First Importance (Part 5): Fresh Ways

HEADS UP: This week is our final week of Small Group Discussion Guides this Spring. We will pick back up in August!

TO START

This week, we jumped into the final part of a series called First Importance, a series that invites us to look at five important invitations from the resurrection of Jesus. Each of which reminds us of the fact that our faith isn't created but rather handed down to us. This week, we took a closer look at the ways Jesus invites us to know him even as we enter times of complete disorientation. 

  • What has been the best grace of God handed down to you in your life?

TO SHARE

For the entirety of this series, First Importance, we invite your group to have 1 member share a 5 minute response to the following prompt: How was the faith handed over to you?

Reminder: Invite folks to share in advance of your group meeting and maybe start with folks who are less likely to share. This practice will close this week!

TO DISCUSS

Read John 20:11-18

  • Have you ever had an experience where a transition in your life completely disoriented you? A time where an experience outside of your norm completely rattled what you believed? 

Zane mentions in the sermon that as tough as transitions are for many of us, they are actually good for our brains! We actually need regular times of transition for our own health. Oftentimes we choose to avoid anything out of the normal because it depletes our imagination to see things in new, fresh ways. 

  • What type of transition in your life has been the hardest on you, your faith, or those around you?

In the sermon, Zane points us to the way Jesus reorients Mary in the midst of her disorientation through encountering the God who knows her name personally.  Zane invites us to hear these words by Will Willimon:

“The risen Christ is free and moving. He does not intend to remain boxed in one day a week, for an hour in church. He does not recognize the separation we tend to make between "secular" and "religious." He intrudes, comes to you where you are, speaks to you and reveals himself to you. So pay attention when you are sitting at your desk or sweeping the floor or reading a book. Easter means, among other things, that Jesus is loose and that he is looking for you.”

  • What stands out to you in these words about Jesus who is loose and looking for you right now?

  • In what area of your life do you long for Jesus to come to you in a fresh way?

As Zane closed his sermon, he revealed that the greatest temptation in our life is to hold onto the ways that God has come to us in the past. Those were likely beautiful moments but if we only hold onto that, we will miss the new ways that God is coming to us in the present. 

  • What leads you to choose to talk about God more than to talk to God? Are you someone who tends to pursue getting answers to your questions over and against living in the presence of God?

  • What parts of your faith right now are you clinging to that don’t make much sense to you anymore? 

TO CLOSE

This week, we closed out this series which focused on the first importance of our faith and the reality that at some point and time in our lives, faith was handed to us. As we close this series as we have recited together each week in worship, I want to encourage your group to close by praying Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

For I handed down to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: 

That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures

And that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. 

Amen.

Matt DeLano