Rooted
Life with god | week 2

As we think about deepening our Life with God, we talked last time about how personal transformation has everything to do with being connected to Jesus. Today, we want to give you a tool for how to be connected to Jesus—and that is to develop a devotional life of the study of Scripture.

Learning objective: be equipped to initiate or continue a practice of personal devotions which include the reading of Scripture.

Prior to meeting with your mentor or small group, please do the following:
WATCH:

READ:

• “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16)
• “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9)
• “What happens is that the almighty Creator, the Lord of hosts, the great God before whom the nations are as a drop in a bucket, comes to you and begins to talk to you through the words and truth of Holy Scripture. Perhaps you have been acquainted with the Bible and Christian truth for many years, and it has meant little to you; but one day you wake up to the fact that God is actually speaking to you—you!—through the biblical message. As you listen to what God is saying, you find yourself brought very low; for God talks to you about your sin, and guilt, and weakness, and blindness, and folly, and compels you to judge yourself hopeless and helpless, and to cry out for forgiveness. But this is not all. You come to realize as you listen that God is actually opening his heart to you, making friends with you and enlisting you as a colleague—in Barth’s phrase, a covenant partner. It is a staggering thing, but it is true—the relationship in which sinful human beings know God is one in which God, so to speak, takes them onto his staff, to be henceforth his fellow workers and personal friends.” 
• —J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 36

WRITE AND REFLECT:
Rooted Content

• What has your experience been reading the Scriptures on your own?
• What do you find most enjoyable about reading the Scriptures? Most difficult?
• When have you experienced a moment where it felt like God was speaking to you right from the pages of Scripture? What did He say? What did you do as a result?
• Imagine yourself six months from now: where would you like to be, in terms of your engagement with the Scriptures? How will you get there? Who can help?

The Bible Project Content

• The Bible is a collection of various ______ written over a long period of time but together they tell one ______.
• How does the Story begin?
• What is the choice humans faced?
• What did the story of Abraham and Sarah and their family, the Israelites, reveal?
• What did the prophets do and what did they say predict?
• The stories of Jesus claim that he is _____ become human, to be for all humanity what we could never be for ourselves. He took the consequences of our evil and _____ upon himself and his sacrificial ______ proved more powerful than sin and even ________.
• After Jesus, humans face a new choice: stick with the old way of being or chose the way of Jesus. Why were letters written to those who chose the way of Jesus and formed new communities?
• How does the Bible end?

TAKE ACTION:

• Take 15 minutes, three times this week, to study your Bible. During that time, try practicing the SOAP method of studying the Scriptures:
  • Scripture: read it, multiple times, slowly.
  • Observation: What do I notice? What seems to be the central thought?
  • Application: what might God be saying to me through this? Is there something He wants me to try? A truth He wants me to embrace? An action He wants me to take?
  • Prayer: ask God for courage to do the very thing he showed you in the application portion just now. Ask Him also for a willing heart to obey.
• You might also consider the historic practice of Lectio Divina for meditating on the Scriptures. This involves a slower reading of the text and a quieting of your heart to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to you. See the Appendix for an outline of the practice.

As we think about deepening our Life with God, we talked last time about how personal transformation has everything to do with being connected to Jesus. Today, we want to give you a tool for how to be connected to Jesus—and that is to develop a devotional life of the study of Scripture.
Learning objective: be equipped to initiate or continue a practice of personal devotions which include the reading of Scripture.
Coaching objective: to move a person toward regular personal engagement of the Scriptures.
INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW

• This week you should have covered the week two in your Participant Guide and your Biblical Study Guide and sent me your homework for both.
• In the Participant Guide, week two introduces you to a tangible practice to foster an intimate life with God—and that is the reading and study of Scripture.
• Before we dive into some coaching, does anyone have any questions about the material or the flow of our Rooted series so far? Anything that needs to be clarified?
• Can I have 2-3 people share from their homework in week one—the transformation conversation about where you are and where you’d like to be in life with Jesus? Or anything that stood out to you from the Biblical Study Guide homework?

COACHING: 10-15 MINUTES

• Preferably, prior to your coaching session you’ve read the participants homework. As you do so, pray for God to highlight a few people from what they’ve written in the homework. This will give you a jumping off point for coaching.
• I’d love to do some coaching around reading the Scriptures. Ask if you can coach a specific person (whom you identified from the homework).
• Ideas to coach around: someone who feels “dry” in their Scripture study, someone who has never had a consistent schedule or reading the Bible, someone who already seems to ‘know it all’.
• Potential questions to ask:
  • I noticed from your homework that you wrote…can you please expand on that?
  • What about regularly reading and studying the Bible is challenging for you? What obstacles are you facing? Boring? No time? Don’t understand it?
  • What do you imagine engaging in the Scriptures could look like for you? What do you hope for?
  • How would imagine that changing the way you show up in relationships and address challenges in your life?
  • What are some possible steps you could envision yourself taking to engage the Scriptures more deeply?
  • Which one do you find most appealing? Easiest? Most led to try by the Holy Spirit?
  • Which step are you willing to commit to? When?

WRAPPING UP

• Thanks so much for engaging today. I’m excited for the journey each of you are on in your Life with God. 
• Let me pray to close us out for the night…alternatively, you can do prayer ministry for an individual or break the group up and have them pray for one another.