicted this Joel 2:28-29 It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.
We see this come about on the day of Pentecost. Now the Spirit is for all believers. He is our Advocate before the Father. He is our helper in time of need. He intercedes for us when we don’t know what to pray. He lives in us and gives us power for service. He equips us with spiritual gifts for ministry. He convicts us of sin and helps us to repent. He gives us assurance of salvation. He teaches us new things. But most importantly He guides us in life and helps us to worship Him.
(written by Brian Manns)
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
There is one and only one God, eternally existing and fully expressed in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each member of the Godhead is equally God, each is eternally God, and each is fully God –not three gods but three Persons of fully the identically same, eternal divine nature, yet each is also an eternal and distinct personal expression of the one undivided divine nature.
Rejoice that the Son is fully God. Many have tried to say that he was only man, but have failed. Jesus was fully man and fully God.
In this time in history the role of the Son is the role of building the church. He is in the process of bringing everything into subjection under his feet. Ephesians 1:20-23.
Nothing is outside of the control of the Son. He rules and reigns the world at the right hand of the Father. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
No matter what you read or hear the world is under the control of one ruler and that is Christ. He is the one who puts presidents, kings, prime ministers and dictators in their thrones of power.
Jesus, the eternal Son, begotten from the eternal Father, made known by the eternal Spirit is to be worshiped and rejoiced in and adored by us. This is our purpose in life. To love and prize the Son of God in whom we have salvation and the forgiveness of sins.
But God when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Galatians 4:4-7
What awesome news! Those who put their faith in Christ become the adopted sons of God and heirs of God. We, by God's grace, can cry out to God, "Daddy!" and he will hear us and come running.
We are all sons of God (even the ladies). In the Old and New Testament the Fathers gave a majority of their inheritance to the firstborn son. The firstborn son was honored above all the other children. In Christ we are all firstborn sons of God. We are heirs. We receive all that the firstborn son receives. Do not get tripped up by the language.
The greatest example of how we should relate to God as our Father is Jesus Christ. Jesus' identity was founded on him being God's one and only son. When Jesus spoke to God he always called him "Father".
This Sunday I am going to teach on four areas in which Jesus related to God as Father and how we should see these as examples for us to relate to God as father. The four areas are:
1. authority
2. affection
3. fellowship
4. honor
All of the ways that Jesus related to God extends to the adopted children of God. We should relate to God as Jesus related to Him. Read the verses this weekend and immerse yourself in thinking of how we are children of God through Christ.
