Work through the following questions and scriptures on your own, and get together with your running partner, life group, or friends and family to talk through what you are learning.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.) If you’ve ever said, “I want life to be normal again” what are the things that you include in your definition of normal? Said another way, what are things you’d love to have back as a part of life that has been lost or different in this past year?
2.) What stood out to you from the message?
3.) Read Hebrews 11:6. What is success in God’s eyes? Do you think about success like this? Why or why not?
4.) Read Philippians 2:6-7 & John 5:19. How do you see Jesus living and relating to God in these passages? How can we apply what we see in Jesus to our lives?
5.) When circumstances out of your control don’t go your way—does it rob you of peace, of hope, of joy—or do you lean into God and trust God to guide and reward you as you seek to follow Him by faith—believing He is guiding because He promised to? Why do you think this is how you respond?
6.)Read Matthew 6:25-34. Do you believe that God wants you to enjoy life and not live with worry? Do you live life “enjoying the Moment” as the serenity prayer states? Why or why not? What would it take for you to live life without worrying?
7.) What in the Serenity Prayer draws your attention most as you think about something you need to practice more in your life? Why?
KEY SCRIPTURE
Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him
Philippians 2:6-7 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
John 5:19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”
Matthew 6:25-34 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
DIGGING DEEPER
Prayer for Serenity
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
-Reinhold Niebuhr