Embracing The Challenge

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Embracing The Challenge

With Thick Skin & A Soft Heart

February 26, 2023 • Pete Campbell • 2 John

It's not always easy to face challenges in life, but it's important to remember that we can't always control what happens to us. What we can control is how we react to those challenges. Do we let them harden our hearts or do we let them make us more compassionate? If we can learn to love God and others despite the challenges we face, we will be much better off in the long run.

TALK ABOUT IT - Questions to GROW through with family, friends, & myself.

1. How does life’s challenges & struggles reveal what I truly believe?

2. What are my reactions & thoughts towards compromising situations & mindsets that I’m not ready for?

3. In what ways have I allowed life's challenges to harden my heart?

4. What can you do to develop thick skin when it comes to my faith?

5. In what ways can you become a friend of sinners? Think of a couple things you can do this week to love people while embracing the challenge.

For Our Kids

March 5, 2023 • Jordan Hansen • 3 John, John 14:6, Matthew 6:21, Matthew 5:16

Raising a child is no easy task. Shaping and influencing the next generation of followers of Jesus is no simple process. Our kids are faced with challenges in their personal lives, but also the dangers and threats of living in a world that does not know God. If all of our parenting could be summarized into a few values, what would those values be? What do we want for our kids? The shortest book in the entire Bible has a lot of punch packed into 15 total verses. TALK ABOUT IT - Questions to GROW through with family, friends, & myself. 1. What were the most important lessons our parents or grandparents taught us in life? 2. What do we want our kids to learn from us? If we could only teach them 3 things, what would they be? 3. What does John’s conflict with Diotrephes lead him to teach Gaius in this letter? 4. How will I help my kids, or the next generation, to know Jesus and to follow him with their whole hearts? 5. PRAYER: “Father, help us to raise the next generation to know you and to live for you and your mission on this Earth!”

Get Out Of The Way!

February 19, 2023 • 1 John 5:13–21, Exodus 34:14, Romans 6:23, Romans 8:34, Romans 8:26–27

Prayer. What is the point? What makes us selfish in our evangelism is often times proved in our prayer lives. If God answered all of our prayers, would the world change, or just OUR world? As John comes to a conclusion, He wants His spiritual family to KNOW they can have confidence in their prayers to God. As believers, we have access to the God of all Creation, Jesus in the flesh, who desires to move. Confidant prayer moves us out of His way. What confident prayers move us out of the way? TALK ABOUT IT - Questions to GROW through with family, friends, & myself. 1. How would I describe my prayer life? Do my prayers move me out of the way for God to move? 2. What kind of prayers please God? How does “the Lord’s prayer” please God? 3. Do I pray for people in my life to experience the true God, Jesus who IS eternal life? Why / why not? 4. What modern day idols have the most access to tempt me? How does God help me? 5. PRAYER: “Father, give me the confidence to pray bold prayers that move me out of the way for you to move!”

Keeping Secrets

February 12, 2023 • 1 John 5:1–12, John 1:29–33, John 1:8

At some point in our lives, someone confided in us something important. It made us feel special. But we’ve also been on the other end of a secret kept. That had the potential of making us feel like we were on the outside looking in. The good news of the Gospel of Jesus is that it isn’t secret knowledge that rescues us. God desires to reveal Jesus to ALL of us, in a way we can understand, so we can experience Heaven, starting on Earth. That is worth sharing! TALK ABOUT IT - Questions to GROW through with family, friends, & myself. 1. Have I ever had people keep an important and beneficial secret from me? How did that make me feel? 2. What are the three witnesses to the identity of Jesus in this passage that can bolster our desire to share Christ? 3. Which witness do I struggle with the most? How do our lives preach the message of Heaven on Earth? 4. Why does God desire people to know the Truth? What impact will it make on His Creation, their lives, and others? 5. PRAYER: “Father, help us to live our beliefs in Jesus so others can follow him, too!.”