Month: March 2013

Date:  March 23-24, 2013
Series:  Fearless Generosity
Message:  The Palm Before the Storm
Passage:  John 15:4-9, 15

 

INTRODUCTION – 5 MINUTES

What are some Easter traditions you have in your family?

Leader note:  Easter could be that one day (or one of two days) your family attended church when you were young.  Maybe you got special Easter clothes, baskets, color and hunt for eggs, tell stories of sacrifice, have special meals, end fasts, etc.  Have your group recall similar and different traditions from each other.

 

OBSERVATION – 20 MINUTES

Read John 15:4-8. What does Jesus say about faith?

 

How does what Jesus say about faith differ from the idea of religion?

Leader note:  As your group highlights each characteristic of faith Jesus spoke of, ask them how that differs from previously held opinions, or other expressions of religions.

 

Commentary:
Jesus says-

It’s about relationship

• Living connection, organic
• Vine and branches
• Produces something – fruit, dependent relationship
  • Vine – produces through
  • Branch – expresses it
• Bring glory to God
• If we aren’t connected, we are useless
• Remain –
  • abide,
  • to dwell,
  • To become like
  • In Christ
  • Stay with
• Be led by the Spirit, submitted to, surrendered to
  • Walk in the Spirit, in step with, same pace as

Leader note:  Have your group put these concepts in non-“Christianese” words.

 

Examples:

“It’s like a parental relationship, I don’t need to think about if my needs will be met, if they will provide, care for and love me.  I gain life from parents – gain life from God, connected, don’t have to think about it or work at making them a parent or becoming a child, you just are.”

 “You have a choice to remain in relationship – it’s a decision you make to walk with, abide in, etc or pull away, disconnect – It’s a decision to enjoy it, live in it, depend on it.”

 

What Religion says:

• Do it – fail – result is guilt and shame
• If I’m able to then I feel like “I did it”, pride – leads to looking down on people, or judge non-Christians because they are having fun without guilt
• I produce it – being good, moral, going to church, giving, serving, being better, knowing God’s Word, bumper sticker, Bible study, kind to the poor or marginalized, act like Jesus vs. become like Jesus
• Earning

 

UNDERSTANDING – 15 MINUTES

 

What makes religion attractive?

• It’s measurable
• Gives me a checklist so I can control it
• Gives impression it will make you good
• If you have a mentality of earning, being a super achiever, this gives you the way to make you better at religion than the next guy

APPLICATION – 20 MINUTES

 

As we move toward Easter, what are things that drive you to religion?  To relationship? 

How does religion lead to failing?

 

Religion:

• Tradition
• Rules – don’t eat meat on Fridays, etc.
• Pick up your cross – need to do better, be nicer,
• Sacrifice something – do something I don’t want to do
• Obligatory part – requires something of me
• Peter and denial, how many times have I done that?  I  need more self-control
• Need to feel bad
• Religion is our go to fastball

Religion is “me-centric”  – “God what do you notice about me?  Don’t you see what I’m doing?”
Don’t have to be concerned about what God is doing, do what I want to do instead – come along with me God.
Religion gives illusion of control, but in abiding you have to rest, produces feeling of rest, surrender
For doers – control when the fruit comes, measure it, my time is well spent – but otherwise he determines it, and I feel out of control.
Religion says I’m going to pick the part to play and then be the architect of it

 

Relationship:

• Freedom is fruit
• It’s not your timetable, or the fruit, can’t be selective – I’m not there, but God is producing it.
• Some will reap and some will harvest
• Finding what God is doing and joining Him
• Healthy sense of frustration –
• No control
• Not measurable
• Requires surrender

 

Leader note:  After the discussion of moving toward relationship, lead them with “How are you going to do that???”  This is a set –up because the answer is “they can’t do anything!”  It’s not about doing.  It requires a different way of thinking.  Keep working within the group until they get a clear sense of a different way of thinking.

 

LIVE IT OUT

If we all lived in relationship, and not religion, how would it impact those watching us?

 

Pray:  As you end your time together give your group quiet time to personally respond to Jesus with confession of the laws they’ve constructed to achieve God’s favor – recognizing how that separates them from the fullness of Jesus’ sacrifice for them.  Let them sit with the full weight of grace for a moment and then pray for each person to rest in remaining in Jesus this Holy Week. 

 

Good Friday Service Times

Irvine:
Friday, March 29:  12, 3, 4:30, 6, 7:30p
Childcare thru age 5 at all but 7:30p                         

 

Mission Viejo:
Friday, March 29: 4 & 6p
Childcare thru age 4 at all services

 

Huntington Beach:
Friday, March 29: 11a-2p and 4-7p
2124 Main Street, HB (near offices)

 

Easter Service Times

Irvine:
Saturday, March 30, 4&6p
Sunday, March 31, 8:30, 10 & 11:30a
Port Mariners children’s program for
Infant – 5^th grade at each service

 

Mission Viejo:
Saturday, March 30, 5p
Sunday, March 31, 9 & 11a
Port Mariners children’s program for
Infant – 5^th grade at each service

 

Huntington Beach:
Sunday, March 31, 8:30, 10 & 11:30a
Port Mariners children’s program for
Infant – 5^th grade at each service

 

Other Easter Events

Easter Egg Scramble – Irvine Campus
Saturday, March 30, 3:15 & 7:15p
For toddlers – 5^th grade

 

Peep Roast
Saturday, March 30
After the 5p service

 

Easter Egg Hunt and Family Fun Day
Saturday, March 30, 9a-3p
Parking $2 in HB Sports Complex lot

 

 

 

Date:  March 3/9-10/13
Series:  Fearless Generosity
Message: Philoxenia
Passage:  John 4:1-30, 39-42

 

INTRODUCTION – 5 MINUTES

 

When did you visit someone and were made to feel “at home”?

 

Leader note:  Think of visiting a friend, maybe staying with someone while you were remodeling your house, welcomed in on a mission trip, while you were in college, etc.  How did they make you feel welcome?  What was the experience like?  It doesn’t have to be for an extended visit – maybe just someone who welcomed you in and prepared for you, or took care of you, in a way that made you feel welcome.

OBSERVATION – 20 MINUTES

Read John 4:1-30, 39-42.  What do you learn about fearless hospitality from the story?

Leader note:  You may want to start with defining hospitality.  What does it encompass?  You may want to look at some of these other passages as you form your definition:  Matt 22:36-40, Matthew 5:43-47, Hebrews 13:2)

• Jesus was first to speak – to a Samaritan woman (would have been despised by Jews)
• Jesus knew her story, she had been married many times, was an adulteress, he told her “everything” she ever did
• The disciples saw Jesus talking to her and didn’t question it – were they used to the fact that Jesus talked to those on the “outside”?
• Jesus offered the woman a way to not thirst again
• The Samaritans who came to see Jesus they offered for Him to stay with them – even though He wasn’t one of them.
• The disciples would have stayed as well.
• They welcomed Jesus and the 12, provided for them until they were ready to leave.
• Hospitality is extended to strangers, those on the outside, and reciprocal – Jesus began the conversation – was a stranger to them, they ended up welcoming Him in.

 

Who are the Samaritans of our day?

 

Leader note:  Make a list of those considered outsiders from church goers, those people normally avoided or kept at a distance.

• Immigration
• Muslims
• homosexuals
• abortion doctors
• abortion recipients
• rapists, addicts
• homeless
• mentally disabled
• criminals

 

 

UNDERSTANDING – 20 MINUTES

What does it look like extend fearless hospitality to those on considered to be “on the outside”?

Leader tip:  Consider people who would be like the woman at the well (and the rest of the Samaritans), and Jesus and the disciples in a strange land?

 

• Help the most offensive
• Stopping to help people broken down on the side of the road
• Helping at the medical clinic – dirty mouths, contagious,
• People caring for HIV patients, especially before it was really clear on how you got infected
• Foster families/safe families/adoption of special need kids, troubled kids
• Tutoring undocumented immigrants

What are the obstacles to practicing fearless hospitality to those who are different from us?

 

• Time
• Fear
• Money
• It’s uncomfortable
• Not sure what could help

 

What does it look like to receive fearless hospitality from those on the outside?

 

Leader note:  One major point of hospitality as highlighted in the verses above is that it is reciprocal.  What would it look like to be offered something that serves a need from someone on the list you made?

Commentary:  One woman in a life group is helping her friend walk the journey of cancer and cancer treatments.  The friend is Hispanic, understands very little English, yet welcomes the group member into her home.  The group members helps round up furniture, rides to chemo, fill out insurance forms, prays in English for the friend, and the friend’s mom cooks for all the helpers.  It’s a beautiful story of fearless hospitality. 

 

APPLICATION – 20 MINUTES

What would it look like for you to practice fearless hospitality?

 

Leader note:  Look at hospitality from all the descriptions you’ve identified, including the reciprocity of it.  Have your group consider what they could move at this and who they might already have in mind.

 

What obstacles get in your way?

Leader note:  At this point, have your group help work around the obstacles they face.  Can you help each other?  Do it as a group? 

 

LIVE IT OUT

 

What would be different in our community if we all lived with fearless hospitality?

 

PRAY:  As you end your time together, pray for the people who have shown you hospitality in the past.  Pray to be given opportunities this week to extend and receive fearless hospitality, and to be open to all that means for you, your family, and your home.  Pray if there are attitudes and biases that get in the ways of extending hospitality, that God will reveal them, and speak the truth to you, abolishing and tearing down obstacles from living out all He has asked you to do.