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 (start at 25:14)
While our relationships can be the sources of our greatest joy, they can also be the cause of our deepest pains.
- Think of a relationship that you are struggling with right now. What is the nature of the struggle? How has this relationship caused pain, worry, or frustration?
- Are you in conflict—over what?
- Have you been hurt—why?
- Are you discouraged or feel dissatisfied—how does it fall short?
- Have they disappointed you—where?
- Read Philippians 2:1. Here, Paul turns our eyes from all the ways others have failed us to the love of Christ. If we are His children, these four things (and more!) are ours. Meditate on these truths. How might they shed light on your difficult relationship?
- If you feel discouraged, He is beside you to encourage and walk with you.
- If you feel others have failed to love you well, remember He has loved you to the fullest extent, even to death.
- If you feel frustrated by your differences, recall that the Spirit unites us despite those differences.
- If you feel unloved, know that in Christ, you are deeply loved, with great affection.
3. Pastor Kim explained that our pride, our “conceit,” will block us not only from loving but from knowing these truths in our lives. When you think about your struggles with this individual, how is your pursuit of the wrong kind of glory—yours, not his—impacting the difficulty you’re experiencing with this person? How might you be selfishly ambitious for something—even if it looks respectable or even good on the outside—be hurting your relationship? Humble yourself and confess it to the Lord.
4. Just as pride in the heart shows up in hurtful actions that divide, so humility in heart shows up in loving actions that draw us together. Ponder Paul’s exhortation for us to count others as more important than ourselves (Phil. 1:3). Pray that God would help you think differently about this individual. How would you respond differently to them if you believed this? Start by committing to pray for them every day this week as a small step towards growth.
If you are not experiencing a difficult relationship at this time, consider how this passage can challenge how you show up at church.
- Ask God to help you to approach your time at church in service, your fellowship group, or small group with the reminder that others are more important than me.
- As you reframe your perspective around the best interest of others, how might that change how you interact or serve with those around you? What can you do to love and serve: introduce yourself to someone new, listen and pray on the spot, consider making the sacrifice to attend third service?
- Pray for our church, that in our humble service and care for all who enter our doors, we may be a place of kindness and hope in a dark world.
