Here's How (Part 2): Here's How To Be Open-Handed

TO START

This week, Zane invited us into the second part of a series called Here’s How, a series that invites us to live out our mission to Live Love together through our 7 core behaviors. This week, we leaned into one of the seven ways we practice living love: being open-handed 

  • How have you seen the practice of being open-handed in action in your life? What did it look like? How did it make you feel? (Encourage your group to share how they’ve seen it in this group if they have an example) . 

TO DISCUSS

To begin Zane’s message, he invited us to consider how we imagine God. He conjectured that it could be anywhere from an old person to Morgan Freeman's voice.

  • So, when you imagine God, what do you see? How has your perception of God evolved or changed overtime? What is this God like? 

In order to get to the heart of the God who holds us in his hands… Read Matthew 25:14-30 together.

  • How does the story speak to God being an open-handed God? How have you experienced the God of open-hands? Why does God entrust us with resources, joys & strengths?

Zane points us to the fact that the story Jesus shares doesn’t point us to a God looking for you and I to meet a benchmark or a specific quota to be loved but rather God is looking for us to have a faithful posture of open-handedness.

  • How have you fallen into the trap of believing that God is constantly grading you or that you have to reach some point before God accepts you?

In having this posture of open-handedness, the focus isn’t on how much but is fully connected to acknowledging and accepting that God has given each of us different gifts that invite us to respond. God wants us to share the delight he’s given us. And whether or not we have open hands reveals a lot about our relationships with God

  • So what’s your relationship with God like? What has been given to you? A feeling? Security? Financial Support? Energy? Are you sharing what’s been shared with you to others? 


While much of our focus on open-handedness tends to revolve around what we give, invest and entrust, we need to consider how we respond when someone desires to be open-handed to us.

  • So how often do you accept someone’s open-handedness to you? Is your first move to deny help or to accept it? Why do you think that’s the case? Why does it matter? 

Near the close of his sermon, Zane invited us to consider possible ways that we can discover the joy of what’s already been given to us by giving in turn… 

  • Encourage your group to consider how they can begin to engage in open-handed work. Is there a place in the life of this church where you can invest? Is there someone you can invest in?

TO CLOSE

As a group, pray for the Holy Spirit to enliven them to how God is calling them to live with open hands. Invite your group to share the name of someone who embodies open-handedness in their life. And then close with the be open-handed prayer together (roundrockchurch.us/prayforopenhands):

Father in Heaven, We are no longer our own, but yours.

Put us to what you will, rank us with whom you will;

Put us to doing, put us to suffering;

Let us be employed for you, or laid aside for you,

Exalted for you, or brought low for you

Let us be full. Let us be empty

Let us have all things, Let us have nothing

We freely and wholeheartedly yield all things 

To your pleasure and disposal

And now, glorious and blessed God,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

You are ours and we are yours. So be it. 

And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. 

Amen.

Matt DeLano