January 13, 2019 -FLOURISH - Decluttering Your Desires

FLOURISH  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  48:47
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Flourishing requires us to take inventory of our desires. Through Jesus, our desires can be redirected. Redirecting or decluttering your desires requires active tending to. Join us to start the clean up this Sunday. 10 AM

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January 13, 2019 The smaller groups in our church community are inside our homes where we go deeper, build friendships, and walk out the Christian life with each other. HOME CHURCH/SMALL GROUP/CLASS GUIDE + “Breaking the Ice” question (group facilitator) + CHECK-INS: Introduce yourself if new/new people in group, check-in with each other. What’s been happening in your week(s) since we last met? + CARE: Needs in the group; name these needs and have sentence prayers (just short sentences/open ended, not long-winded) at end of the gathering time + COMPASSION: What compassion work is the group planning? Are you inviting your neighbors to join in? + GROUP ANNOUNCEMENTS (church-wide and group-only) + DIG IN: Any reflections, discernments, disagreements from last week’s teaching (or since you last met)? Look at the Bible passage(s) again and read some of them out loud in the group (and other verses that may have been mentioned). What jumps out at you? Discuss some of the questions as a group. + End and Homework: Final questions, prayer huddles for personal requests. Consider breaking into small groups (huddles) of 2-4, by gender, if large enough. DISCUSSION questions: 1. We are often drawn in many directions by various desires in our lives. Please share with the group a few different desires you have in life? 2. Reread 1 John 2:15-17 and John 3:16-17. Are there tensions between these two passages? How do we hold them together? 3. In order to make space for God’s presence, we have to be ruthless with decluttering various things that take emotional and mental (and sometimes physical time/space/resources). This is one important spiritual discipline. What do you think of this idea? 4. In 2:15, John tells us to not love the world. What do you think of the idea that your loves are chosen and can change? 5. James KA Smith argues that we SIGNIFICANTLY underestimate how the culture around us shapes us as worshippers, AKA “cultural liturgies.” Do you underestimate how you are formed by culture around you that is not in line with God’s Spirit? What does that look like in your daily life? 6. Compartmentalization-thinking we can be sacred/secular in various contexts is not exactly real. Talk about how we try to compartmentalize and why? 7. The Spirit will convict us of our desires, however the conviction is a call to partner with God’s grace and act/behave in creating new habits. What new habits do you need to take up to become a Jesus-centred person in your thoughts, attitudes, words and works/ actions? How can Home Church be a part of that “making space” and forming work in you and each other? Prayer Requests: 1 John 2:15-17, John 3:16-17 REVIEW: We exist to love our city and to invite our neighbours to flourish by rooting our lives in the outrageous love and life of Jesus. TEXT: Jeremiah 29:7, 1 John 4:7-8, Ephesians 3:17, Col 1:17, Col. 1:28-29, John 13:34-35, John 3:16-17 MAIN IDEA: Disordered desires shape what we love. We are what we love. To flourish, seek peace, and make space we must attend to our desires and simplify them by naming and prioritizing them starting with the love of God. What we love can be formed. THREE CONNECTED THEMES: Flourishing, Shalom, and Making Space Key passages: 1 John 2:15-17, John 3:16 2:15a Do not love the world or the things in the world. 15b If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, 2:16 because all that is in the world (the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance produced by material possessions)is not from the Father, but is from the world. DESIRE OF FLESH AKA “the lust of the flesh” “what the body hankers for (Yarbrough)” TAKE AWAY 1. Be warned we are in the world - but the world is not neutral in terms of spiritual life. It is a warzone. 2. Identify where the Holy Spirit is convicting you of stuff you’ve let into your life and home that is forming you by darkness instead of light. DESIRE OF EYES AKA “the lust of the eyes” 3. Check your desires - affirm emotions BUT DO NOT LET THEM RULE! (Jones) Anatomy of Sin, James 1:14-15; 1 John 2:15-16 4. Leadership - influence by the world’s definition does not mean one is necessarily to have spiritual authority in the church. (5) ALLEGIANCE PRIDE OF LIFE (arrogance produced by material stuff) AKA “The boasting what s/he has and does” 2:17 And the world is passing away with all its desires, but the person who does the will of God remains forever.
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