Heart for the Harvest Week 3 – Discussion Guide
Getting Started
Main Idea:
The living God desires a living faith from us—a faith that bounces back.
Discussion Starter:
What is your favorite part you play in the Thanksgiving and Christmas season with your friends and family?
Introduction:
This week continues our annual Heart for the Harvest Series. We are collectively preparing to see God move this week with miracles of healing in anticipation of the Real Love offering next weekend. We are challenged to prayerfully ask God to reveal our part in the miracle. Christ Followers are to crave a living and loud faith, a faith that brings hope in the silence and darkness, a faith that allows us to bounce back no matter what happens in the world around us. This is the living faith that God desires from us.
Watch this brief intro together with your group (click picture below):
Encounter God
Primary Scriptures: Luke 7:6-10, Hebrews 11:1-6
Discussion Questions:
- Read Luke 7:6-10. What stands out to you in the story of the Roman centurion?
- What does this reveal about God?
- How does your life reveal a strong faith in the living God—one that is made of rubber not glass? How has this kind of faith sustained you through difficult times?
- Read Hebrews 11:1. What does this verse mean to you?
- Read Hebrews 11:3. Faith is a very practical thing, in spite of what unbelievers say! It allows us to do things other people would never do—to step out in faith. God created the universe by His Word. How do you relate to and respond to His Word? How has God called you through His Word to step out in faith? What fears do you allow to hold you back?
- Read Hebrews 11:6. Believing that God is real and truly exists is just the beginning. God wants much more for us and from us; He wants intimate communion with His people through faith in Jesus Christ. This meaningful relationship will lead to heart transformation our lives. How has your life changed since becoming a Christian? How is God continuing to transform you today?
Discovery Bible Method:
For deeper study, as an alternative to the questions above, read Hebrews 11:1-11 and use the Discovery Bible Method to explore the passage.
Embrace Others
Suggestion: Consider breaking the group into dyads or triads for this section.
This week, our focus was on strong, rubber-like, sustaining faith. In small groups of 2 or 3, discuss and encourage one another by sharing how faith in Jesus Christ has carried you through or is carrying you through the darkest times.
Engage the World Around Us
Engaging at Faith Promise: Pray as a group to explore ways you can step out in faith as God calls you to serve our church family. Did you pray with someone during the worship experience for their healing? Continue to lift them up in prayer this week.
Engaging in Community and the World: We learned this week about having a living and active faith that can stand the test of time and withstand the schemes of the devil. How will you share the Good News of Jesus Christ to a hurting a dying world? Step out in faith and share the only way lives can be transformed and made new again.
Expand God’s Kingdom
Faith comes to God with the confidence that He is, and faith comes with the confidence that God will be a generous giver. What pleases God is that our hearts and minds display God’s being and God’s beauty and that we display God’s existence and His excellence, how real He is and how rewarding He is. This is what pleases God, and this is faith. How will you step out in faith and share the good news found only in Jesus Christ?
Leader’s Notes
- Answers may vary. May include the centurion’s great love for his soldier, his humility towards Jesus, and his faith that even impressed Jesus!
- God can heal regardless of the circumstances. He is not limited by time, space or our preconceived notions of Him. Simple but profound faith can yield amazing answers to prayer. If the centurion had this amazing faith, how much more should ours be, given we have access to the full revelation of God in His Word.
- Answers may vary.
- Answers may vary. May include that Christ Followers can know, based on the past, that God’s promises will be ours.
- Answers may vary.
- Answers may vary.
ALL groups at Faith Promise should follow Jesus Christ and lead others to do the same. Below are the marks of a growing follower and disciple of Jesus.
– A follower of Jesus desires to encounter God through the deeper study and application of God’s Word.
– A follower of Jesus embraces people and values relationships on a deeper level so everyone can grow together.
– A follower of Jesus engages and serves the world around them and in their community, through local partners or God-directed opportunities.
– A follower of Jesus expands God’s Kingdom through development and multiplication of disciple-makers, possibly to lead more groups at Faith Promise.
