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.
1. Skim through the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7, which describes faithful living as citizens of Christ’s kingdom. Are there any that address some of the struggles, sin or circumstances you are dealing with presently?
Though Jesus’s kingdom may seem upside down, it is more accurate to say that we are the ones who are upside down. Are there any sections that seem impossible to you? Where do you specifically need God’s help to reorient and change your understanding?
2. Our natural tendency is to value and prize strength. We may even be proud of our ability to do things on our own. Being poor in spirit means we humbly acknowledge our weakness and desperate dependence. Confess to Him the ways you prefer to be pridefully strong or try to have the best of both kingdoms. Acknowledge this as sin to mourn before Him. Will you take your first step of humility by asking him for help in your specific area of need? Admit to Him that apart from Christ, it is impossible for you to live life as he describes in this sermon.
3. Review 2 Cor. 12:9-10 and James 4:8-10. How do these verses help you understand what it means to be poor in spirit and mourn for sin? What blessings are mentioned in these verses? How might these help you to think differently about the areas of struggle you identified earlier?
4. Spend some time thinking about how the kingdom of God is already here in the present and how it is still yet to come. What are some blessings of the kingdom you have already experienced now? How might remembering that this is just the “soft opening” of the kingdom, that there is more to come, cast a new light on how you live today? Ask God to help you navigate the tension of living in His already and not yet kingdom as you learn from Him how to walk as a citizen of heaven. Close your time by thanking and praising Him for our Savior who has walked this very road before us, all the way to the cross, that we might also be blessed as we follow and obey Him.