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 18:45). (This is the second of a 2-part series. Part 1 can be found here.)
1. What facets make up your identity? Consider your roles, relationships, loves, hates, passions and preferences, sins. What are some man-centered alternatives you have used to define yourself: success, occupation, relational status, appearance, ethnicity, sin, gender, circumstances, etc.?
2. The world also tells us false messages about our identity: be true to yourself, what you feel is most important thing about you, you can define yourself, etc. How has the “gospel of self” influenced your thinking? How have they influenced how you live your life?
3. Scripture tells us a different message about our identity:
- We are needy people—we are not able to help or save ourselves from our sin or the judgment we deserve. What is the danger of overlooking this aspect of our identity?
- We are forgiven people—no longer defined by our sin. How might that help you as you think of past failures or recurring sin?
- We are a new creation, with a new heart and relationship with God. (2 Cor. 5:17). How does that change our relationship to sin?
- We are beloved children of God. How does that change how we feel about ourselves? How does the fact that we are beloved children change how you live each moment?
- We are citizens of heaven. How might this change how you view your time here on earth? How might it change your goals?
4. Pastor Kim points out that unless we are defined by what Christ has accomplished for you on the cross, we will pursue other things to define our identity.
Meditate on verse 14. “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
- How does this passage free you from the world’s power over you (“the world has been crucified to me”)?
- How does this passage free you from the world’s influence over you (“I am dead to the world”)?
- Explain how these gospel truths might set you free to rest in the identity God has defined for you. What standards or pursuits can you release? What might that free you to focus on instead? How can your identity as a new creation change how you spend your days and relate to others?
5. Pray that God would help you to rest peacefully, contentedly and gratefully in your identity in Christ. Thank God for the truths of Scripture, for His love in saving you in your neediness, for His commitment to you and for doing what is best for you in light of His Story.
Other suggested applications:
- Memorize verse 14.
- Attend Christopher Yuan’s upcoming “Holy Sexuality” seminar.
