Sermon-Based Small Group
Lessons
When God Gets Personal with His Mission: Abrabham
Dr. Les
Hughes
February
1, 2009
Scripture
1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your
country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show
you.
2
"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will
bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."
4 So
Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was
seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. 5 He took his wife Sarai,
his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they
had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they
arrived there.
Share
a time in your life when God has called you to do something unique or out of
the ordinary. If not you, have you
observed a unique call in someone else’s life that you know was from God?
1. Life-changing
lesson number one is this: “Believing God exists doesn’t satisfy what God requires
of us.”
Read
James 2:19. Discuss the spiritual
state of demons.
2. Read 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.”
What
are the implications of this verse on our lives?
3. Read Genesis 12:1-3 above. If God gave us that command, what type
things would be running through our mind in the first hours following the challenge?
4. Lesson number two is “Our relationship with God is dynamic and
changing, not static and status quo.” The good news is that God lets us
grow. We don’t have to be
mature from the beginning. Tell
about how you have changed in your relationship to God.
What
factors in your life have most helped you to increase in your spiritual
maturity?
5. Les said, “When God gets personal,
He wants us to be all in.”
What happens if we are only half in to God’s plan?
The
Bible uses the illustration of Christians being in battle. Can you imagine a person in the military
being “half-in”?
6. Lesson number three states, “When God gets personal, He requires
unconditional obedience.”
Les
stated that God’s blessing has conditions. How do you feel about that? Is it logical? Why or why not?
7. God blessed Abraham to bless the world,
not as an end in itself. How does
that help us to view our blessings?
What keeps us from seeing the intent of blessings as being to share?
Galatians
3:8-9 says, The Scripture foresaw that God would
justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham:
"All nations will be blessed through you." So those who have faith are blessed
along with Abraham, the man of faith.
8. The reason the dead
sea is dead is that water flows in and none flows out, leaving a high
salt content. Are we allowing God’s
blessings to flow through us? What
are the implications of not allowing blessings to flow through?
9. Discuss whether Lesson Four is true or
false: “A personal relationship with God is costly.” Why or why not?
10. Les said that we can understand enough
of God to follow Him.
John
17:3 “Now
this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom you have sent.”
Psalm
145:3 “Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one
can fathom.”
What
are you doing to follow what you understand of God?
11. Les gave some suggestions for following
God. Which of these do you want to
work on this week?
a. When God
calls your name, when you hear from Him, obey.
b. View
struggles as ways for your faith to grow instead of inconveniences to your
lifestyle.
c. Be a blessing
to someone just as you’ve been blessed by God.
What is God calling you to do as a result of today’s
study? What can you do to build
your own faith so that you truly trust God? Is there any part of your life that you
need to give Him?