Step Six

Mixer

What is your favorite thing to do during quarantine?

Discuss/Reflect

In this week’s episode of As Normal As Weird Can Be, Pastor Jared & Mike Foster talked about our sleep habits and how our current reality is effecting good sleep.

1.     How have your sleep habits changed since COVID?

2.     What is something causing you stress right now?

3.     What is one way you can prepare yourself for good sleep?

4.     What is one way you can release your tension during the day?

Sermon Questions

1.     As we continue through the Beatitudes, this week Pastor Jared focuses on Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”  It’s easy to put on an “outside show” in order to seek the approval of others and appear righteous.  But God is concerned with who we are on the inside.  Take a moment and self-assess.  Be honest with yourself – are there things you sometimes ‘project’ on the outside in order to measure up?  What are they?  If you changed your external motivation (outside in), what would you change internally to course-correct your heart (inside out)?

2.     Review Luke 18:9-14 – “The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.”  It’s easy to judge others and be thankful that ‘we’re not like them;’ however, it’s a completely different story to be able to stare in the mirror and realize our own shortcomings.  We’re human, we make mistakes, just like the tax collector.  Are their times in your life where you were more aligned with the Pharisee in the Parable and yet, at other times, more like the Tax Collector seeking grace?  Share what this looks like in your own life.

3.     Pastor Jared referred to three ways in which we sometimes think and respond to others:

Externalism = At least I’m not like them

Separatism = I don’t like being around them

Imperialism = I am different and better than you

We’re in a unique season in which we are all facing the same pandemic. We may even find ourselves judging others in the way they are dealing with it.  If we want to avoid externalism, separatism and imperialism in the way we see others, what are healthy ways in which we can respond to the current crisis and extend grace?

Go Deeper

Read 2 Corinthians 4:18

We have all found ourselves romanticizing the way a date will go, or a family outing, or maybe just a perfectly thought out day. But the date was a bust, the toddler through an epic tantrum at the family picnic, and the perfect day was interrupted by a work call. When my husband and I were ready to have a baby, we were so excited we immediately bought a diaper bag with the expectation that we would soon get pregnant. To our dismay, it was 2 years before the diaper bag was put to use.

Today, many of us are in waiting. Waiting to go back to work. Waiting to get a job. Waiting to have a baby. In this waiting, we plan and romanticize what it will be like once the waiting is over. The reality is – we have no idea. But God reminds us in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Looking back at our ‘wait’ to have our daughter, we find ourselves thankful it did not happen when we thought we were ‘ready.’ We have all heard it time and time again, “God’s plans are bigger than our own.” While we picture what our next season might look like, let’s find peace in knowing God is bigger, God is eternal, and we are being renewed during the ‘wait.’

(Jaden Duncan)

Suggestions to Serve

Good Neighbor Drop-N-Drive | The Church at RB | Thursday 10AM-2PM

Feed SD | Deliver Senior Care Packages | Contact donna@thechurchrb.org

Feed SD | Build Homeless Care Kits Packages | Contact donna@thechurchrb.org

Feed SD | Food Sorting & Distribution | Contact donna@thechurchrb.org

Prayer

Popcorn pray as a group.

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