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.
My Natural Assumptions About God
- What in your life keeps you alienated from others: a sin, shameful past, stigma, failure, etc.? What do you believe needs to be “cleaned up” in your life before you can approach God or be acceptable to Him?
- On a scale of 1 (doubtful))-10 (confident), how sure are you of Jesus’s care and good will for you? What makes you doubt? What are your natural assumptions about who God is?
- In your worst moments, what do you think are God’s thoughts about you? Who or what do you turn to for relief, comfort, or help during those times?
Replacing Our Natural Assumptions By Looking at Christ
“Learn much of your own heart; and when you have learned all you can, remember you have seen but a few yards into a pit that is unfathomable…Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in his beams. Feel his all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and rest in his almighty arms…Unfathomable oceans of God’s grace in Christ are for you. Dive and dive again, you will never come to the bottom of these depths.”
—Robert Murray McCheyne
- What were some key characteristics of Christ that were significant to you from this passage and Pastor Francis’s message? Some include:
- Jesus is able to cleanse us from our sin and restore us to fellowship with God and community with one another.
- God’s power is able to minister directly into our own lives particularly and personally, in the ways we need it at the moment.
- Even if he does not remove the suffering, he gives us the grace to bear with it.
- Jesus’s cleanness, purity and righteousness is far greater than our uncleanness, impurity, and unrighteousness. Where sin increases, grace abounds all the more (Rom. 5:20).
- If you are a believer, Jesus has made the great exchange for you—your sin for His righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21).
- Spend some time looking at and meditating on our lovely, majestic, and gracious Savior. Bask in and rest in the depths of His grace.
- How might recalling these truths help you in your worst moments of shame?
Pointing Others to Look at Christ
- Do you know someone who is struggling to come to Christ because of a false understanding of who He is? How might you imitate Christ by entering into their suffering?
- How might my own humble recognition of my need be a help and example to another?
