HSM

Series: “Christmas In Chaos”
Focus: Fear in the midst of chaos

Family Discussion:

In this series we will connect the chaos of the first Christmas with the emotions and realities of our lives.  As you join us in this journey, I want to encourage you to look for ways to make traditions and memories for your family.  The more we capitalize on these moments the more we will be able to underscore Jesus’ purpose for coming to earth for our students.

Read Luke 2:1-14 as a family and discuss the following questions:

Discussion Questions:

1. The shepherds are an interesting group of guys.  How do they play into the story of Christmas?
2. Why do you think they were afraid?
3. The first Christmas was extremely chaotic for Mary and Joseph.  How did the shepherds feel this chaos? What did Jesus’ birth mean for them?

The shepherds experienced two things that they never had before: floating, singing angels and the birth of the Messiah.  Typically, when we face things that are unknown there is an element of fear, either small or massive, that comes into play.  The shepherds were able to move past their fear and were used in the greatest story ever told.  What are you doing as a family to share the Good News despite the fear that the chaos brings?

MSM

Tonight we are kicking off a three week series focused on who Jesus is.  We all have different thoughts about who Jesus is and those thoughts are very important.  What we think about who Jesus is will have major implications on how we live our lives.  There are some characteristics of Jesus that we tend to overlook.  Over the next three weeks, we are going to take three specific characteristics that tend to be overlooked and see what impact they can have on our lives.

In large group tonight we looked at the story of Jesus cleaning the Temple (Mark 11:15-19) and saw how Jesus displayed a very important characteristic of who God is.  That characteristic is jealousy.  Jealousy is a desire for something that is not.  We challenged students to see that God’s jealousy is a desire for something that is not and should be.  Jealousy should move us to take action to fix something that should be that is not.  That is what Jesus did in the Temple.  He saw the people were being blocked from what worship was all about, and He allowed His jealousy to work as God designed it to and do something about this situation.

The cool thing is that we too have been made in the image of God, and we have the jealousy character trait.  The problem is that our jealousy is usually not over the right things.  Often it’s over things we selfishly want that don’t really matter.  We then allow that desire to control our lives and pull us away from God and what matters to Him.  We discovered how God’s jealousy warns us to re-evaluate what we are jealous about and make sure that it is really important in the long run, as well as to take action to fix things that should be.  We challenged students to ask themselves, “What has God given me to fix this situation like Jesus did in the Temple?”

In their group time, students continued to evaluate the things that they tend to struggle with jealousy over and evaluate God’s jealousy compared to their jealousy.

Listed below are some questions that you can use to spark conversation with your students and connect with what we talked about this week:

• Can jealousy be a good characteristic to have?  How so?
• What is the difference between God’s jealousy and our jealousy?
• What are some things that you struggle with being jealous about?  In the end are they really that important?  Are they things that should be or that you selfishly want to be?
• Have you ever faced a situation where God wanted you to allow jealousy to push you to take action to fix something that should be?  What did you do?  What things could you have used that God has given you to take action and fix that situation?

Blount

Series: “Christmas In Chaos”

Focus: Fear in the midst of chaos

Family Discussion:

In this series we will connect the chaos of the first Christmas with the emotions and realities of our lives.  As you join us in this journey, I want to encourage you to look for ways to make traditions and memories for your family.  The more we capitalize on these moments the more we will be able to underscore Jesus’ purpose for coming to earth for our students.

Read Luke 2:1-14 as a family and discuss the following questions:

Discussion Questions:

1. The shepherds are an interesting group of guys…how do they play into the story of Christmas? Why do you think they were afraid?
2. The first Christmas was extremely chaotic for Mary and Joseph…how did the shepherds feel this chaos? What did Jesus’ birth mean for them?

The shepherds experienced two things that they never had before: floating, singing angels and the birth of the Messiah.  Typically when we face things that are unknown there is an element of fear, either small or massive, that comes into play.  The shepherds were able to move past their fear and were used in the greatest story ever told.  What are you doing as a family to share the Good News despite the fear that the chaos brings?