Big Idea
The essence of living the christian life moment by moment is accessing the Word & the Spirit of God to guide our moral reasoning.
Deuteronomy 11:18-32
(Group leaders: Consider reading this passage after you do the group ice breaker.)
Ice Breaker
Have you ever had a time when you had to summarize your thoughts for a speech at an important event? Or, think of our church tradition which asks parents to write a letter to their graduating senior. Or, perhaps you were the maid of honor at a wedding and had to give a toast to the bride. What do you say? How do you gather your thoughts? You have so much history with this person and you want to urge them forward on a good path.
Give group members the opportunity to share with the group some of the emotion felt when preparing such a speech and have them share some of the struggle to condense all they wanted to say into one short speech. Why did they say what they said etc?
This is very much like what Moses is experiencing as he prepares his speech and this is what the people are experiencing as they hear their leaders’ speech in Deuteronomy 11.
This is Moses’ farewell speech to Israel. The speech is given just before he dies. It’s packed full of heart felt instruction.
Discuss
Share with your small group how you find yourself disordering your loves in daily interactions? What is your pull with your spouse, children, friends, co workers? For example, if you want attention from your spouse and you are not getting it the way you want it what do you do? In this moment I am to order my loves. My flesh and hurt come up so quickly. We pout, we retreat, we power up with anger, or we go do something in order to withdraw from our spouse.
Next Step
Make yourself accountable to someone to do one new thing this week to order your loves.
Consider the following as you prayerfully consider one new thing: “Start”…when will I start? “Stop.” “Measure”–how do I measure this new thing?
Additional Discussion Questions
A Biblical framework for prioritizing our lives can be thought of as: “The 5 P’s”.
The 5 P’s are listed below in order of priority:
- Person–think of your relationship with God and think of embracing and living out your true identity as God’s dearly loved child.
- Priest: you connect with God and you bring others to Him.
- Partner: your spouse.
- Parent: your parenting role.
- Profession.
Picture the 5 P’s as a shelving unit with 5 shelves. On the top shelf is priority #1 and this priority shapes all the others underneath it.
Are your loves ordered in the priority listed above? Take some time to evaluate your life–evaluate both the past month as well as the past year. Write down how you see yourself living out your priorities and share this with the group. Consider asking your spouse or your children for their feedback.
When you think of prioritizing your loves try to get practical regarding how you live out your loves. Think of life giving responses: For example, you are hurt by your spouse(or friend or child or co-worker) but you think to yourself: I still know she loves me, I know she has to get something else done so I will give her the space she needs and I will take my desire for attention to God right now. Or perhaps ordering my love would mean that I talk to her after I examine my own heart first. And, I may end up saying something like this, “Let’s work on what we can do to nourish our marriage together because I believe we both want our marriage to flourish.”
Notes and quotes
I can’t love my kids well if I don’t love Jesus first and love my wife well.