Welcome to Sunday Fuel! This series of questions is designed to assist your personal reflection and fellowship with others about the sermon from this past Sunday.

Go to This Sunday’s Sermon

1. Discern your worry. 

• What is something you worry about in this season of your child’s life, whether an infant or an adult? Though this week’s sermon focuses on parenting worries, it can also apply to other anxieties in your life—work, school, singleness, friendships, suffering or other difficult situations. 
• How does this worry drive or impact your life and how you live it? Would you say it is better or worse for it?  

2. Get to the heart of your worry. (If you are not a parent, substitute your own concern.)

• What is a desire you have for your children? How are you working harder and longer to help them attain that desire? 
• What fear do you have for your children? How are you trying to protect them from it? 
• Ask God to help you identify the heart behind the ways you try to alleviate your worry. Is it a desire for control? Is it the false belief that if I do enough of the right things, my kids will turn out the way they should? Is it because you are looking to your children as a means to an end for your own gain instead of viewing them as a gift from God? 
• Review Psalm 127. Meditate on the phrase “in vain,” which means empty, meaningless in light of your worries. 

3. Meditate on Christ and elevate Him above your worry. 

• What does Psalm 127 remind you about God? Think about what it means for God to be sovereignly in control of outcomes, timing, plans, and even our failures.
• Take some time to focus on and rest in these truths.
• Accept and even embrace your limitations as a parent. Respond in prayer—confession, dependence, trust, worship. 

4. Believe and trust in God in the midst of your worry. 

• If God is sovereign, how might that change how you respond to him? Consider: 
• When you feel fear, what truth will you choose to believe and hold to? 
• What is a pathway of grace you can faithfully put your child on as an act of faith, entrusting the outcomes to Him? 
• If you feel regret or guilt in how you responded or raised your children, will you bring your failure to the Lord and commit them and yourself to the Lord? How will you move forward in truth towards God and in love towards them? 
• If you lay awake at night with your worries, how can you instead use your mental energy to turn to Him in prayer and faith, trusting His sovereign control? 

Are you facing infertility and/or miscarriage?

If this particular topic on parenting generates much pain, please do not try to bear this alone. Besides bringing your pain to the Lord in lament, please be aware the church offers several resources to help walk with you through this season: 

1. Ask for prayer from the pastoral staff or their wives. We can pray with you. 
2. Read Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop. Check to see if there is a free copy available at the church office to help you process this in your life.
3. Find support in the Care Group that focuses on infertility. The goal of this group is to meet roughly every other month to walk alongside and provide support, prayer, and encouragement in what can be a lonely journey. You may indicate your interest on this form by checking the box for this group.