Apr 02 2024
1. One of the slides from Tim’s sermon today read, “People will choose a low level of chronic anxiety & stress, even though it’s more withering, over temporary acute pain that deals with the root cause.”
What is your initial response to this idea? If you agree, why do you think people seem to operate this way?
How true does it ring for you personally? Where have you seen this principle at work in yourself?
If you’re aware of ways in which this has been true for you, but in which you have also eventually dug into those root causes, what motivated you to delve into that space of temporary acute pain? Once you did so, how “worth it” has that work been? Do you wish you’d done it sooner? Never done it at all?
2. Tim talked about his observation that the process of deconstruction & reconstruction often leaves us without a sense of hopefulness and without a strong belief that God is still working in our world, and that the Spirit of God is still living, active, and taking us somewhere good.
Take a moment to reflect on this idea. Have you gone (or are you going) through a process of deconstructing & reconstructing big pieces of your faith’s foundation? If so, how relatable is this observation? Where is your own sense of hopefulness right now? How easy or difficult is it to believe that God is at work in your world and that the Spirit of God is living & active & taking you somewhere good?
Now, rethink this idea relative to someone you know and about whom you care. Do you believe that God is at work in theirlife? That Spirit of God is leading them somewhere good?
Is it easier or harder to believe in God’s active role in that person’s life than it is to believe in it in your own? Why do you think that might be?
3. Nearing the end of his sermon, Tim said that we all have to have to make the same choice into which Nicodemus was being invited: We’ll have to decide if we’re going to draw our lives not merely from a clear-eyed assessment of the mess we’ve made in the world, and, instead, let go of a life we’ve gotten used to in order to endure the acute pain of new birth.
This, Tim said, is the way to let a new kind of fully alive life be born into our lives. It’s also the way to transmit to the coming generations a sense of hope, and a faithful expectation that God actually can show up and make a difference in our broken world.
How does this very significant invitation sit with you? How willing do you feel to “let go,” delve into the painful process of examining root causes, and find a new kind of eternally alive life? How realistic or do-able does that actually seem? Where might you begin?