Group Leader Guide
Open with a short prayer and ask God to bless your discussion time.
ICE BREAKER
Highs and Lows: Ask each person at the table if they wish to share a highlight or lowlight of their week.
Question: Starting off 2021, what are you most excited to keep doing well?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
It’s a whole new world now that we’re done with 2020. Off with the old, on with the new - the only way out is through!
If only real life started and stopped so quickly and so well. Nothing is that simple. Our beginnings are always combined with endings and middles. Life remains messy, despite our best attempts to make lists and resolitions.
1) Is there a resolution that you make every year?
2) Have you made a family resolution?
3) Is there one resultion you won’t make anymore?
There is no such thing as a clean slate - we are always and forever a combination of what is happening now, what has came before, and what is happening next. What happens when we surrender our life to Christ is that He draws the line in the sand for us, truly seperation what was from what will be.
With Christ, we are reborn! That’s the only way it works and it’s a messy, long process. It’s a life-long adventure and it takes the rest of your life. The good news is that our Savoir is ready for us. He’s waiting on us to show up and get to work. First the decision is made and after that step, evertyhing happens.
4) What are you ready to give to God?
5) How is God encouraging you to stretch in your life?
6) What are you still holding on to?
7) How are you ready to dive into this new year?
MOVING FORWARD
The hardest thing to realize is that we are always in the middle of something. The idea of a ‘new year’ is such a man-made and, in some ways, dangerous concept. To think that we can become a ‘new thing’ WITHOUT God is dangerous. Jesus is the only one who can make things new, left to our own devisions we will just keep mudying the waters.
There needs to be radicial change to live radical lives. There needs to be radical love to fuel the radical change. Our role is to TRUST and GO. Trust in a loving God, even when we feel unloving and unloved. GO out and share the love that you don’t deserve with everyone else who doesn’t derserve it either.
Keep no recrords of the wrongs done to you. Leave past past hurts at the cross. Raise up with hope and faith for this year. Be ready for what is next and what is new. God is always working for us, no matter what the eneby tries to tell us. There is no greater love, there is no greater advocate, there is no greater camption for us than our Father.
8) How are you getting ready this next season of your life?
CHANGING YOUR MIND
Jesus loves us on our good days and our bad days. He sees us at our best and our worst and our lukewarm. He knows us and He loves us. We are HIS and at our worst, He gave us His best. Let us take this isea of a ‘new year’ and celebrate the Savior who is constant. Get ready for the new and bring foward the best of the known.
We can trust an unknown future to a known God and so that’s what we’ll do, one day at a time!