Inhabited Recap: Jan 23, 2010

I lead a Life Group/Community Group/Home Cell/Cell Group/ Splinter Cell/Jihadist Group for our church called “Inhabited.” The vision is “to invite God’s transforming power into our lives through various forms of personal worship” and the focus is on spiritual formation.  Ultimately, the “various forms of personal worship” point towards how we approach our relationship with the Holy Spirit, thus much of it centers around our prayer life.

I’m going to start posting our notes. Of course, as a community group, much of our night is discussion driven, which is hard to capture by just copy-pasting our notes. I’ll interject some nuggets that sprinkled our discussion to at least sort of gives an idea of where we went (of course, nothing directly personal, just guide posts). This week was a discussion of relational honesty. The original idea has been working in me for a few weeks, but the current book I’m reading (Metamoprha / Kyl Strobel), provided much of the support and helped me round it out as a lesson. I’d love to continue the discussion here for anyone who wants to jump in, especially considering I may not always convey it correctly as i convert discussion based stuff to text.


Opening Verse
Search me, O God, and know my heart
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way of the everlasting
Daily Wisdom From Proverbs
Proverbs 23: Read / Respond (we start every session reading from “Today’s Proverb” as a warm up / discussion. I do not read it in advance, so it’s fresh for all of us.)
Hands On: Let’s Be Honest: What do we really believe?
For sake of discussion: Do I believe that God works in my life daily? (looking at some questions that we all affirm quite readily in our Christian faith, but do our actions and / or hearts really believe it or are we paying God lip service? We had some honest answers which highlighted how often what we know in our head doesn’t line up with what we feel in our heart.)
Can I have a real relationship with God?
Relational Honesty:
1) Honest with each other
2) Honest with yourself
* Third element in relationship with God *
3) Honest with yourself about what you honestly believe about God. (we tend treat our relationship with the Holy Spirit in such a way that would never be acceptable in any other relationships)
“Come as you are” – We do not have to sugar coat what we feel: (the phrase “come as you are” is not in the Bible… That’s right, Jesus never said it… but Kurt Cobain did. I do, however, believe strongly that the concept is all throughout scripture and Jesus’ life)
Matthew 11:28-30
“Church is not a hotel for saints, but a hospital for sinners”
Matthew 9:9-13
(if we know and believe this, why do we feel the need to offer half-truths and watered down honesty? For example, how often do we straight up tell God we’re ticked off at him? Rather we say that we’re angry at a situation and do not understand why God would allow it… often, though, we’re hiding much more passionate, deep-rooted frustrations TOWARDS God. We’re afraid of being irreverent, which is a valid concern in many situations, but if it causes us to suppress our honest thoughts, than we lack integrity and we harbor frustration rather than facilitate growth.)

We must be willing to have our beliefs de-constructed by God so that His Spirit within us can transform us into His image. We must examine our actions to see if we really believe what we claim to believe. We must be honest with ourselves about how we feel about God… and not just pay Him lip service:
Do I really believe … (potential action markers to know if we really believe it)
God works in my life daily? (internal thing, search your heart)
prayer works? (how often do i pray?)
God even cares about me specifically? (internal thing, search your heart)
there are any real consequence to my sin? (do I allow certain sins to continue in my life? it’s important to note here that the eternal consequence of our sin has been erased, but if that meant we had a free-for-all on living in sin than the New Testament wouldn’t talk so much about righteousness and finding freedom from sin. See Romans 6-8 for more discussion about this)
God changes me? (or do i continually try to change myself without seeking his guidance)
Jesus is my model to follow as a man? (do i know anything about Jesus other than what I’ve heard? have i even attempted to model his life? What do i believe about Jesus that may not have any scriptural background?… Another great point from Metamorpha is our inability to see God as fully man. We had a nice discussion on the implications of this thought.)
the Bible speaks life into mine? (how often do i read and let it read me?)
Our journey will probably have to look much like the psalmists’, who often cried out to God with utmost honesty about their inability to find Him near. Our honesty will be the place where God teaches us humility, trust, and how to really be loved. I have found in my own life that the Spirit longs for me to come to Him as I honestly am, with what is really going on inside of me and how I actually see the world. When I do, he takes me and shows me how little I understand and how much he has to teach me. – Kyle Stobel, Metamorpha
(At this point, I asked everyone to pick a psalm below or question above and get brutally honest with yourself and then brutally honest with God. When we face our shortcomings and dark corners, God is faithful to bring change into our lives)
Ps 13: God doesn’t care
Ps 22: God has abandoned me
Ps 38: I’m at the end of my rope
Ps 42: Depression weighs me down
Ps 44: I don’t deserve this
Ps 73: Following You is vain
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